Monday, October 20, 2008
Monday, October 13, 2008
Packing Up And Moving
Moving day for the TRAVEL LOG is officially here!
You will find all future TRAVEL LOG articles on my hosted website here.
This blog has been housed on Blogger for nearly two years. Back in June I set up a hosted website for my e-mail newsletter On The Twisting Road, including a sub-address for the TRAVEL LOG. Since then I’ve posted my weekly update on Blogger and on my hosted site.
This is the last new post I will put on Blogger. I will leave the Blogger site up with the archives of the TRAVEL LOG for a while as I move them to my hosted site.
I’ve already managed to move the first three months. It’s slow going, since I have to post them one at a time. I looked at moving the whole blog but the information I found was discouraging.
For anyone starting with a new business idea who is considering a blog, I have a recommendation. Having tried three popular formats, Blogger, WordPress, and TypePad, I have chosen WordPress. This is mainly because I can put the blogging software on my own hosted site.
If I had started with a free WordPress blog, I would be able to migrate the whole thing to my hosted site. If you’re considering starting a free blog and think you might want to host it on your business’ site once you’re up and running, I think that’s a good way to go. TypePad has a great structure and is very easy to use, and the information I read makes it seem fairly easy to migrate a TypePad blog to your own hosted site with WordPress software. But at this time, you can’t put TypePad software on your own site. If you want a TypePad blog, you have to host it on their server.
This week had the theme of packing up and moving, and I’m pretty sure it will be my theme for a while. Not only am I moving the TRAVEL LOG archives to my hosted site, I recently closed down my TypePad account so Anything But Marketing! is only found on my hosted site.
I even have a lot of packing and moving planned for my home office. I rearranged the furniture months ago and set up my workstation in the guest bedroom. I made a list by section of the room for going through books, files, supplies, and binders to sort things out and organize them. But that’s about as far as I got.
It’s sorting and sifting time for me this coming week. I will be clearing out old things and either storing them or tossing them out. I’ll be going through reminders of the successful child care business we sold a few years back, which will be bittersweet. I’ll also be going through reminders of the “business opportunities” I tried, including the ones that collapsed as the parent companies were taken over by the government for fraud. I’ll relive the foolishness, the gullibility, and the desperation that made me susceptible to those scams. And I’ll relive watching thousands and thousands of dollars disappear.
It’s gonna’ be a tough week. And it will probably take more than one week to get it all sorted out. But once I’m done and my office is focused on my coaching and training business, I won’t have to dig through bad memories to find my telephone bill or the stapler. I’ll be focused on the future and on a business I chose after a long process of listening to my gifts, talents, and passions.
That’s the vision I will hold in front of me to keep me going as I clear out the clutter of the past.
May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,
Steve Coxsey
You will find all future TRAVEL LOG articles on my hosted website here.
This blog has been housed on Blogger for nearly two years. Back in June I set up a hosted website for my e-mail newsletter On The Twisting Road, including a sub-address for the TRAVEL LOG. Since then I’ve posted my weekly update on Blogger and on my hosted site.
This is the last new post I will put on Blogger. I will leave the Blogger site up with the archives of the TRAVEL LOG for a while as I move them to my hosted site.
I’ve already managed to move the first three months. It’s slow going, since I have to post them one at a time. I looked at moving the whole blog but the information I found was discouraging.
For anyone starting with a new business idea who is considering a blog, I have a recommendation. Having tried three popular formats, Blogger, WordPress, and TypePad, I have chosen WordPress. This is mainly because I can put the blogging software on my own hosted site.
If I had started with a free WordPress blog, I would be able to migrate the whole thing to my hosted site. If you’re considering starting a free blog and think you might want to host it on your business’ site once you’re up and running, I think that’s a good way to go. TypePad has a great structure and is very easy to use, and the information I read makes it seem fairly easy to migrate a TypePad blog to your own hosted site with WordPress software. But at this time, you can’t put TypePad software on your own site. If you want a TypePad blog, you have to host it on their server.
This week had the theme of packing up and moving, and I’m pretty sure it will be my theme for a while. Not only am I moving the TRAVEL LOG archives to my hosted site, I recently closed down my TypePad account so Anything But Marketing! is only found on my hosted site.
I even have a lot of packing and moving planned for my home office. I rearranged the furniture months ago and set up my workstation in the guest bedroom. I made a list by section of the room for going through books, files, supplies, and binders to sort things out and organize them. But that’s about as far as I got.
It’s sorting and sifting time for me this coming week. I will be clearing out old things and either storing them or tossing them out. I’ll be going through reminders of the successful child care business we sold a few years back, which will be bittersweet. I’ll also be going through reminders of the “business opportunities” I tried, including the ones that collapsed as the parent companies were taken over by the government for fraud. I’ll relive the foolishness, the gullibility, and the desperation that made me susceptible to those scams. And I’ll relive watching thousands and thousands of dollars disappear.
It’s gonna’ be a tough week. And it will probably take more than one week to get it all sorted out. But once I’m done and my office is focused on my coaching and training business, I won’t have to dig through bad memories to find my telephone bill or the stapler. I’ll be focused on the future and on a business I chose after a long process of listening to my gifts, talents, and passions.
That’s the vision I will hold in front of me to keep me going as I clear out the clutter of the past.
