this woman’s work

I’m killing time before we go pick up Pennie (and her bread pudding!) and head over to my dad’s. Noah is on his computer and Brett is watching turkey cooking shows with Madison — as prep, I guess.

I’ve been thinking about overhauling Open Adoption Support to make it easier for people to use. I think I’ll need to do a fresh install on a new host, which will cost money but someone I know in real life said he might be able to help out with hosting. I’d like to run multiuser WordPress, specifically BuddyPress, although that’s in beta right now.

Drupal, the system I’m using now, has more features but it’s also really clunky and I’m afraid of doing stuff to it because it’s a big install and I’m afraid of breaking it. I just don’t have as much experience with Drupal. And I’m so busy that I don’t know if I can find the time to get in there and get some real expertise.

Thing is with multiuser WordPress is that I’m hearing you need a virtual server, which is more expensive than the kind of shared hosting most of us use for our typical domains. This is where the nice local person comes in. I’m hoping he can help me figure out what to do next because he’s techie.

(I’m not techie; I just play techie on the internet. I’m only techie compared to she-who-shall-remain-nameless who when asked what browser she used replied “google” and still has an aol account. I will add that several of my clients exist in this same “I browse with google” type bubble and that patient hand-holding is part of my services.)

I’d love to hit that drupal one but that’s my dad’s 70th birthday so we’ll be busy that day. Courtesy of the Fuse Factory!

Workshop 1: Introduction to Marketing Yourself on the Web
Instructor: Alison Colman
Date: Wed., Sept. 10
Time: 11:30am - 1:00pm
Location: GCAC conference room
Fee: Free

Workshop 2: Intro to Web 2.0: Building a Better Blog
Instructor: Dawn Friedman
Date: Saturday, Sept. 13
Time: 1:00pm - 4:00pm
Location: Junctionview Studios
Fee: $15

Workshop 3: Intro to Drupal
Instructor: Jennifer Deafenbaugh
Date: Saturday, Sept. 20
Time: 1:00 - 4:00pm
Location: The Vault (this will be part of the Independent’s Day festivities - visit http://independentsday.nu/ for more details!)
Fee: $15

Workshop 4: Intro to Flash
Instructor: Phong Nguyen
Date: Saturday, October 4 (Phong, plz let me know ASAP if you think this workshop warrants two sessions! This can be scheduled for both the 4th and the 11th)
Time: 1:00pm - 4:00pm
Location: Junctionview Studios
Fee: $25

I’m not sure how and in what order though.

Meanwhile, see it’s not drupal that sucks — it was just my (in)ability to program it properly. Here’s proof.

I guess I’m not the only one relieved to be out of drupal, eh? But we all survived it! We were strong and we came through! (I still love drupal as a community management system — don’t want to bash ye olde drupal — but it was too much for my wee blog. And for the very in-progress anotherchild.com site, I’m using Joomla — it’s easier to personalize.)

Madison is wearing training pants right now — the plastic coated kind — and she is not happy with them. I was hoping to slip ‘em on without her noticing that they are thousands of times less comfortable than her more squishy and more leaky padded pants. I told her that I’d take them back off once she’s done swimming in the pool.

My sister wants Noah today but if she takes Noah, how will I get anything done? Like this blog entry for example. Noah is playing with her outside while I type. God bless Noah, lemme tell you. And Brett won’t be home tonight (he’s taking his mom out for Indian food) so I really want to keep me some Noah around.

Tomorrow Jessica is coming over and I will FINALLY get to give her Madison’s mother’s day present. We’ve missed her.

I’m going to go back upstairs now. I have a great big long entry saved on my alphasmart that I’ll input sometime when I get back down here.

But there’s a glitch because my old email address — one that no longer even exists — is listed as the contact on whois so I can’t go in and change the DNS yet. I’m afraid of writing anything actually interesting here because I may not be able to get my drupal entries into the Wordpress blog. (The MT entries are already there.) I also can’t mess with the css, because of the way things are resolving. It’s craziness. I hate not being able to play with that new domain.

I now own a bunch of domains. I own:
thiswomanswork.com
dawnfriedman.com
insecurewriters.com

and for my book project (I got the second one for free w/my hosting because I didn’t like the first one so much):
wantinganotherbaby.com
anotherchild.com

I’ve been messing with the software on anotherchild.com and you can go look but there’s not really anything of any substance to see. I’m fixing the survey at the moment and made the site all pretty-ish but haven’t input any real content. I’m stil on the learning curve on Joomla (a content management sytem that looked easier to make pretty that drupal and I need pretty more than I need powerful for this, I think).

I also got an assignment yesterday that’s due on Monday — last minute but decent pay if you break it down by the hour. Break it down by the word and not so much goodness of pay so I’m choosing hourly. It won’t take any research or interviewing so it’ll be a cinch.

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I’m going to be changing my rss feed again. I went over the options and I am going to switch to wordpress on my new web host. Why?
–I use wordpress to manage my clips and it’s spectacularly clean and easy;
–Drupal is just way too much software for a wee little blog;
–I’m going to be using a content management system (probably drupal) for my book project site so I decided to go with easy for my blog site and the IW site.

I know I’m likely going to lose readers (again) in the switch but I think that those of you who come along will be relieved to deal with a normal commenting system again, right?

I do love drupal, which is why I’ll likely use it to motor the book project (I’m flirting with Joomla but it seems clunkier even though it looks prettier).

I’m going to be switching my web host SOON so expect some ugly changes while I figure things out.

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I’m going to move this whole site over to a new host and I think it’s going to be a bit messy. I’m going to switch the Insecure Writers over to Wordpress so that it’ll be separate from my blog. I’m going to leave my blog on drupal not because I like it better (I’ve fallen in love with wordpress) but because I think I’d have a hard time changing my feed yet again. But I’ll likely remove some of the bells and whistles I’ve got going on now because with the IW switch, I won’t need them. Also I’ll let go of the IW forum because there really isn’t any traffic there but if interest springs up at some point I’ll add it back in.

I’m also going to begin working on my book project site but I don’t think that’ll be ready to unveil for a few months at least. I still don’t really know what I want to do there but I bought a domain so I can at least host a survey for research purposes.

Today I’m nursing a wicked sore throat and writing a feature I’ve got due tomorrow. Oh and following up with an editor and working on another round of queries.

In family news, I haven’t had to change a poopy diaper for Madison since this weekend. She’s consistently pooping on the potty and she’s just beginning to get the hang of peeing on the potty. She’s asleep with a diaper on right now but she kept her new Elmo underwear dry all morning and on through lunch. She is very proud of herself!

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