• Home
  • Blog
  • Archives
  • Links
  • About
  • Guest Blogger
  • Contact

Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto

  • Home and Lifestyle
  • Recreation
  • Health Fitness and Beauty
  • Entertainment
  • Web and Technology


You are here: Home / Archives for Web and Technology / Blogging

Join Second Brain and organize and share all of your social media sites

November 27, 2008 by Tricia

Over the past two years a lot of new social media sites have started up and if you are like me, you kind of feel like you need to join quite a few of them in order to keep up with all of your blogging friends. Some of the social media sites are not only good places to connect with other bloggers and old friends, but they also offer ways to promote your own websites and or blogs.

If you look at my About page you can see a list of some of the social media sites that I use. It’s not a complete list as I get invites every week from blogging friends to join new sites! It’s hard to keep up!

Some time ago I came across a site called Second Brain. I didn’t join it when I first came across the site, but I decided to sign up a few days ago when I realized that I could connect most of my social media accounts to Second Brain.

There are a few other social media sites where you can connect quite a few of your other accounts, but I liked the look and feel of Second Brain.

Not only can you bookmark favorite sites in your Second Brain account (or use their Bookmarklet tool in your browser), but you can import your bookmarks from sites such as Delicious, Faves, Digg, GoogleReader, StumbleUpon, Mixx, Reddit and Mr. Wong.

You can also import feeds from your Blogger, WordPress, Metaweblog, RSSBlog and tumblr accounts. If that’s not enough you can also connect your Second Brain account to your accounts at GoogleDocs, MindMeister, ZohoDocs, Slideshare, Box, Scribd, Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, Revver, Vimeo, Qik, Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, Behance, Diigo, and GoodReads.

One thing that I discovered recently is that you can upload files from your computer to Second Brain. I don’t think you can do this on many of the other Social Media sites. I’m not sure what kind of files one might want to upload – perhaps articles – but it’s an interesting feature to have.

Anyway, I know that a lot of you already have accounts at many of the Social media sites that I’ve listed above, I get enough friend invites each week to know that, LOL … so why not join Second Brain too? It’s free to join!

Remember to add me as a friend if you do start an account there!





Filed Under: Blogging, Internet, Web and Technology, Website Promotion Tagged With: accounts, bloggers, blogging_friends, bookmark, bookmarking_site, connect_accounts, docs, files, friends, get_organized, Join, organize, Second_brain, share, social_media, web2.0_sites

How do you handle comment spam?

November 24, 2008 by Tricia

I’m so sick of spam! I swear, most days, every second comment I get on all of my blogs is either spam or someone just commenting to get a dofollow link and using a SEO user name.

I have the spam bots pretty much under control between the Akismet, Bad Behavior and WP-Spamfree plugins I use, but comment spam from real people is a constant problem.

I’m seriously considering closing comments on my old posts. I don’t really want to do that because I get real comments on older posts all the time, but I also get comment spam on them too.

I mark comments that appear to be spam (don’t make sense or that really don’t add to the post “good post!”) as spam and put them in the Akismet bin quite often. Others that look like they’re from someone commenting just for a link and or using a tacky SEO user name are either marked spam or have their links removed. It all depends upon the comment, how many comments or the number of my blogs they hit that day and the mood I happen to be in when I find the comment.

How do you handle human comment spammers on your blog?

Filed Under: Blogging, Internet, Web and Technology, Wordpress Plugins Tagged With: akismet, Bad_behavior, bots, comments, comment_spam, Delete, delete_url, dofollow, handle_spam, human_spammers, link_seeking, mark_as_spam, mood, plugins, SEO_links, SEO_user_name, spammers, spam_comments, wp_spamfree

I thought I lost my WordPress Database just now! Scary!

September 18, 2008 by Tricia

A few minutes ago as I finished the post below and pressed the Publish button this is what my admin area looked like:

Blog Admin Error After Posting
Blog Admin Error After Posting

Pretty scary, eh? I just about had a heart attack!

With the mantra “Oh no, oh no, oh no” going through my head, I opened up a new tab in my browser and loaded the site in the hopes that the blog would look normal. You know … that maybe what I saw in the admin area was just a temporary glitch?

No such luck … the front page of the blog looked like this:

Front page of my blog after publishing a post!
Front page of my blog after publishing a post!

After having another heart attack and aging 10 years (gotta get some wrinkle cream now!) I decided to go to my webhost and check C-panel to make sure that my database really hadn’t disappeared.

The database was still there and I could see that it still had comment and post data in it, so i decided to open another new tab in order to load my blog again. I got the same error messages all over the page, so I added wp-admin to the url and I was able to go directly to the admin area.

Much to my relief the admin area looked fine when I got into it. I use a wp-cache for this blog so I went to the settings area and cleared the whole cache for the blog and it looked normal again.

I have no idea what happened, but it sure scared me! This is my oldest and biggest blog. The thought of losing the whole database and possibly the databases for my other blogs really freaked me out.

I just updated this blog to WP 2.6.2 on Saturday. Up until now there’s been no major problems except for the widget area looking strange on occasion. I wrote about that one one of my other blogs if you want to read about the widget problem. You can actually read about how fun it was to update 16 blogs in that post if you’re interested in hearing about my experiment with the WordPress Autoupdate plugin.

At least having just updated my blog I do have recent backups of the database and files.

So I don’t know if this was a problem caused by the new WP 2.6 or if perhaps there was an error on my hosts server when I was publishing my last post. I suppose it could also be a plugin conflict, but I haven’t added any new plugins or updated any since Saturday when I updated WordPress, and I’ve published several posts since then … so that doesn’t make sense as the cause of the problem.

