Ta Da!!!

Okay, I can't keep it to myself any more. There may be some tweaking yet to be done, but I think I'm ready to go public.

Postcards from the Mothership officially has a new home at www.danigirl.ca/blog.

What're you still doing here? Get over there already!!

Blog woes redux - the one where I whine

Ugh! I had no idea there would be so many major and minor complications in the set-up and transfer to my own domain!

It ended up being rather easy to set up the domain and web host, and relatively inexpensive. It took maybe an hour or so, plus a few hours of shopping around.

Designing the new blog banner took up the better part of a Saturday, but I'm pretty happy with it. It's a good start, anyway.

Choosing a "theme" for WordPress continues to be an ongoing drama. Unfortunately, I have some vague and some specific ideas of what I want, and I must have looked at 300 or more themes trying to find one that was just right. Relatively minimalistic, single sidebar; how difficult could the choice be? Don't get me started.

Finally, I downloaded one, and to my great shock, it's coded in PHP instead of the CSS/HTML combination that my Blogger template is written in. So in order to customize it at all, I've been teaching myself PHP. Did I mention ugh???

I got frustrated with that one and downloaded one that has more CSS in it, but I still cannot make that sucker bend to my will. I'm currently picking at it on and off. We'll see how much longer I have patience for it, but I'm getting dangerously close to going back to trolling themes again for something that works for me out of the box.

The FTP program I was using was making me nuts, so I downloaded a copy of FileZilla. That means in the last five days I've learned how to use my new web host's control panel and file manager, a new FTP program, a new blog interface, and the beginnings of a new programing language. My brain hurts!

To add insult to injury, last night I was mucking about trying to figure out how to import both the Blogger posts and Haloscan comments. I found out that the verion of WordPress installed automatically on my web host was outdated, and I had to upgrade before I could import from new Blogger. So I did - more practice with the FTP software and the web host control panel. Then I found out that the line of code that I need to change in the Blogger import php file doesn't exist in the latest version of WordPress. Classic Catch 22: can't import new Blogger into old WordPress; can only import Haloscan comments into old WordPress. Argh!!

I'm not quite $90 into this venture... too late to call the whole thing off?

Edited to add: okay, progress. I just realized that one of my major PHP headaches was resolved by the upgrade to WP 2.2. Widgets! I love me some widgets! Also, I must pause at this point to heap praise on the designer of my new theme, Tom at One Hertz, for actually responding to a question and helping me out. Also, major kudos to the tech support guys at Namespro.ca, with whom I had registered my domain. When I sent them a quick question asking how long it would take to transfer my domain to my the new web host, they took the trouble to go into the web host's FAQs and give me explicit instructions on how to do it myself. Excellent customer service definitely makes up for much bloggy angst.

And in the time it took me to write this, WordPress has completely hung in trying to import my 949 Blogger posts. Two steps forward, one step back...

Survey question

So, if this blog were to mysteriously reinvent itself in a new home, would you want all the original posts to move with it? Or would you expect a fresh start in the new location, assuming the old posts will be archived here for eternity and beyond?

And what if it were possible but intimidatingly difficult to shuffle almost 10,000 (!!!) comments from HaloScan to the new location... would the old posts be worth having in the new location, but stripped of their comments? Or would it be worth the extra chunks of pulled-out hair and special favours begged of tech support to get those comments over there, too.

What say ye, bloggy peeps?

(Don't worry, Mom. I promise to leave a trail of breadcrumbs to the new blog location!)

Gone fishin'

Computer access might be a little sparse for the next few days. Talk amongst yourselves, and I'll see you again in a couple of days!

Blogger hiccups?

Hmmm, I seem to be having some trouble publishing my posts. Well, I'm fine but Blogger - not so much. A couple of weeks ago, someone mentioned that although they could see comments that obviously related to a post from that day, the most recent post she could see was from two days before. The same thing seems to be happening sporadically all over.

Since Wednesday, I've been having trouble forcing Blogger to publish my posts. It says they are published, and I can go to the page that holds the post, but it doesn't appear on the top of the main page. And yet, some of you are commenting on it, so I guess you can see it. It hasn't been dumped into my RSS feed yet, either.

Anybody else having the same trouble?

(Edited to add: Aha! Blogger coughed this one up AND the one about Stephen King, too. So now I have to publish two posts every day???)

My husband is a dumbass

I'm flying into Toronto for a marketing conference tomorrow - well, today by the time you're reading this. My flight leaves Ottawa at 6 am, and I arrive in Toronto at 7:05. (In order to make my flight, I have to be at the airport at 5 am, which means getting up just after 4 am.)

