Technology

WordPress Switch: Speed Bump

Today I was prepared to take the plunge and move my blog from blogger to wordpress. I have a new layout, I have several print out of instructions and I was ready to tackle everything. Until I went to install wordpress on my hosting plan and it told me “Invalid Domain” D’oh!I put in a support ticket and my hosts are talking to the administrators there to see what is going on. I am not sure how long it will take for this issue to be resolved, so it looks like I will be sticking around here at blogger for at least a little bit longer! Things may change without warning though now that the process has started so if you see anything strange going on, don’t be alarmed it is just the moving process. πŸ™‚ (P.S The Space Race Kids giveaway end date was chosen with a day of buffer time for when the blog was down during the move. If the move ends up taking more than 1 day, the end date will be modified accordingly)

Favicons?

Have you ever noticed that websites have little icons next to them on tabs and near the URL? For instance, Blogger has the orange and white “B” logo,  Google has their “g” logo, WordPress their “w” logo, etc?  I had always wondered HOW this was done and this weekend I decided to make it my mission to not only figure it out but to get it working on my blog(s)

I did some research and found out that they are called “Favicons” short for “Favorite Icons”  They are REALLY small, 16x16pixels.  My next mission was to figure out how to make myself one and get it set up on this blog!

I opted to go with a musical note and in Photoshop I edited down to as close to 16×16 as I could get it.  I saved the image as favicon.ico, which is the format it needs to be in for it to work as a favicon.  Then I uploaded it to www.concertkatie.com, so it would show up there as well.  (If you do not have a custom domain that you can upload to, you’ll have to find a place to host the image that is compatible with .ico files)

Once I had my image uploaded I had to go into the blogger design tab and click “Edit HTML”  I had to search for the following line of code:

 

 Underneath it, I had to add in the following code:


After I got that stuck in, I had to replace “IMAGE URL” with the actual URL (in my case, http://www.concertkatie.com/favicon.ico)  Then I saved the layout and TA-DA – I have a nice new musical note icon next to my blog URL and tab on browser windows!

If your blog is hosted on WordPress.org and not Blogger, upload your favicon.ico into wp-content/themes/default  (default might be the name of your layout, it was for me)  Then add the following code into header.php (Go into Appearance and then Editor to find header.php)

There is no specific place to put this code, just make sure that it is done in the head tags.

If you got it to work on your blog, leave a link! I’d love to see what favicon you chose to represent your site πŸ™‚

My favorite blogging β€œtool”

During the course of my blogging, I use quite a few items that can be considered tools or aids for blogging.

My scanner – to scan ticket stubs, backstage passes, autographs and postcards.  It recently stopped working properly and I have to jump through hoops to get it to work – but I don’t think I’d be lost without it.

My memory card reader(s) – The one for my “big camera” I can never remember where I put it.  Then I have one for my smaller camera that doesn’t properly fit into the PC’s USB drive. I have to use an octopus USB hub for it to work.  Not my favorite.

My phone – I have a wordpress app and I have blogger set up to post via email in case I am on the go and really, really need to post something. This is not my favorite way to post.

My computers – I have a Gateway desktop PC and I have a Mac laptop.  While I would probably be lost without them (and forced to do everything via phone – yikes!) these are also not my favorite.

Photoshop – How do you think I get that cute little kick drum and guitar on everything?  It is a brush I made in photoshop!  Plus I can crop images, resize them, basically do whatever the heck I want.  But I am not that good with photoshop (yet) so this is not my favorite!

My Flip – My video camera! Lots of fun! Except that everything has to be done on my laptop because my USB port on my PC doesn’t have enough room for it. Unlike the memory card reader, I can’t use the octopus hub because it doesn’t have enough power.

So just what is my favorite tool?  You’re probably going to think my favorite tool is silly. But I seriously would be lost without it.  Occasionally it  falls on the floor or under my desk and I go absolutely insane looking for it.  It’s a calendar.

