On the original 9/11, I was in my corporate job in Richardson, TX. I could not believe what people were telling me about airplanes and World Trade Center. Of course, the Internet was overloaded with everyone wondering the same thing. Took hours before we got the full story. I hope the survivors and the families of those who passed are doing OK and carrying on as their loved ones would want them to.

• Reuters Handbook of Journalism: You know… a style guide [Link: Smashing Magazine].
• Writer Unleashed 25 Best Writing Blogs 2009
• How to Develop into a Leader on Twitter
• Case Study: Can You Launch a New Site with Twitter Alone?
• Must See SEO Guide for All WordPress Bloggers: Must find time to ensure this site follows these recommendations.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• Do you leave your USB drive in your pants and wash them often? Hubby has MANY times (dryer, too) and his Kingston USB still works!
• This Is Photobomb: Hilarious photos.
• Official Seal Generator
• Icon Finder: Search solely focused on icons.

My favorites that I haven’t posted here from CNN 10 Humor Sites…

• My Life Is Average: It only took six days before my first grader forgot his take home folder. Five for my 5th grader.
• My Parents Joined Facebook: My mom did, but I’m cool with that. Daughter not so happy about me on FB.
• Laser Portraits: Think Star Trek light sabers in the background.
• Historical Tweets: Taking famous scenes and tweeting them. Star Trek’s Trouble with Tribbles: “@Spock Would you consider investing in a powder puff export business?” Written by: Heather Turner of Forfeng Designs
• GraphJam: Charts, charts, charts, baby!

Something strange happened that caused all of my blog entries (or most of them) to lose paragraph formatting and it looks atrocious. I am trying to get the problem solved. However, if I have to fix them manually, it’ll take a while since this contains over 3000 entries.

Thanks for bearing with me. I’d rather post no content than one that has no formatting as it goes against everything I believe in with regard to web content.

Games still receiving updates. Those have to keep rollin’ as no game stops for me.

I finally listened to WordPress and decided to do the upgrade at 7:00pm one evening. Downloaded the .zip file and went to the WordPress three step upgrade guide. Three steps… sure, but not fast ones. First step — backing up. That’ll make even the long-time geek sweat a little. I’ve played with databases a little over the years, but that doesn’t ease the discomfort of backing them up.

Besides, just reading the backup instructions can scare a non-geek. phpMyAdmin alone will freak ‘em out since most of them don’t go near that even in their cPanel (Web site administration application). The backup instructions mention a couple of applications, but they’re not easy either.

Another thing freaked me out. My WordPress database went from 50 megs to 17 megs after the upgrade. The folks at WordPress support forums assured me this was normal of databases and they don’t operate the same way as file systems. All is fine here. Cool that it shrunk that much!

Also, I looked at my SQL file to verify all my entries transferred. The latest post was past 3000, yet the total entries plus draft didn’t come close to that. Turns out the attached files also count in this number. So it’s all good.

I opened FileZilla (file transfer application to move files between my computer and my Web site’s web host). I created a new folder on my computer for my WordPress backup. Then I simply copied everything in the WordPress folder and root folder (one level up from WordPress where wp-config.php and other WordPress files live). The root folder has other files not related to WordPress, but don’t worry about that. Just copy everything — better safe.

Lesson #1: I didn’t realize it until after the upgrade that many WordPress files didn’t transfer. Here I thought I did the right thing only to find I missed a step… I should’ve checked that all files transfered before proceeding with the upgrade.

Lesson #2: Save the wp-config.php file with another name such as wp-config-currentdate.php. The other problem I ran into was the database name and password. Somehow, it got all mixed up and none of the passwords I had worked. Had I saved and known which wp-config.php was the latest one, it would’ve saved me the biggest trouble of all.

The upgrade failed because of the name and password mismatch. Long night — stayed up past my bedtime trying to clean up this mess as this site was down.

Be sure you deactivate all plug-ins, which I did. They all started perfectly… except one. Still trying to figure that out.

Remember you can still win birthday bash prizes.

Today we have our first guest post in the blog birthday bash celebration to give Meryl almost a month off from blogging (well, someone has to post the entries and the prizes as I have no fingers). Yuwanda Black of Inkwell Editorial and Meryl have lightly crossed paths, but they finally connected when she interviewed Meryl for Yuwanda’s jam-packed newsletter for writers.

Since then, they’ve stayed in touch and read each other’s blogs. She’s the first contributor to meryl’s notes blog 8th birthday celebration.