I guess I’ll have to see what happens when I publish this post! Wish me luck!

Has anyone else had a problem like this immediately after publishing a new post? If you have experienced this type or error, did you ever find out what caused it? Any ideas?

Filed Under: Blogging, Software, Web and Technology, Web Hosting, Wordpress, Wordpress Plugins Tagged With: admin, blog, Blogging, cache, cpanel, data, database, databases, error, errors, freaked, freaky, frightening, index, mySql, plugins, post, posting, problem, published, scary, site, Stress, Tech, update, updated, website, Wordpress, yikes

Spinning my wheels these days

September 11, 2008 by Tricia

I’m so confused and disorganized these days and it’s just getting worse.

I have too much on my plate. Too many sites to manage and too many projects that I’m getting involved in. If I were making enough money I’d almost say that it’s time to hire someone to help me out, but that’s not an option at this point. Either that or quite everything to seriously consider one of those silly Jewelry sales manager jobs in Europe that I keep getting offered from job sites that I listed my resume on in the mid 90’s!

About a month ago I joined two membership sites that train you to market your websites and help you along the way. By this I mean they are set up with a variety of options to help you get traffic to your site as well as backlinks and even content. The sites are great, but most of their tutorial material is in video format and video’s don’t do well on my laptop – they keep cutting out. Not to mention that it’s difficult watching long videos when you have a puppy that constantly wants attention or a husband who wants to watch TV around. Plus, I find that if I’m given the choice of reading directions that would only take me five minutes to read or watching a 30 minute video I’d rather read a tutorial.

So I’m busy creating new blogging and website projects and trying to learn these two new systems at the same time and it’s just not working for me. I’m sure lack of sleep doesn’t help. I haven’t slept well in months so I’m living in a fog these days and if you’ve ever been seriously exhausted you probably know it’s very hard to learn something new or to get organized when you are practically brain dead.

I’m sure I’ll get my act together in the near future, but in the meantime I just feel like I’m spinning my wheels and not making much progress.

Filed Under: Blogging, Internet, The Blogisphere, Trouble sleeping, Web and Technology, Website Promotion Tagged With: attention, Blogging, blogs, brain, choice, confused, disorganized, everything, fog, format, hire, Job, laptop, maintain, manage, material, membership, Money, month, notime, option, progress, projects, puppy, reading, resume, site, sleep, Spinning, Tech, time, traffic, train, training, tutorial, variety, Video, website, websites

Looking for a new WP photoblog theme – help?

September 9, 2008 by Tricia

I need a new WordPress Theme for my photoblog – Breath of Life Photography.

You’d think it would be easy enough to find a nice theme for a photoblog considering that there are thousands and thousands of free WP themes out there … but no … there are very few that are suitable for displaying a large image in a single post.

The theme I’m using now is OK, but it incorporates the post page (single page view) into the main index page, so that cuts down on your options if you want to display certain things on your index page and other items (or exclude items) on single post pages. Also … there’s no sidebar. I guess I could live without a sidebar, but a theme with footer sidebars incorporated into it would be cool.

The current theme displays images up to 720 px in size. I’d like to find a theme that displays pictures that large or at least no less than 600 px wide.

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions for a new WordPress theme? I’d prefer a free one if possible!

Thanks!

Filed Under: Art, Blogging, Entertainment, Photography, Recreation, Web and Technology, Wordpress Tagged With: blog, blogtheme, footersidebar, image, imagesize, index, page, photo, photoblog, photoblogtheme, Photography, post, sidebar, theme, width, Wordpress, wptheme

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • …
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • …
  • 32
  • Next Page »

Connect with Us

  • Facebook
  • Flickr
  • Instagram
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Categories

Sites of Interest

Useful Links

Eavestrough Cleaning Toronto

Shopping

Gifts, Gadgets,
Books and More!

Recent Posts

  • Is your home well insulated or do you have energy leaks?
  • Pet Safety Tips
  • Top 10 Most Fundamental Yoga Poses For Beginners
  • Will My Interior Décor Stand The Test Of Time?
  • Outdoor Furniture- Spicing Up Your Backyard
  • Ensuring You Have A Good Experience Staying At Hotels With Children
  • Mother’s Day Cookies

Recent Comments

  • Bill on Top 10 Most Fundamental Yoga Poses For Beginners
  • [bonus]old school new body-f4x workout on Why does my husband always bring home the wrong stuff?
  • Rodhe Stevens on 5 Little Known Secrets To Finding Cheap (But Durable) Furniture
  • Julia Carlson on How To Install A Mosaic Tile Kitchen Backsplash
  • Humane Raccoon Deterrent Idea on Helped save a baby raccoon last night

Subscribe


Subscribe to our RSS Feed It's FREE!

Subscribe to Tricia's Musings by Email It's FREE!


Follow me on TWITTER

Find us on Google +



Find us on Facebook



I have two mottos-
1. Live life to the fullest; and
2. Don't have any regrets.

Get More Traffic

Visitors since 2006

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Search this site

Tags

blog blogs camera Canada Chris computer crohns dinner dog Family flower flowers Food friends funny garden Gardening Green Thumb Sunday Health and Fitness Health Fitness and Beauty holiday home Home and Lifestyle house husband IBD Inflammatory bowel disease Internet Music neighbors pain photo photos plants puppy Shopping sick sleep spring Toronto TV Video visit website Wordless Wednesday

Blogs I Visit

  • BlogTO
  • Say No to Crack
  • Organic Gardening Tips
  • Casual Slack
  • The Domestiquette

Copyright © 2025 · Lifestyle Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in