Tag: Technical

This new blog of mine not only looks different than the old one, it works a bit differently, too.

Specialty Pages

The page you’re on now is the home page, which is where the main blog is located. I also have specialty pages. Right now, there’s a PHOTOGRAPHY page and a DOGS page. (I just added the dogs page today, by the way.) Not all of the info on the specialty pages will appear in the main blog. So, if you are in fact interested in the specialties, you’ll have to click on the links in the menu bar at the top of the page.

Comments

Have you figured out how to comment yet? It’s really pretty easy. On the upper right side of each post, you’ll see that green box, which tells you how many comments are associated with that post. If you click on that box, you’ll be taken to the comment field. The only information you are required to provide, in addition to your comment, is your name and e-mail address. A Web site address/URL is completely optional. The first time you comment, the comment will not appear until I have approved it. After you have been designated as an approved commenter, your comments should show up pretty quickly.

Following

I am still trying to figure out how to get my followers to show up. That’s one of those niggling little things that is making me nuts.

Subscribing

I am also trying to add a subscription tool. Ideally, you should be able to click a button and enter your e-mail address then every time I post something you’ll get an e-mail telling you there’s a new post to read.

Miscellaneous

There are other things I am working on, too. If you are confused for any reason, don’t like the new look, love the new look, etc., let me know. Please. I love comments.

Anything you’d like to see changed? Let me know that, too.

And don’t forget to check out the dogs page today to see the cool videos I posted.

I look forward to reading your comments soon!

I mentioned the other day that I was going to be changing my blog. I was planning on building a new blog, getting it all situated and then making the switch. However, once I imported the posts from ToadMama’s Web Abode (old blog) to test the new blog, I pretty much had to go ahead and make the switch. I’m not going to bore you will all of the technical details, so you’ll just have to trust me on that.

Anyhoo, that’s why all of a sudden you find yourself here. I hope you like the new look.

The reason for the change wasn’t purely aesthetic. I’ll try hard not to get too technical as I explain this.

Blogger.com, which is where the old blog was hosted, is free. It’s powered by Google. As long as you don’t have an overwhelming amount of visitors (i.e., site traffic) and your file storage doesn’t exceed a certain size.

I did not have too much traffic, but slowly but surely I have been inching toward that maximum storage limit. I’ve been blogging for about two years now. And I post a lot of images. Image files are huge. I could have upgraded the storage capacity (for a fee) or I could have transferred the files to an external server. Since I already had my own Web site with a huge amount of extra server space, I could have just transferred the old blog. But I have never been overly thrilled with Blogger’s functionality.

Over the past year or so, I’d begun to notice that many of the blogs I visited had really cool designs. I wanted to emulate some of those looks, but Blogger just does not support some of the cooler stuff. That’s when I started noticing a lot of those way-cool blogs used WordPress.

WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.

Once I started looking into WordPress, I realized I could easily migrate my files to the toadmama.com server, easily get the more-customized look I wanted, and add functionality like separate pages. That way I can have the main blog page, which you are looking at now, as well as separate, specialty pages, such as the Photography page.

Why separate pages? Because not all readers want to read in-depth, technical discussions on photography. I also plan to add a Motorcycling page. And (surprise, surprise) a page just for the dogs, too. So that if I am doing an in-depth analysis of dog behavior, I won’t bore my readers that could care less about dogs.

WordPress is better in a lot of ways. It’s much easier to post images (I can do it in batches instead of one at a time) for sure. And you all know how I like to share images, right?

Like this one, which shows what our WV driveway looks like this morning. We had someone plow it so that we could get in here last night. It’s a good thing, too. See the size of those snowbanks along the side?

Here you can see one of the snowbanks the plowman left behind.

Back to the change… there are still some things I am trying to work out. Like my Followers listing. I’m trying hard to get it migrated so my followers won’t have to re-enroll, but it’s not looking promising so far.

I’ll be adding those extra pages I talked about, too. And probably tweaking the look. Who knows what else.

But it should work well enough that you don’t have any problems. If you do have problems, please let me know. Please. I hate when stuff doesn’t work the way I want it to work. You can write to me at toadmama_space_@_space_gmail.com. You’ll have to remove the “_space_” before and after the “@” to make that work.

I am in the process of renovating my blog. I’ll be moving away from Blogger (blogspot), but it will take a little bit of time. If you have landed here in the meantime and are wondering, “WTF? Where’s ToadMama’s stuff?” go to http://toadmama.blogspot.com.

I’ll get this site working soon. I hope.