This post’s prize: Two full copies of Magic Farm Game PC games from Oleg Kuznecov of Meridian’93. One copy for a reader and one copy for a guest blogger. My Magic Farm review. To win, post a comment in this entry of at least 30 words (to ensure they’re valuable to readers) by June 6.

All yours, Yuwanda!

7 Things You Must Know Before Moving Your Blog

I recently migrated my blog from Blogger to Wordpress – with disastrous results. I’m now moving it again — to my own hosted domain. If you’re thinking about moving your blog from one spot to another, here are seven things to keep in mind.

1. Back Up Everything: This is obvious, but I wanted to state it and get it out of the way first. I usually save about a week’s worth of posts. But, this process has taught me to back up everything on my own system.

The chances of large blogging platforms like Blogger or Wordpress losing your posts forever are nil. However, just recently, I was relaying my story to a new client who noticed my blog was down and she said that a few years ago, she’d lost about a year’s worth of posts from a large company — and they were never able to recover them.

Lesson Learned: Don’t rely on a blog hosting company not to lose your files. Back them up yourself.

2. Choose a Blogging Platform Wisely: I’m not slamming any platform – just relaying what happened to me that turned me off free blog hosts.

I migrated from Blogger to Wordpress on 30 April 2008. On 19 May, I logged on to this notice from Wordpress: “This blog is inactive.” And, nothing more -– just a white screen. I received a notice from Wordpress when I logged into my control panel that said, “Confirmation required: Your blog is inactive. Please contact us to confirm your account details.”

After contacting them and waiting almost a full day for them to get back to me, the problem still wasn’t resolved. The next day, on 2- May, I received the following email (after two more interactions): “Hi, Your blog was made inactive because it broke the Terms of Service. One or more of the following apply: . . . ”

The email went on to list four different scenarios — none of which I thought applied to my blog. I wrote back asking if they could tell me EXACTLY which Terms of Service rule I had broken. As of this writing (20 May in the evening), I’m still waiting for a response.

Bottom line: I’ve been offline now for two full days — and still don’t know if my blog will ever be live again.

Lesson Learned: Read the terms of service diligently, and scour forums to see if you can find out more about how quick a company is to take you offline without giving you a chance to correct your mistake.

3. If You’re a Business, Act Like It: That means investing in your business. After this debacle, I decided to have a professionally designed blog hosted on my own domain.

My business is at the point where my blog is an integral part of how I relate to my audience — hence, produce certain streams of revenue. Therefore, I can’t afford to break a Terms of Service rule, be taken offline with no clue as to what I did wrong, then wait for someone to get back to me.

Wordpress is a free blogging platform. So, I don’t blame them for not rushing to my rescue, so to speak. As an online freelance writing business though, my blog is crucial to ebook sales, my writing history, links to other sites and so on.

I blame myself for this mostly because I vacillated between going with another free blogging service or getting my own host. Trying to save a few dollars, I made the unwise choice.

Lesson Learned: Do it right the first time — especially if you can afford to (and I could have).

In short, if your blog is integral to successfully running your business, treat it like that and have it professionally designed and hosted on its own domain.

Two Things You Must Do to Hire a Professional to Design Your Blog

4. Research Blogs You Like: Spend some time scouring other blogs you like, then write down what you want. A design is only going to be as good as what you relay to your designer (I wish I could get some of my clients to understand this about writing, but I digress).

This is where most of small business owners go wrong (and I’m soooo included in this bunch). We just want to outsource a project and have it done. Then, when we’re unhappy, we blame the designer. This is partly our fault. I’d even go so far as to say largely our fault.

Get a good list of 5 or 10, then you can proceed to the next step, which is . . .

5. Write Out a Blog Design: It took me about an hour to write down what I wanted then forward it to the companies I targeted. Over about the course of a month, I had been bookmarking blogs I liked. I then went back to those to write out exactly what I wanted.

Some particulars I requested were a three-column design, a 10-point Arial font; a white background with navy (to match my website). I went column by column explaining to the designer exactly what I wanted and where. I also listed the plugins I wanted and even the graphics.

Note: As I had been thinking about getting my blog professionally designed for months, I was able to be pretty specific. If you are truly lost, your designer can make recommendations. But remember, they don’t know your business like you, the purpose your blog serves for you and how your customers relate to your site.

All of this information has to come from you. So, while it may take a while to figure it all out, it is well worth the investment. It is, after all, an investment in your business.

6. Get Bids: I contacted a few companies and ultimately decided to go with one whose work I had been familiar with for about a year, and whose business owners I knew to be fair and professional from our interactions online.

My hope is to be up and running by the end of the first week of June.