A calendar! A 2011 calendar from Disney Movie Club.  I previously had one in 2010 too.  I quit the movie club though so I’m not sure what I will do for 2012.  I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.  There are dates circled on my calendar.  These are days I have gone to concerts.  This is so I can keep track not only for this blog, but for my scrapbook to make sure I have everything in date order and didn’t skip any shows.  When I want to schedule a series of blog posts every Tuesday, I can quickly see what dates I want to use.  When I want to have a post every weekday and I am several weeks in advance (postcard blog) I can figure it all out with my calendar!

Of course,  I can use the calendar on my computer but I like holding it and running my finger along the week or day columns to figure everything out.  I don’t like running my finger across my computer screen.  It will either end up covered in dust (ha) and/or leave a streak on the screen that will bother me every time I see it.

Website Pet Peeves

I visit a lot of websites every day.  Sometimes, I visit a lot of websites at once. Well, not exactly. I can only read one page at at time (which is a bummer, I know) but I do often have many, many tabs open on the top of my browser. Especially when I find a post with a lot of great links – like a blog hop, for instance.. I’ll go through and open them ALL to check out over the course of the next hour or day, depending on what other things I have going on.

And I have to say, one of my biggest pet peeves is when one of these multiple tabs starts talking or singing!  Websites that have auto-play – whether it be a music player, an ad or a video, drive me NUTS!  The worst is when more than one of the tabs you have open have auto-play.  Then you get all sorts of crazy noises going on.  Not to mention, somehow they are always the loudest thing ever playing and sometimes it scares me and I jump a mile out of my computer chair before I scramble to figure out what page it is.

Can someone explain how this is beneficial to your site?  If someone can’t figure out how to turn off the auto-play because you have it buried somewhere or at the very bottom of you page, they might just close out of the page and not check out your site.  Sure you’d have that initial “hit”, but will they bookmark you and come back later? Probably not. I know I don’t!

(And I have to say one of the worst offenders is Hanson.net. Which I visit frequently. Multiple times a day. And if I stay on the home page too long I hear “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” coming from their promo for 5 of 5. I don’t like hearing it at the shows and I certainly don’t like hearing it coming out my computer speakers!)

Comments are now numbered!

I honestly have no idea how I did this, but my Disqus comments now have numbers! I was playing around a bit with the settings for this blog and my postcard blog earlier today and I guess one of the buttons I pushed was the right one because now all the comments are numbered!

They aren’t very fancy numbers, but that is ok!  At least now I won’t be second guessing my counting skills picking winners on future contests πŸ™‚

(I’d link to my postcard blog, but in addition to playing with the comments I am also trying to get it moved to WordPress on my domain as a bit of a trial for possibly moving this blog so it will be down for a bit while I get it all figured out! I will link it when it is up and running again!)

Twitter PSA

I have a bit of a PSA here.  If you get crazy DMs (Direct Messages) or @replys from someone that you are following – let them know about it! (And most importantly – don’t click on any links that might be included!)

Last month, my public account got targeted (and to this day I am not sure how or why) and was sending out crazy DMs to pretty much everyone I follow (600+) about Apple beta testing and iPhones. Not a single person wrote me to let me know this was going on!  Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) my account also spammed my private account so as soon as I saw it I knew to go in and change my password and hope for the best.

Even before this has happened to me, I had made it a point to contact whoever sends me crazy DMs.  It helps me out because the sooner they know about it, the sooner they can do something about it which will reduce my risk of being sent the same crap DMs over and over again. And it helps them out because chances are – no one else has told them about it yet.

All you need to do is send a simple “your account is sending spam DMs – you might want to change your password”.  9 times out of 10 the person will be thankful – you’ll either get a “Thanks I didn’t know! Changing my password right now!” response or a “Sorry! I changed my password hope that does the trick” type response.  Every now and then you get the “NO IT IS NOT!” reply.  I find usually when people are this defensive, it is best to just remove them from your friends.  It is often hard to convince them.  Some of the viruses are sneaky, and there will be no evidence of any sent DMs on the account.  The one I was hit with, I had all the DMs in my sent area.

