Recently in Blogging Category

I have always received email from readers of my blog. Sometimes more so than I do comments. Sometimes people just feel more comfortable saying what they have to say in private and I understand that. I am all cool with readers emailing me.

Unfortunately, there are times when I offend some of my readers. It is not that I set out to do so ... it just happens. I say what I think about something and they don't like it. That is life when you have a blog. Some readers will love what you have to say and some won't. Some may experience both emotions in the same day ... depending on the number of posts you have.

Today, one of my reader's took offense at me referring to racist people as ignorant. They felt it was an unfair assessment and said that it seems I take pleasure in referring to them that way. Well, I probably do take some pleasure in referring to them as ignorant ... I admit. To me, they are.

I have a question for you ...

I used to call my children by their names here on my blog. I would even post the occasional picture of them. I got spooked and went through all my posts, took out their names and replaced them with nicknames and removed all of their pictures. But, I see other parents calling their kids by name, posting their pictures, etc.

Do you think it is safe to use your children's first names on a blog or post pictures of them online? Or am I being too overprotective or anxious about it?

I would love to feel comfortable doing so ... I just don't know if I feel safe doing it.

Have I mentioned lately just how much the MT Community Forum sucks?

No? Well, it does.

Like I said ... stuff:

I need to work out the way MT4 does pages. Where the old MT put a _ between words in the title of a post to make the URL ... the new MT puts a - and so now my navigation is messed up. If you go to an old post and it links to another post ... that link will be dead. As in dead-as-a-door-nail dead.

I still haven't worked out CAPTCHA either. I am thinking about allowing anonymous comments just so people don't have to jump through hoops just to comment. Last time, I became a major target for SPAM. I haven't had any trouble with that this time around. I don't know if I want to go back there or not.

Also, I cannot figure out how to get my individual category pages to show all the posts in that category. Right now it just wants to show the last ten ... which is what I have set as the number of posts to show on this page. Somehow I have to figure out how to get the category pages to ignore that setting.

I wish blogrolling.com would get it's collective booty together and make it to where I can access my blogrolls again. I need to add some links and delete some links. I know they got hacked by the idiots who believe Mohammed is a Massenger ... but still. It is taking too long.

I think I am going to have to go through this blog one post at a time to get everything back in order and I am not crazy about that idea at all. Really.

Blogdigger Groups hasn't updated since July and they aren't answering emails. Frustrating. I got an email stating they plan to be back in business in about a week.

Oh well. I will deal with it all eventually. :)

I have been working on installing CAPTCHA so that if you don't want to sign-in to comment, you won't have to anymore. You can just input the little letters or numbers or whatever they are ... and just be done. I won't have to worry about spam and you won't have to jump thru hoops.

Did it work out? Well, no! I finally got it configured to have it, but then the images didn't actually show up and I don't know why. I can see them when I go directly to them in my browser, you just can't see them on my blog.

Maybe one day ...

More of us need to use this guideline for blogging politics ...

Ten Commandments of Talking (or blogging) Politics

1. Do not worship political theories or parties. (You shall have no other gods before me.) Do not worship ideas or theories instead of God. Not your stance on global warming or Capitalism or deregulation or education or abortion or gay marriage or health care or international trade or war. Do not put your hopes in a political stance or party line or economic theory. Those things are important, but they should not distract us from our unity in Christ Jesus.

Found via The Writing On The Wall.

You know, when I went on my extended hiatus, the biggest thing going on in the "blogosphere" was the constant political bickering that was enough to make anyone hurl. I mean, the whole "you can't be a Christian if you are not a member of the Republican Party" was enough to drive me batty and I must admit I got quite sick of it. I didn't miss it either. Believe me. It is not something I have ever had to deal with at church. I think it is truly an "online" thing.

Now, the big thing is people trying to make money from their blogs. There was some of that before I went offline, but not like it is today. You can't hardly view a blog without a multitude of advertisements bombarding you. Whole sidebars are filled with them. It is ridiculous!

It is one thing to add an ad ... it is another thing to decorate your blog with them. They are not a decoration. They are not the newest thing in blog design. They aren't pretty. On a lot of blogs ... they aren't even tasteful.

And, let me be the first to tell you ... I won't click them. I will not click an advertisement on a blog no matter how enticing it is. It could be for the product I have been looking for since 2002 and I still wouldn't click it. I am not helping you annoy me. And, everytime you make a cent off those ads, you are adding more ads, and you are annoying me.

I don't read blogs for ads. If I wanted ads, I would read magazines. I would watch TV. I read blogs as an alternate to all that and you are ruining it for me. And, that is "you" as in those of you who put a gazillion ads on your blogs.

Anywho ... I'm just saying. I am sure it will not change the fact that some people just have to have an ugly blog. And, hey, it's your blog. You can make it as ugly as you want to. Just don't expect anyone to read it.

I love templates. I love templates like this one. All nice and new and shiny. It gives me that, "Ooooo ... look ... shiny new blog," feeling. I am not into cartoons and caricatures. I don't want to look like I am Super Woman. I used to use a pretty angel to decorate my blog ... but, I got bored with her. And, as often as I get bored with the way something looks ... it would really be stupid for me to design a new blog everytime.

That is why templates are so great. I just pick one and I am in, "Ooooo ... look ... shiny new blog," heaven.

And, I think I have this one figured out. Now I just need to do some tweaking and work it to stand alone outside of MT so I can make my site look nice and uniform. Patience is the key when it comes to that.

Baby steps. Lots of baby steps.

Update: I still need to go through my old posts. Some have missing images. Some I just want to delete altogether. Not many, but there are a few.

It's been a long time coming too. I know.

I think the blog is back up and running soundly. I want to go to MT4, but I am going to have to work on the whole template issue and I am not ready to do that yet. It has taken so much time just getting this blog back up and working and I do not have much in the way of time.

I am sorry about the mess my blog became. I just didn't have the time or ability to check in with it much or even do anything about what was happening to it. I still don't understand what happened to it. It started running errors occassionally and then it was all the time. Eventually, you couldn't access my blog at all. When I got into it to take a look ... the mt directory was gone! Another main directory was mush ... full of files that I had never even seen before. My database was jibberish. It didn't make sense. I tried to call my girl who has been hosting me for like forever but the number I have for her now belongs to someone else.

So, I went to GoDaddy not knowing that intalling MT on it is near impossible, if not completely. I wasted days trying to figure out what I was doing wrong just to find out that they have issues and know it. Now I am on HostGator and it looks like things are going to work. Yay!

I have really missed blogging. I don't know how much time I am going to have to devote to it and cleaning up this site. It may be slow going at first. I am a busy woman. But, I am glad to be back. :)

If you are affiliated with the Assemblies of God and want to link up with others bloggers who are as well, please consider joining the AG Blogger's Aggregator and webring. There is even a nifty button ...

You know it is really messed up when your life is upside down and you are really going thru something ... but you don't even feel comfortable blogging about it. Why have a blog if you don't feel comfortable sharing your life on it? And, why do other bloggers have to be such buttwipes that you don't feel comfortable writing about really important stuff because of how they behave?

*sigh*

If you have a heart for the Persecuted Church, why not join the VOM Persecution Blogosphere Program? All you have to do is have a blog, add their graphic to your site, and devote two posts a month to the cause. And, if you join now, you can get a free copy of Extreme Devotion!

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