7. Keep Your Old Blog Updated: For a full quarter (three months) after your new blog is up and running, constantly update your old blog. You probably have some search engine recognition behind it, so continue to capitalize on that until your readers have gotten used to looking for you in your new home.

And, not for nothing, just in case there are glitches with your new blog, you’ll still have an active blog up and running until all is smooth sailing in your new home.

Good luck!

About the Author: Yuwanda Black is the voice of InkwellEditorial.com, a business portal for creative freelancers. She is the author of eight e-books, the most recent of which is How to Make $250+/Day Writing Simple, 500-Word Articles. She continues to blog at InkwellEditorial.blogspot.com until her new blog home has been established.

In 2000, I earned a certificate in Internet Technologies in hopes of becoming a Web designer. Working on the blog today reminded me why I changed my mind and went into writing instead.

Based on advice (you know who you are — I don’t want to put your name in here again and have people thinking I’m trying to make nice nice), I took off the excerpts on the main blog page so you don’t have to click the entry to see the full content.

But in doing this, my paragraphs disappeared (the extra blank line). The blog entries looked like a ruddy mess and hard to scan. I looked at the code and don’t see anything that would make paragraph <p> not add a blank line.

So back to excerpts because the unformatted content broke too many web content rules. Oh, the bolding was there as were the bullets, but the whitespace was terrible. Content overrules features when it comes to the following:

• Bold headings.
• Bulleted lists.
• Easy to find paragraphs.
• Short paragraphs and sentences.
• Text and background color contrast (too many blogs and web sites use gray for text with white backgrounds — this resembles reading in a fog. Black isn’t boring — black works.).

If my blog breaks these rules, then the feature will have to go away until I can solve the problem. So, the main blog page continues to use for technical and readability reasons and not for usability reasons.

Using a blog application, bloggers deal with the application’s quirks, CSS, templates, plug ins. So a problem might be buried in layers of CSS or code. In fact, Peter Shankman had problems with his WordPress: “… all of a sudden, after switching to Firefox and upgrading AVG, I can no longer upload photos to WordPress.”

I’ve had problems like this happen in the past where the solution meant disabling a plug-in. The problem with computers (especially Windows-based) is there are too many variables that can cause a problem. Even if you add one thing, it could be something you installed long ago that could be the cause of problems.

My computer needs a clean up as it has various problems. However, using registry cleaners and other cleaners could make things worse. I’ve used Registry First Aid, but it requires carefully reviewing changes before accepting them — and that took time.

Also tried CCleaner a long time ago — don’t remember why I stopped using it. I downloaded Revo Uninstaller, but haven’t tried it. Anyone have luck in safely cleaning a computer?

Recently, I lamented about the many blogging features available. I interacted with the blogosphere more than I usually do to see what works and what doesn’t. What took me so long to discover CommentLuv, I don’t know. But I did.

Since I use WordPress, it was a breeze to install. The plugin doesn’t even need you to copy code into your template or anything. If you’re not familiar with the plugin, just scroll down to the comment form to see it.

The CommentLuv automatically appears in the comments. The plugin retrieves the commenter’s latest blog post (if they have a blog), and links to it. Cool, eh? It’s nice to reward commenters.

I also added ShareThis, but not sure if it’s worth keeping. MenWithPens believes ShareThis should be replaced by Sociables. I asked why because ShareThis has one little low profile icon while Sociables contains however many social sites you pick, which can build a small crowd at the bottom of the post. James explained why use Sociables:

Social Media is for both the blog and the reader. Readers who use social media to find better content referred by others means they want to see their preferred social media icon so they can click and share.

The problem with Share This is that it’s one click too many. Every click you force a reader to take reduces the chance that they’ll actually take action and follow through. I think the numbers are something like 7% of potential loss with each click (don’t quote me).

So Share This means one click to open and one click to search for your social media and one click to send. With Sociables, you eliminate that. One click. That’s all you need. It’s right there for you.

Also, how many people actually email blog posts to friends? It’s more common to share links or URLS, which makes Share this a little unnecessary.

Excellent point, Gangbanger James (he goes on drive through shootings — legal ones… you know… shooting blog problems). Now I wonder if I should even use anything because ShareThis and Sociables benefit the blogger more than the reader (promoting a blog entry).

What y’all think? Shoot ShareThis? Add Sociables? Forget social anything?

What about the fact if you come here (thank you!!) on the blog’s main page or the home page and you have to click once or twice (from the home page) to see the full entry? I thought I was doing y’all a favor by keeping the entries short on the blog’s home page so you can scan. But then it adds a click if you want to see the full entry.