May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,
Steve Coxsey
Monday, October 6, 2008
Back In The Sandbox
In April I wrote a post called Having Fun In The Web Design Sandbox. I was getting brave messing around with HTML code, aiming personalized URLs to blogs I had on other sites, and getting a little more control of my SteveCoxsey.com site. This week I’ve been getting dirty all over again!
It all started because the end of the month came mid-week, and when I was going over the budget – yes, it’s boring sometimes, but it’s also really important – I noticed I was about to pay my annual hosting fee again for my SteveCoxsey.com site. I hadn’t done much with it besides changing the template and making a few tweaks to the text since I learned how to play around with it back in April.
I wanted to redo it completely and take down the “Contact Me” form. Those forms were probably a good idea in the past, but the internet vultures have found a way to use mine to send me several messages a day that are either garbled nonsense or the worst version of SPAM I’ve ever seen. I wanted that form gone. I wanted to have full access to the control panel. I wanted the ability to screw it up in any way I possibly could!
So I transferred the hosting from my web guy, to whom I am very grateful for getting me going on training wheels, to the hosting company where I have my two blog-zines. If I were on top of things, I would be an affiliate of the company and I would have just put an affiliate link in this post. Boy, I can see how I should “Always Be Selling,” but I can’t quite make it happen.
I was wiped out with a virus Thursday and Friday, and I had just enough energy to go to my younger son’s soccer games on Saturday before I had to stop and rest. Sunday was my older son’s game, so by the time I was feeling nearly well on Sunday evening I was way behind on first of the month tasks for my small business.
Of course that was the perfect time to focus on playing in the web sandbox. I purchased the hosting and messed around with redirecting my e-mail. I had to stay up late to get it to work, but I finally managed to have the e-mail routed through the new hosting company. Good thing, since that’s my business e-mail address. The site was a different story.
I had to place a call today to the hosting company to have an error message removed every time I tried to access my site. The customer service rep helped me out and made sure I had access to install files for my new site. I looked at a lot of templates and then decided to install WordPress. I spent way too much time choosing a theme and then customizing parts of it. I’m nowhere close to done yet, and I may change it completely, but I’m feeling connected to my site again.
I also managed to take a lot of steps reformatting Chasing Wisdom, but the changes won’t show up for a while. I’ll be rearranging the articles to make the site easier to navigate, and then I’ll start publishing more issues of that blog-zine.
There were times when I was looking at templates or WordPress themes and thinking I was wasting time, maybe even goofing off. But then I remembered I’ve been wanting to make significant changes to both of these sites for months. It takes time because my approach to choosing a design layout is “I’ll know which one I want when I see it.”
I still take a lot of time making changes to the layout of a theme once it’s installed because I have to experiment with different things on the stylesheet to see if what I’m doing is making the right changes on the page. I haven’t mastered these skills; I’m still struggling to learn them.
Fortunately, struggling to learn them is a lot of fun.
May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,
Steve Coxsey
It all started because the end of the month came mid-week, and when I was going over the budget – yes, it’s boring sometimes, but it’s also really important – I noticed I was about to pay my annual hosting fee again for my SteveCoxsey.com site. I hadn’t done much with it besides changing the template and making a few tweaks to the text since I learned how to play around with it back in April.
I wanted to redo it completely and take down the “Contact Me” form. Those forms were probably a good idea in the past, but the internet vultures have found a way to use mine to send me several messages a day that are either garbled nonsense or the worst version of SPAM I’ve ever seen. I wanted that form gone. I wanted to have full access to the control panel. I wanted the ability to screw it up in any way I possibly could!
So I transferred the hosting from my web guy, to whom I am very grateful for getting me going on training wheels, to the hosting company where I have my two blog-zines. If I were on top of things, I would be an affiliate of the company and I would have just put an affiliate link in this post. Boy, I can see how I should “Always Be Selling,” but I can’t quite make it happen.
I was wiped out with a virus Thursday and Friday, and I had just enough energy to go to my younger son’s soccer games on Saturday before I had to stop and rest. Sunday was my older son’s game, so by the time I was feeling nearly well on Sunday evening I was way behind on first of the month tasks for my small business.
Of course that was the perfect time to focus on playing in the web sandbox. I purchased the hosting and messed around with redirecting my e-mail. I had to stay up late to get it to work, but I finally managed to have the e-mail routed through the new hosting company. Good thing, since that’s my business e-mail address. The site was a different story.
I had to place a call today to the hosting company to have an error message removed every time I tried to access my site. The customer service rep helped me out and made sure I had access to install files for my new site. I looked at a lot of templates and then decided to install WordPress. I spent way too much time choosing a theme and then customizing parts of it. I’m nowhere close to done yet, and I may change it completely, but I’m feeling connected to my site again.
I also managed to take a lot of steps reformatting Chasing Wisdom, but the changes won’t show up for a while. I’ll be rearranging the articles to make the site easier to navigate, and then I’ll start publishing more issues of that blog-zine.
There were times when I was looking at templates or WordPress themes and thinking I was wasting time, maybe even goofing off. But then I remembered I’ve been wanting to make significant changes to both of these sites for months. It takes time because my approach to choosing a design layout is “I’ll know which one I want when I see it.”
I still take a lot of time making changes to the layout of a theme once it’s installed because I have to experiment with different things on the stylesheet to see if what I’m doing is making the right changes on the page. I haven’t mastered these skills; I’m still struggling to learn them.
Fortunately, struggling to learn them is a lot of fun.
May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,
Steve Coxsey
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