Category: Blogging

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Blogging

Category and Tag Crazy

Well, I did some cleanup tonight. I deleted all my categories. I had way too many, like 400. And it was goofing up some things. I will probably find some auto technorati tag generator instead of using categories. I will probably try to limit my categories to 10 to 15 at most. The list was huge!! Took me a while to get it cleaned up. In the process, I was trying to find some plugins to do the dirty work, found a few that didn’t seem to work exactly how I wanted. One thing, I couldn’t find a single plugin to “delete all categories”. Weird.

Rule #1 of blogging – tag/categorize your posts!! And now my blog is totally uncategorized. Probably totally screwed my search engine status on things, but oh well, life goes on, and I couldn’t stand the huge list of categories I had going on.

BTW, I changed my theme again, some reason my new one got jacked , the sidebar was messed, and I kind of like this new theme.

BTW2, I am writing this from Windows Live Writer. I had a post up previously, but thought that was the culprit of the sidebar jackedupness so I deleted it (rule #2 of blogging, don’t delete posts :)) – Anyways, I deleted another post from a while ago I didn’t with Word 2007, since the timestamp was 1969, and I couldn’t change it for some reason, and since my dad was a few years out of high school in 1969, I don’t think I would be blogging that year…well, maybe if was born I would have been 🙂

 

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Categories
Blogging

More WordPress tips: Get rid of blog spam!

I set up WordPress a couple of years ago, moving my blog over from blogger.com. After a while, I started getting tremendous amounts of blog spam. For the longest time, I’d come home after work and delete 100’s of blog spam.

Finally, I decided to find a solution. Akismet.

Akismet is a WordPress plugin that pretty much eliminates the blog spam problem. You need to goto WordPress.com and sign up and get a Developer API Key, but that is about it.

Install the plugin and away you go.

I always love logging into my dashboard and seeing the stats:

Akismet has protected your site from 58034 spam comments

🙂

Categories
Blogging

Backing up your WordPress Blog Database From WordPress

If you have ever wanted to back up your wordpress blog database from within wordpress, well look no further.

Here is a blog post on the plugin you need, and instructions.

Pretty simple. Download the plugin, unzip, upload the php file to your blog, active plugin, goto Manage->Backup and you are good to go. I feel more comfortable already. This is especially handy if your blog is hosted on a hosting company server.

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Blogging

Trying New Theme – crystalx

Well, fiddled around with a new theme here at G-Allens on wifi with Dahlin today.

Here was my old theme:

steve.jpg

Things I DON’T like about the new theme:

  • The sidebar isn’t wide enough
  • I can’t seem to get the site description working in the top header, I can display it, but its jacked with the css and such
  • The widths are screwy, so a post that is wide will overflow into the sidebar

I don’t know, this is start, I will probably end up doing something different. Also, the rest of my site (music, etc) is still using the old wordpress theme css, so there is a little disconnect between the blog and rest of my site currently. I don’t want to update that until I am really satisfied with a theme.

Maybe Jen can make me a new one, since she doesn’t like the old one.

Categories
Blogging

New Theme Coming Soon

Well, looks like I am getting publicly flogged for not having a “cool” theme, so it looks like I will have pull up the sleeves and show everyone my graphical talent and prowess. Be on the lookout for a new theme soon, hopefully this weekend. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Categories
Blogging

MyBlogLog and WhoLinked, and WordPress Themes.

I have read alot about MyBlogLog, so I signed up this morning. Pretty cool, I am liking it so far. Lets you see who visits, who clicks where, etc. Kind of like a suped up stat counter. Thing is, I signed up, logged out, and I can’t log in again, something must be wacked at the current time.

One other WordPress plugin I ran across is WhoLinked. I havent installed it yet, but I am thinking I am going to try it, looks pretty cool too.

I do need to do some widget organization on my sidebar, maybe this weekend is the time.

And since I got so much flack for my default WordPress theme, I might even change that up too – probably a good time to convert my whole site to an ASP.NET Web Application. When I made this site, all you could make were ASP.NET Web Sites in VS2005, so I was kind of stuck. I do have some music to put up to. We will see what this weekend brings, I am thinking either St. Patty’s day, or Geeking, haven’t decidied yet.

Categories
Blogging Life

Saturday Night, Pioneer Place, Blogging

Last night, a friend and I headed out around Central MN, we ended up going to the Pioneer Place, which both of us have heard of, but never ventured into. It is a theatre, that has a little bar in it. Almost feels like a “nice” house party. There was some guys playing acoustic guitar and piano. Very laid back, no smoking (yes!) and just a cool atmosphere.

It is kind of funny, because earlier in the night we talked about going to see Amadeus which is playing there right now. Obviously we needed tickets, but we just weren’t thinking.

Anyways, I recognized one of the guys up on the little stage, the piano/harmonica player. Earlier this week I was getting made fun of #1 because “blogging” was on the front page of the St. Cloud Times, and #2, because I didn’t make the article 🙂 – anyways, I read the article and it covers the blogging life of Jeff Lee, who run’s a blog called “View from the Cloud”

I snapped a picture of them playing, sounded really good too. Something I could see myself doing if only I could find someone to play with 😛

Jeff Lee at Pioneer Place

I’ve been doing alot of blogging lately, and really started a few years back, but I never really got into the St. Cloud blogging scene. Seems that SCSU Scholars just wasn’t my type of read. I’m more into technical blogs, and also friends that keep their blogs up to date [everyone is a blogger! – one post and gone for a year :)]. I’ll probably subscribe to Jeff’s blog now that I have met him, so that is kind of cool.

In any event, I think I’ll probably be hanging out at the Pioneer Place more often. I’m pretty sure they have Wi-Fi too. What I need to do is drive around and find all the hot spots, or, I could just buck up and pay the extra $ to have my phone (Pocket PC 6700, which BTW, I probably have sold more of them than salespeople at Sprint – I think I probably sold 2 last night just showing mine off) as a modem, which I just might have to do.

Fun times, as usual 🙂

Categories
Blogging

How to be a better Twitter'er

If you want to become a better twitter’er (to many t’s, e’s and r’s)  take a look here.

I’ve found that if you follow some of the people who post every 5 minutes, its way to much coming at you. I turn off following them and maybe check on the site once or twice a day, other than that, make sure your friends are following you. I’d like to get into the @Username: stuff, plus direct messages.

What would also be cool is integrating location info in the txt updates. Take my Pocket PC 6700, hook up the bluetooth GPS, and then publish up a link to Google Maps or something with the location of where I’m twittering from. Maybe that could be my next little side project 🙂

 

Categories
Blogging

Twitter is Addicting

Been using Twitter this week, and now I have some friends on there, and it is really cool and addicting. I can see how this can keep you up to date with your friends and just is kind of fun. Its a good way do share snippets of info with your friends, semi-blog type app.

Categories
Blogging

Twitter – What are you doing?

I signed up for Twitter this weekend. Its pretty cool so far. Just IM an address (gmail/aol, etc), send a txt, or update from the web. You can update people on what you are doing. Also, you can get alerts when people update what they are doing. I also put a badge on my blog on the right. Pretty cool app, form the same guys who made Odeo

BTW, my Twitter username is ScaleOvenStove