A Big Step

Much as I generally like working with Blogger with my other blogs, having my own domain name of http://www.thespiritmovedme.com/ doesn't seem to be working very well.  I have over 625 entries to this blog having had it for several years.  It also takes forever and a day to do the FTP publishing.  However, things are about to change.  After having received in my email a notification that as of sometime in March my blog will explode at Blogger (or whatever technical term is required...explode worked for me) I needed to busy my non-geeky self to fix things.  This I tried for 2 days.  Confusing is the word.  Reach somebody at Blogger for help?  No.  Do I need to spend more time on this?  No. 

So, I joined up with Moveable Type via my hosting service at Pair.com  It's only $2.95 a month.  I am hoping that I will be able to migrate most, if not all, of my blog over there.  If not I have copies of everything on my server.  Or, I could write a couple of books with all the material that I've compiled and start fresh.  So, lots of options.  Nothing I would have actually embarked upon without that threatening action from Blogger.  And, I never did trust that I got the page attention from Google that my site deserved having it under the Blogger name. 

So, we'll see. I hardly expect anybody at Blogger to say goodbye to me.

Internet Explorer 7 and Java Problem Solved

Wow. That took awhile. Recently I upgraded to Internet Explore 7. I tried to play one of the word games at Pogo and it wouldn’t work. It kept saying I didn’t have Java installed. Except, I did. After much searching on the internet I finally discovered what needed to be done.

On the Internet Explorer 7 screen over on the far right hand side is the word “Tools”. You let that drop down and go to “Manage Add-Ons”. Go to “Enable or Disable Add-Ons” and make sure that Sun Java is enabled.

The first time I did it I saw all these other programs that I used to use occasionally before I did the upgrade and selected them too. Wrong move. Just do one at a time and make sure it works before you add on any others. I managed to totally disable Internet Explorer. And, the way to solve that slick move? I went to the Control Panel – Internet Options – Advanced Tab – and down at the bottom Reset Internet Explorer Settings.

This was another time where I was glad to have a second browser installed. It is Firefox and I use it as a backup when I manage to screw up Internet Explorer 7.

The Blog Broke

It’s the minimalist look. We’re done with fancy schmancy. Well, what happened was the blog broke. It was okay to look at with FireFox, but totally busted with Internet Explorer. I’ve been farting around with it since the weekend. Thinking it was Internet Explorer, I took the plunge and upgraded to version 7. Nice, but not the fix I needed. So, tonight I held my breath and reset the template to plain. Real plain. I saved the old blog so I could go back in and begin the long, laborious process of tweaking and adding on all the bells and whistles I’ve been accumulating for the last few years. But, I’m real happy that it works at all.

The Spirit Moved Me

I am totally amazed. When I got my own domain for this site in July, 2006 I didn’t have the foresight to do a redirect on the template or at least a notice that I’d moved the site on the last entry. So, there it languished. Like it had died in July, 2006. And, when people got to the site via the blogspot address from whatever searches they’d done on the search engines they didn’t go any farther. When I realized what I’d done I was dismayed and wrote in a panic to the Bloggers that Be. They ignored me for awhile and finally I got an answer to my third request that they were too busy rolling out the new Beta Blogger to bother with my problem.

I got over it eventually and life went on.

Until a few weeks ago when I wrote again. Persistence gets me places. Anyway, I got an email from Karl at Blogger tonight and he said the old site should be available to me again. Turns out the whole thing is fine. What I don’t know and this entry will be the key to discover if new entries are duplicated with the blogspot address too.

So, www.thespiritmovedme.com and www.thespiritmovedme.blogspot.com we’re back in business again.