Posted under
General by The Blonde Diaries on July 3rd, 2008 12:09 am
One thing I try really hard at doing is keeping my online life separate from my personal life. I’m not sure to complete reason that I try to do this but I think it could be so that I can feel free to express myself online under an alias and not worry about someone finding my writing and questioning me about it. But as I continue to work on this blog I find myself posting the link in more places like my facebook and myspace accounts. As a result, I’ve had a few people ask me about starting a blog.
One of the first things I suggest is hosting your own blog/website over using a free site like blogger or blogspot. My main reason is that I am a former techie geek who likes coding and prefers to have free rein over my creations online. With a free site you can’t really change it up too much like you can with a self-hosted site.
Another reason I prefer this method is that I can use Word Press as my blogging software so to speak. Word Press is completely free and there are so many different page themes and plugins that you can install to really make your blog your own and customize it to do exactly what you want.
The good thing is that self-hosting really will not break the bank. Many sites are less than $100 a year for your own personal domain as well as storage space to hold the files that make up your blog. If you aren’t quite sure who to go with for a host the geeks at WebHostingGeeks.com have set up a site to rank the top hosts in various categories such as: best budget hosts, best blog hosts, and best forum hosts to name a few. You can easily compare ratings between hosts as well as features and prices before you decide who to go with to get your site going strong. I would definitely use this as a good starting point. Happy Blogging! 
Posted under
General,
budget by The Blonde Diaries on July 4th, 2008 5:49 pm
A few days ago I wrote about getting started with your own blog and deciding whether you want to self-host your blog or get a blog through a site like blogger or wordpress. Now that you have figured out which path you want to take the next big step is naming your blog and deciding on its theme. I have to admit I spent a long time finding the right theme for my blog. I think deciding on a theme took longer than I spent deciding on my desired name and web address. I literally looked at hundreds of wordpress themes before finding this one. The biggest problem was finding a “cute” girl for my blog. I wanted something that was trendy but yet represented me and my theme.
TopWordPressThemes.com is one of the best places you should look when trying to discover your theme. They offer hundreds of free Wordpress themes with various themes. If I wasn’t aiming for a blonde girl for my page I think I would have gone with this theme titled “Shopping Manual” because it totally reflects my love for shopping. I still might try it out and see how it looks with my posts and links especially since the theme is totally free!
That is the great thing about WordPress - there are hundreds of free themes you can download from sites like this so you are not stuck with a set amount of themes available to you from a blogging site like blogger and you can change your theme as often as you’d like. Nothing like hearing free and lots of choices to make this budget girl happy! So go out and find a few themes to play with on your WordPress blog and get ready to blog!!
Posted under
General by The Blonde Diaries on July 12th, 2008 11:13 am
Attention Mommy Bloggers! I have an idea for you that will not cost you a penny. You have all the tools already in place since you already are blogging on your own site. All you have to do is submit your blog to SocialSpark for approval and you can start bidding on blogging jobs to earn you extra spending money! How cool is that? You can earn money doing what you already do every day/week when you post to your blog! You are never assigned to do a post for them which means you do not have to blog about a product or concept you do not agree with like on other blogging sites. Additionally, they support full disclosure on every post so that you don’t have to feel sneaky trying to put up a post where you are being paid without being able to tell your readers and all links are no follow links which will not count against you with the Google gods and their page rank system if that is important to you. So make sure to go visit today and sign up!!!
This really is one of the best programs out there because once you get in queue for a post you do not have to check back or refresh like other programs because they will send you an email notifying you when you are awarded the post and the timing for posting. This means you have more time to spend with your family working on new craft projects or trying out fun recipes. Which is the number one reason I love mommy blogs: awesome recipes. If you have a mommy blog drop me a comment so I can come visit your blog!
Posted under
Entertainment by The Blonde Diaries on July 16th, 2008 5:29 pm
Man I love the organization series plugin for WordPress. I love how it organizes your similar posts and allows you to group them together under a set series. Once you assign a post to a series you have a cute little box in the post area that tells you the name of all of the other posts in the series and gives the links so you can jump around the series from there.
Well I have been trying to fix this plugin for 2 months now with no luck. I was able to get things in a series and get the box going but clicking on the name of the series under the post title would give a 404 error and the widget added to the left side bar for the longest time would give a 404 error. So last night I was wondering if it was a template/theme issue or just the plugin itself. I did some reading and figured it was not the template. So I upgraded WordPress hoping it would fix the issue. No dice. So after more reading apparently the organize series plugin does not work with the revver plugin. Hmm sounds plausible because my blog had both. Only issue was I couldn’t figure out how to disable revver so I had to go into cpanel to delete the plugin entirely. Well now the organization series is working as intended…almost. I now have an issue where every time I make a change to a post already posted the series assigns it (the updated post) it’s own number in the series so now I have multiple posts for the same series with the same name and receiving 404 issues there.
ARGH!!! So I am now working to resolve this issue. If you run across a 404 error message I apologize and hopefully it will be resolved soon.
Posted under
General by The Blonde Diaries on July 16th, 2008 11:16 pm
Wow! These WordPress gurus are all over things and boy are they fast. The minute it was reported that some plugins were having issues thanks to the latest and greatest WordPress upgrade they went into action and found a fix! Wahoo! So I drug out my coding experience from many years ago and went to town. The instructions I found were very straightforward and easy to follow. The biggest issue I had was finding the files in my cpanel! Before I hit part 3, I did make a backup of my database and then crossed my fingers and prayed for my blog not to crash. Luckily, the coding worked and not only is my blog cleaned up and patched up, the organize series plugin now works correctly!
So if you are having issues with your Organize Series Plugin after the big WordPress upgrade check out Lester Chan’s blog for instructions on how to fix the issue.