It took me days to delete my sent DMs.  Every now and then I go back and check and it seems like more have popped up (though all are with the mid-January date so I am hoping it is not an ongoing issue still) And the more DMs I deleted, the more shocked I became at just how many people got contacted and how many people said nothing about it!

How I use social media.

Are you constantly checking your Twitter feed? Updating your Facebook status? Writing another blog post? Do you use it to market or meet other people?

I am almost always connected to twitter. I have 5 accounts (yes, 5) and I have my main private account hooked up to echofon so I can see all my friends updates through Firefox when I am working on other things. I’m thinking of starting a business on social media and have already spoken to social media experts on The Marketing Heaven on how to do that. I have 4 apps on my phone for 4 of my 5 accounts so I can keep track of everything when I am on the go. I can even tweet from my TV through my DVD player if I want!

I am sure you want to know what all my accounts are – I have my private account, a public account for replying to celebs, entering contests, etc. I also have a 2nd public account for when I need to spam and re-tweet things a billion times for contests (though I don’t really use this one all that often).Β  Then both of my fan sites have an account @hansonstage for hansonstage.com and @HSLive for honorsocietylive.com, those I almost exclusively use from the web, but occasionally I will “live tweet” on them from a show or I’ll get bored and check out the feeds on my phone.

I do have a facebook but I do not update my status nearly as much as anyone else (or as much as I update my twitter)Β  I guess I feel like most people I am friends with on both twitter and facebook so why bother having them read the same things twice? (HUGE petpeeve is people who have their twitter HOOKED UP to their facebook so I see the same exact updates verbatim on both sites. I at least try to switch up my words if I am posting about the same thing on both sites!)Β  Mainly I use facebook for keeping up with friends and uploading photos – but I think I should start using my gallery on my domain for that instead of facebook – at least then I know I actually *own* everything and know that a photo of mine won’t show up in an ad or something without my permission.

Foursquare&Miso&Get Glue

Lately I have become obsessed with websites where you have to check in to get badges or stickers.  Why, I don’t know, but I feel like I need to figure out how to unlock EVERYTHING.  There are 3 main sites that I use.  If you know of any other similar sites – be sure to leave a comment… as if I need another website to become addicted to!

FOURSQUARE – www.foursquare.com is a site where you check in when you visit places.  There are badges based on what kind of places you check in, what day you check in on, what you “shout”, etc.  As of writing this post I have managed to get myself 54 badges, some of which are now retired.  A lot of the badges seem to be location based (ie New York City specfic) which tends to turn people off to using the site.  However, in recent months it seems that foursquare has become aware of this and have added some badges that can be unlocked anywhere that has bowling alleys, or book stores for example. One of the big issues I have with this site (or I guess more accurately, their phone app) is that I am sometimes told I am too far from a location when I am standing outside it, or even right inside it. Kind of crazy. While other times I can check in to locations from my bedroom and it counts. The GPS is weird.

The other 2 sites are similar to foursquare, but involve checking in to movie and TV shows that you are watching instead of locations.

MISO – www.gomiso.com was the first site I had signed up for.  You get badges based on how many movies or TV shows you check in to, what kind of genres you check in to and other special TV based (or event based) badges based on what you check in to.  I kind of gave up on this site once I found out about the 3rd site – but I do check in from time to time if they tweet to remind people to check in to certain shows (that usually means there is a badge involved).  They also hold contests from time to time – and I won two of them.  I won a signed Bad Girls Club poster for checking in and sending my check in to twitter during one of their episodes.  I also placed 2nd in their costume contest and won a Miso tshirt. (Both of which arrived in reasonable time)  As of the writing of this post I have 42 badges.  The downside to this site is they sometimes rate limit you and you can only check in as fast as you watch.  They don’t have a bb app as far as I know – so if I try and catch up to whatever I watched that day or the day before I usually get limited which stinks because a lot of times I forget to come back later and finish logging what I watched.