Did I mention the 15 cm of snow in the forecast?

Then I leave Toronto at 6 pm and get back to Ottawa just after 7 pm.

No time for blogging - but think a kind thought for me as I hurry up and wait all day long!

(If you're wondering, no the title of this post has absolutely nothing to do with the subject matter. As I sat contemplating a title for this inauspicious post with my fingers poised over the keyboard, Beloved playfully suggested that maybe I should title it 'my husband is a dumbass' - so I did.)

A Message from the Department of Commerce

If you’ve been around for a while, you’ll remember the wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth over the whole issue of ads on the blog. Not just anybody’s blog, mind you – you want to put ads on your blog, more power to you. Nope, I was just angsting about ads on my blog.

I started toying with the idea of ads back in September of last year. Then I got caught up in one of those blogstorms that swirl through the blogosphere every now and then and changed my mind, and I said all kinds of lofty, idealistic things like I didn’t want to sell our stories.

Apparently, I just hadn’t been offered the right price. Silly me, I should know everything is for sale.

So yes, there are now ads on the blog. The seller approached me out of the blue and simply made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Aside from the money, I liked the offer because it was simple, straightforward, and completely in my control. The ads are text only, I am free to place them wherever I want, and there is no contract to sign. While I won’t tell you what I earn from them, I will tell you that it’s a decent amount, not based on click-throughs or page impressions. In fact, I’m highly impressed with the company and the respect they showed me.

By contrast, and not to slag anyone in particular, but one of the things that I didn’t like about the other offer I was entertaining back in September, from the Blogher ad network, was that they stipulated that the ad must appear ‘above the fold’. Plus, they were honkin’ big ads with pictures, and you never knew exactly what you would be advertising.

The thing that bugged me the most about the whole blog ads thing was not even the advertising itself, but the predatorial (is that a word?) way advertisers were taking advantage of bloggers - bloggers who might be selling themselves or their work short. And here I' m not talking about the Blogher ad network at all, just the pittance that was being offered to most paid bloggers that really didn't respect the work and effort and heart that goes into a successful blog.

To me, this deal was a fair wage with no ethical strings. (The words and link will never change, and it leads to a well-respected shopping comparison site called bizrate.com.) But I’ve promised to always be up front, and so I wanted to let you know that there’s been a policy shift and I’m now on the advertising gravy train.

After all, someone’s gotta start saving for Tristan and Simon’s bail college fund.

Birthdays and other milestones

Watch this space for a love letter to Tristan. I really really wanted to post it today, on his birthday, but that's just not going to happen. My handsome, smart, loving and perfectly wonderful baby is five years old today. I still can't believe it.

And on the subject of I can't believe it, last night at around 5 pm the sitemeter counted the 100,000th visitor to blog since February 2005. Wow!

More later, I promise!

Blog payola

I've been doing a lot of research on the bigger world of blogs lately, and I've been seeing some interesting stuff. And not interesting in a good way, either.

A while ago, I declared blog an ad-free zone. I'm content with the decision, and haven't regretted it. I also turned down a few product review opportunities, just because I was still trying to find my comfort zone with the whole viral marketing thing. I wanted to make sure that I was being completely transparent. For example, I accepted the free phone (a phone I'm not hugely thrilled with, to tell you the truth, but free is free!) for blogging about it, but I think I was honest about the whole process of how I came to have the phone and why I was blogging about it. Same with the books I've reviewed - I've made an effort to tell you when I've received a review copy from a publisher, and when I'm doing a review just because the book inspired me to do one. (Feel free to call me on it if you disagree - I always like to think the best of myself, despite evidence to the contrary!)

I'm thinking about all this after reading about services like PayPerPost. Have you read about this? Advertisers pay to post details of their 'opportunity' to a forum, and bloggers snatch up what seems to be a finite number of opportunities, then write a post about the product or service - and get paid to do so. I followed one set of links back to a low-traffic, low-ecosystem blog who posted about a Harry Potter audio book and is bragging in her sidebar - but not in the post itself - to have made more than $800 in a few months through PayPerPost.

Since its launch this summer, PayPerPost has been roundly criticised by many in the blogosphere for its lack of a disclosure policy. In other words, you aren't required to mention anywhere in your post that you were getting compensated to flog a product on your blog. In response to that criticism, PayPerPost launched a new website called DisclosurePolicy.org , which TechCrunch compared to big tobacco companies funding addiction research: "they are creating a distraction, designed to keep the buzz about PayPerPost going strong, as well as to move people’s attention away from the core issue of blogger disclosure of product shilling."

