The Blonde Diaries

It has been two weeks since I have switched my blog host and so far everything is going well.  I am very pleased with my new host and how easy it is to set things up with them.  In fact, I now have 3 domain names with WordPress installed and ready for me to get to work on the actual blog part.  How cool is that? I am very happy that I was able to find Webhosting Geeks to help figure out which host I wanted to go with because I went into this blogging thing pretty blindly last year and just went with this one host that wasn’t all that good. I didn’t have any major down time but anytime I needed support with something they weren’t too eager to help. I found the reviews by both the geeks and people like me to be very helpful in narrowing down the choices since there are so many hosts out there.

Specifically, the web hosting awards given out each year from the geeks gave me a great starting point when I started shopping around. If you are thinking about self-hosting or just want a new host, start with webhosting geeks and their review pages and their awards pages. It will really help you sort through the really good hosts and the really not so good ones. You can also research based on what you want your hosting to do – blogs, forums, email, etc – and how environmentally friendly you want it to be. I actually switched to Hostgator when I switched because thanks to webhosting geeks I realized that by using them I was helping out my state. Hostgator is in Texas and they use wind power from the wind power farms in West Texas! So The Blonde Diaries is green and supporting a local business.

LOL.  I can’t believe it has been one year already.  It seems like just yesterday I was asking Kimberly to help me get my blog all set up on my host and then install my WordPress and original theme.  Come to think of it, it was just last week I was harassing Kimberly to help me reset up my blog but it was because I was transferring hosts and didn’t know what to do.

Looking back, I don’t know if I would have thought my blog would be where it is today.  I have managed to create 897 posts (898 with this one),  accumulate over 1,100 comments on my blog, and maintain a Page Rank of 2.  Daily traffic usually fluctuates between 50-100 people and that is without using traffic exchanges so thanks visitors for stopping by however you might have found me.

I am looking forward to seeing what next year brings to my blog.  I don’t have many expectations for it.  I just want a fun place to write my thoughts and hopefully a few people will read it every now and then. 

Technically my blog has done the moving not me.  I finally got around to switching my blog host from An Hosting to Host Gator this week and I think everything has come over nicely.  I think I lost one comment from Kaye but luckily I saw it before it was lost in the transfer.  I also momentarily lost my side bar buttons and a few other widgets but there was a blip in the system and I was able to get the coding from the old host today and so I copied it and saved it before copying it onto this new host.  I am hoping the bliping back and forth stops though.  This is the second time I’ve written this post and I don’t want to do it again. LOL!

So with that said if you see anything else wonky with my blog this weekend please drop me an email (see left sidebar for the button).

Wow is all I can say about the new WordPress 2.7 Upgrade.  I love the new feel behind the scenes where I do all of my writing and organizing.  I am still getting use to finding which buttons and areas I need to go to for each thing I want to do but overall I am super excited and can’t wait to get home and explore more around here.  The navigation is a little easier than the older versions of WordPress because everything is collapsible until you click and expand it.  Once you expand, all of your options for that particular section are available rather than a new page or tab loading.  Everything is also more column based when you are navigating with 3 columns of things vs. the old column and row layout.

There is now an option to do a QuickPost from your dashboard.  Kinda cool.  If you run across a thought, idea, photo, or media clip you want to post about right away you just type it all up in the QuickPost area of the dashboard and press publish rather than going through the steps of creating a new post.  There is also batch editing for when you forget to add tags or categories to posts.  You can now select similar ones and edit them all at once.  Nothing like saving a little time!

Like usual, the upgrade was very fast and easy to complete.  I didn’t have any major hiccups except that my WP-Sticky Plugin is giving me a fatal error and there is no longer any development or support for that plugin so I think it is going to be a goner   Hopefully there is something similar to it out there that I can install and use.

So that is my quick run down of my experience with the new WordPress 2.7.  I’ve been at work all day so I haven’t been able to play too much but I look forward to seeing what else is new tonight.

I was surfing blogs yesterday and came across a post about what that particular blog’s personality was. I have heard about personality tests for individuals (think Myers-Briggs) but I was curious to see what a “blog” personality was. So off I went to Typealyzer.com to check and see what personality my blog has and how it compares to my Myers-Briggs personality. I am attending a training this week and one of the prerequisites was to complete the Myers-Briggs test and to see what our personality type was. I am an ISTJ which is the same thing I was the last time I took the test over 10 years ago! I guess some things never change.

So over on Typealyzer you enter your blog web address and it skims your posts (or keywords or some other metric) and determines your posting personality. Your posting personality does not necessarily match your individual personality type which makes sense because you can “hide” behind a blog persona that is what you ideally would be like but for some reason you are holding yourself back in real life. So my blog personality is an ESTP. So two items are the same and two are the opposite.

ESTPs are “doers”.

The active and play-ful type. They are especially attuned to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and engaging in physical out-door activities.

The Doers are happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time.

I find it pretty interesting and a decent assessment of my blog. I tend to be fairly active in posting and tend not to let my blog sit unattended for long periods of time. I also tend to talk a lot about topics that interest me. I am guessing my health and exercise posts are what is giving me that out-doorsy trait because that is so not me in real life. LOL.

Check out your blog personality and let me know what you find out about your blog!