GET GLUE – www.getglue.com, this is my most recent obsession.  For checking in to shows you get stickers.  Most are sponsored by networks.  You also become a “FAN” of something after checking in 5 times and a “SUPER FAN” after checking in 15.  There are generic stickers for both of these milestones and certain shows also have show specific stickers (Glee and Fringe for example).  The great thing about Get Glue is that after you earn 20 stickers (I think, they keep changing the number on me!) You can request to be sent REAL copies of the stickers in the mail.  I have now requested stickers 3 times and have yet to receive anything! They claim requests take 6-8 weeks and they can only send up to 20 because that is how many fit in an envelope with a single stamp.

My first request was at the end of October – I am not sure how many stickers I had at the time (maybe 40?) a couple of days after I had joined the site. This was when you only needed to have 7 stickers to request real copies.
My second request was the beginning of December. I had hundreds of stickers (I now have over 400) and the nice thing about this request is that they asked what I was excited to received.  I had hoped this would mean that I would end up getting the stickers I was excited about (subject to availability), but nothing has arrived so I don’t know if my theory is correct.
My third request was the beginning of January – and the box to mention what stickers you were excited about was gone.

I follow a couple of sites to help me figure out what shows I should be checking in on, and when – stickerfaqs.blogspot.com and getgluestickers.com.  Between the two I almost always know what stickers are coming up and when to check in.  (Some stickers are only available for a limited time – like the hour the show is airing or just the night the show aired)  Both also include posts from users who have received stickers. It seems like it is a crapshoot – some have gotten duplicate stickers and stickers they hadn’t even actually earned on the site.

If you are out there get glue – I want my Glee, Weeds, Dexter, Conan, Fringe & Pretty Little Liars stickers the most πŸ˜‰

I guess you can tell getglue has quickly become my favorite – but if I go any longer without getting real stickers I might give up completely since that was what drew me in to signing up. I. Love. Stickers.

I’ll keep you all updated on when my stickers come, if they ever do! And of course which ones I receive.

EDIT: I wrote this post shortly after my 3rd request, but saved it until later to publish it.  Since writing it – I did receive a package of stickers on January 8th, which were mailed January 6th. Based on my theory of my 2nd request, I believe that these are from that request (it includes Glee, Weeds, Dexter and Pretty Little Liars stickers – all of which I mentioned I’d be excited to get) but it could be a coincidence and be my 3rd request, which I requested January 3rd.  I will be making a post soon with scans of the stickers I got πŸ™‚ 

Foursquare&Miso&Get Glue

Lately I have become obsessed with websites where you have to check in to get badges or stickers.  Why, I don’t know, but I feel like I need to figure out how to unlock EVERYTHING.  There are 3 main sites that I use.  If you know of any other similar sites – be sure to leave a comment… as if I need another website to become addicted to!

FOURSQUARE – www.foursquare.com is a site where you check in when you visit places.  There are badges based on what kind of places you check in, what day you check in on, what you “shout”, etc.  As of writing this post I have managed to get myself 54 badges, some of which are now retired.  A lot of the badges seem to be location based (ie New York City specfic) which tends to turn people off to using the site.  However, in recent months it seems that foursquare has become aware of this and have added some badges that can be unlocked anywhere that has bowling alleys, or book stores for example. One of the big issues I have with this site (or I guess more accurately, their phone app) is that I am sometimes told I am too far from a location when I am standing outside it, or even right inside it. Kind of crazy. While other times I can check in to locations from my bedroom and it counts. The GPS is weird.

The other 2 sites are similar to foursquare, but involve checking in to movie and TV shows that you are watching instead of locations.