In a related story, Jason Calacanis, former General Manager of Netscape and CEO of Weblogs, Inc., is following rumours that users are being paid to 'digg' stories. (Digg is a way to rank news stories and web pages by allowing users to 'digg' or 'bury' an item.)

Every day, it seems like there are more ways that marketers are finding ways to influence (I thought about using the world 'infiltrate' instead of 'influence') the blogosphere. Personally, I find initiatives like this extremely distasteful. Call me a purist, but when I read a blog post, or see something has been conferred a certain status by a group of users, I'd still like to believe it's on the basis of merit and not remuneration from a faceless marketer. On the flip side, it gives me faith in the power of the blogosphere to see that these services are being exposed by the very network they are trying to manipulate.

I'm still struggling with my own comfort level on accepting products or reviewing services. I suppose a blog with my readership numbers and links is considered moderately influential, and I get a couple of requests for pitches every month. I consider each one carefully, even the simple "link to my site" ones, but haven't taken up anyone recently simply because I'm not sure where to draw my line in the sand. I wish there was a handbook for this somewhere!

Bear with me and we'll muddle through it together. I can promise you this, though: if I'm getting any benefit from a product or service or link I promote here, I promise I'll tell you about it. Hey, it's not much, but it's a start.

Blogger beta and haloscan - help!

I've started a new blog for internal use here at work (maybe I can share some day soon) and I'm having a hard time installing the comments. Any blogger beta / html experts out there?

I can install the comments just fine on the main and archive pages, but on the post pages, only the blogger comments appear. I reverted to a classic template (same as this one, matter of fact) expressly so I would have a known commodity to tinker with, and followed the code on this blog as a template, but it's not working. I've gone through Haloscan's help pages, and nothing they suggest works either.

Any ideas? If you think you can help but need to see the template, send me an e-mail or leave your e-mail in the comment box and I'll give you more info.

Is Bloglines drunk, or what?

Last week, I issued a little note to apologize for the big dump (oh look, Karen, I said it again!) of my archived posts into Bloglines subscribers' feeds.

Today, I see yet another dump, and now every post ends with "DaniGirl" and my e-mail address. I didn't tell it to do that. Quite frankly, I wish it would not. Nor did I change my blogger settings.

Any ideas on what switch I tripped? I will send a polite e-mail to the Bloglines folks; maybe they can help.

Well heck, if the networks can play re-runs, I guess there's no reason I can't do the same!

Because this blog is my happy place

Did you know that it's World Kindness Week?

Sometimes, things come together with a sense of cosmic good timing that gives me shivers. Or at least good blog fodder.

First, I wanted to tell you that Andrea and Kim, the hard-working and oh-so-clever editors behind the online 'zine The Whole Mom, have a new issue up. In addition to the usual great writing and funny comics, you will also find complete and annotated versions of our entire Motherlode presentation - the whole panel, all five of us!

Over on her newly rechristened blog, Andrea has also made public a conversation we started having when the five of us were collaborating on our presentations. She sums it up nicely:

"...as we were talking, we thought about the idea of a Mom Blogger's Manifesto: A document that would encapsulate what blogging could be for mothers, where the pitfalls are lurking, and how they can be avoided. This document would be posted online so that people could link to it (maybe with a pretty button), both to spread awareness and to publically declare to readers a code of ethics."

We called it the Momifesto, and if you're interested in hearing more, and especially if you're interested in talking about it, do join the conversation in the forum section of The Whole Mom.

Just as I was getting ready to tell you about all that, Bub and Pie had a link today to a wonderful idea from Chookooloonks.

She has created this lovely little button, and if you follow the link back to her blog, you'll find the following declaration:

By posting this badge, I'm declaring that in addition to humour, intelligence, wit, sadness, snarkiness, passion, exuberance, peace, stillness, excitability, anger or any other emotion you may witness on my site:

1) I will never intentionally hurt other people, whether I know them or not, whether they blog or not, whether they're celebrities or not, either through my words or my images. It's just not my style; and,

2) I hope that by the time you've clicked away from my site, I've helped in some way to make your day just a little bit better.

Signed,
Me

So simple, and yet just what I wanted to say. Because the world needs more kindness. I promise that I will always try to be kind, and I will only ask the same of you.

P.S. Voting for your favourite blogger(s) is another way to be kind! *wink*

Bloglines feed dump

A special note to my Bloglines readers: if your Bloglines account is like mine, you got a dump of my last 25 posts in your feed reader this morning.

I have no idea why.

I didn't change the settings, I haven't been editing old posts... I'm perplexed. Anyway, just an apology, and you can ignore the big dump of posts, because there's nothing new in any of them.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled Friday...