MISO – www.gomiso.com was the first site I had signed up for.  You get badges based on how many movies or TV shows you check in to, what kind of genres you check in to and other special TV based (or event based) badges based on what you check in to.  I kind of gave up on this site once I found out about the 3rd site – but I do check in from time to time if they tweet to remind people to check in to certain shows (that usually means there is a badge involved).  They also hold contests from time to time – and I won two of them.  I won a signed Bad Girls Club poster for checking in and sending my check in to twitter during one of their episodes.  I also placed 2nd in their costume contest and won a Miso tshirt. (Both of which arrived in reasonable time)  As of the writing of this post I have 42 badges.  The downside to this site is they sometimes rate limit you and you can only check in as fast as you watch.  They don’t have a bb app as far as I know – so if I try and catch up to whatever I watched that day or the day before I usually get limited which stinks because a lot of times I forget to come back later and finish logging what I watched.

GET GLUE – www.getglue.com, this is my most recent obsession.  For checking in to shows you get stickers.  Most are sponsored by networks.  You also become a “FAN” of something after checking in 5 times and a “SUPER FAN” after checking in 15.  There are generic stickers for both of these milestones and certain shows also have show specific stickers (Glee and Fringe for example).  The great thing about Get Glue is that after you earn 20 stickers (I think, they keep changing the number on me!) You can request to be sent REAL copies of the stickers in the mail.  I have now requested stickers 3 times and have yet to receive anything! They claim requests take 6-8 weeks and they can only send up to 20 because that is how many fit in an envelope with a single stamp.

My first request was at the end of October – I am not sure how many stickers I had at the time (maybe 40?) a couple of days after I had joined the site. This was when you only needed to have 7 stickers to request real copies.
My second request was the beginning of December. I had hundreds of stickers (I now have over 400) and the nice thing about this request is that they asked what I was excited to received.  I had hoped this would mean that I would end up getting the stickers I was excited about (subject to availability), but nothing has arrived so I don’t know if my theory is correct.
My third request was the beginning of January – and the box to mention what stickers you were excited about was gone.

I follow a couple of sites to help me figure out what shows I should be checking in on, and when – stickerfaqs.blogspot.com and getgluestickers.com.  Between the two I almost always know what stickers are coming up and when to check in.  (Some stickers are only available for a limited time – like the hour the show is airing or just the night the show aired)  Both also include posts from users who have received stickers. It seems like it is a crapshoot – some have gotten duplicate stickers and stickers they hadn’t even actually earned on the site.

If you are out there get glue – I want my Glee, Weeds, Dexter, Conan, Fringe & Pretty Little Liars stickers the most πŸ˜‰

I guess you can tell getglue has quickly become my favorite – but if I go any longer without getting real stickers I might give up completely since that was what drew me in to signing up. I. Love. Stickers.

I’ll keep you all updated on when my stickers come, if they ever do! And of course which ones I receive.

EDIT: I wrote this post shortly after my 3rd request, but saved it until later to publish it.  Since writing it – I did receive a package of stickers on January 8th, which were mailed January 6th. Based on my theory of my 2nd request, I believe that these are from that request (it includes Glee, Weeds, Dexter and Pretty Little Liars stickers – all of which I mentioned I’d be excited to get) but it could be a coincidence and be my 3rd request, which I requested January 3rd.  I will be making a post soon with scans of the stickers I got πŸ™‚ 

New widgets!

I added a couple of new widgets to the site. Mostly because I was bored and looking for something to do instead of sleep…

1. I added my word count widget from NaNoWriMo.  If you are participating too feel free to email me and harass me that I am behind.  I’m only about a day and a little bit behind (for now) but with all my Hanson coming up in the next week… Let’s just say it would be in my best interest to lock myself in my bedroom and do nothing but write tomorrow night.

2. I added a “share this” widget.  So if you see something you like you can mouse over and then share it with your friends on facebook or twitter or whatever other social networking site you’d like. I was kind of hoping it would look a bit cooler than just the “Share This” button so there might be a transformation of what it actually looks like over the next few days when I decide to play with that instead of write for Nano!

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