Now What??

Basically the websites of the 3 hounds are up and running. There are a few more things to add to the sidebars but basically the majority of the work is finished. The feeling an ‘ex workaholic” gets when working non-stop is gone.

So, now what?  What’s next?

When I shut down my computer last night I was reminded of the time last June while sitting at the picnic table on a beautiful Colorado day, at Rifle Gap SP, thinking to myself “now what?”

Both seemed to be very similar in feeling but so much different in the task. One was building websites with most of the hard work furnished, so there wasn’t major building involved. It’s not like I was writing code, which I don’t know how to do. Yet, there is a lot of work to get the website/blog designed and working correctly … times 3 or 4 if you count mine.

Whereas in traveling, there was the planning, the packing, getting the hounds situated to travel, non-stop driving, setting up the campsite and then sitting back with a feeling “that’s all finished … now what do I do?”

Weird comparison isn’t it?

Not much was planned for today except watching some college basketball before the two NFL Playoff games play back to back (almost 7 solid hours of football). Not only am I out of high-speed data, using my 1gig yesterday for $10 … but I am also out of food and no motivation to go shopping. The life of being a single sports/computer addict.

Not much of a post today … I guess I need to look through the old photos I have on file and post some here. This blog is more about photos than just plain commentary.

On a side note … traffic reports show that 50% of my blog traffic has deserted me and has moved over to the websites of Stella, Sadie and Heidi, now following the hounds … so much for thinking you and your content were the reason people were coming back to read your blog … lol

It’s was a cold but beautiful sunny day in the ‘tropics’ of Southern Indiana today.

Snow Is Melting Here In The Tropics

It might be covering the Northeast and the Eastern Seaboard but here in the ‘tropics’ of Southern Indiana, the ice cycles are running water and the snow is disappearing into the green grass. That is always a catch-22 for walking the hounds. Beautiful day to take the daily hound walk but the ground is too muddy and wet. Nothing like trying to clean the undersides and paws of wet, muddy bloodhounds while they are anxious to get back inside after a walk.

So we went outside to enjoy the afternoon sunshine, take some photos and sniff some new scents. Heidi of course refused to join us but didn’t hesitate later to sprint to the cabinet when the treats were being passed out. With all the food she is eating I hope that leads to her gaining that 10-12 pounds back that she lost last year.

The new websites seem to running smoothly so far today. They don’t see any comments from readers talking of things gone wrong. There are still some things to get finished to tie in the system of there. Finding out the NFL Playoff games are not until tomorrow, I should be able to get what is needed, finished.

The other day Al at The Bayfield Bunch had taken some photos of old fence posts out in his area with different barbed wire fencing. Some of you may have seen this fence post before in my past posts but there is a story behind this. It’s in my backyard near the area that I cleared last April and planted grass seed to increase the area of my yard.

My father who is now 87 years old was a teenager plowing the field for my great grandfather, that same field the hounds now roam. He claims that roll of barbed wire you see toward the lower third of the post has been there since approximately 1944, give or take a couple of years. I think that’s pretty cool that it has stayed intact for around 70+ years.

As you can see, the hounds and I didn’t get much done outside except enjoy the sunshine, warmer temps and melting snow.

The ‘tropics’ of Southern Indiana is the place to be during these winter storms.

Hounds Have Dot Com Sites

After a lot of confusion yesterday and last night about building the 3 new websites for the hounds – each having their own .com domains – a friend mentioned something about how plugins worked and the cobwebs of my memory evaporated immediately. I remembered what to do. So I headed off for a good night of sleep, started again this morning and finished their sites in less than 4 hours time.

Here are the links that you will need to change your bookmarks to:

Heidi – http://heidithebasset.com

Stella – http://stellathebloodhound.com

Sadie – http://sadiethebloodhound.com

Now the reason you need to change your bookmarks or favorites to those links, I have to delete the .worpress.com sites each hound had because if I don’t, the google search engines say that each of the hounds have duplicate content. They don’t like that and would penalize the new sites of the hounds, thus they wouldn’t show up on the search engines.

Why did I build these sites and not keep the ones I made the last week?

Well the hounds are going to do a little affiliate internet marketing. They needed their own domain name to do that. They think it might be a chance to make some money online, buy a few more treats, maybe a camping trip here and there or save up for any unexpected vet bills they might have as they get older.

They don’t have the chance to join Obamacare, so they have to do something for some sort of health insurance.

Also, going to their own domain name makes it their site, they own it, they own their photos. Sure their slave Steve will have to do the work in the background, he has installed automatic updates so their sites are backed up without us even worrying about it. It will be the same type of work the hounds have me doing now FOR FREE … I don’t get paid by them.

All of the hounds are happy with the way things have turned out. They would like some warmer temps though.

This morning started out interesting. We normally go outside together to take the two normal photos for my personal use…the shot across the field and at the corner of the house looking back into the field. Just a sky shot to show what the weather is like.

For some reason this morning I didn’t let the hounds outside with me at the same time. I wasn’t going out that long, only to take 2 photos. During my first photo I picked up about 15+ deer running across the cornfield. By the time I focused the Nikon D3200, there were but 5-6 of them left. The last 2 turned and looked at me, then sprinted away when they heard my Nikon D3200 beep when it focused.

If I would have let the hounds out with me, like normal, they would have smelled the deer immediately before they did anything. Once they saw them, they would have taken off running after them, having to cross a dangerous highway to get to them … and they would have been “unconscious” during their chase. They would have never heard me yelling their names.

Nothing would have stopped them. So something prevented me from letting them out.

Afterward, they came outside for their morning trip, did a little snooping around and then right back inside.

Stella came when I called her name … she was happy to be back inside.

That’s about all from the ‘tropics’ of Southern Indiana this morning. I have more fine tuning to do on all of their websites, some double checking things to make sure they work and an IU basketball game on at noon I want to watch.

Be sure to check out their new sites, although, they have the same themes (templates) so they will look the same in appearance. Let me know if they are missing something you want or you find that something doesn’t work like before.

Thanks for visiting.

Sadie & Stella Have a Burst of Energy

It’s been one of those days here in the ‘tropics’ of Southern Indiana. Too warm to snow, cold enough to have to wear a coat, and the ground is too wet/soggy to go for a walk … but the bloodhounds had a sudden burst of energy this morning. I’ll let the photos do the talking.

I’m not sure they will get much more done today … they have been sleeping every since.

If you want to read about my efforts this morning or the 1st half of the day, to move Heidi’s blog and hopefully the other blogs to her(their) new dot com site, hosted by DreamHost then read from here on. There is some humor, a little frustration, few questions, a lot of head scratching and 2nd guessing.

First of all when I talked to a friend about this a few weeks ago, even before moving to WordPress, she told me “if you are not going to make money off of a site then why pay for a domain and a host for that site.” Estimated depending where you buy the domain and hosting service .. but a $100 – $125 per year.

So I decided to move my blogger blog to the free WordPress side. I liked the dashboard, all of the themes. I even found 4 different themes that I really liked for each blog. They all seemed to fit, if you know what I mean. In this story I am about to tell it will be important that you remember what I just said about ‘themes’.  :)

I had some good sleep Thursday night. No health issues like the night before. Stella wakes me Friday morning, I feel rested, a couple of cups of coffee and I am ready to move some blogs from here to their new domains, onto a host and publish online. Should be easy.

Over the years since I last did this type of work at home, everything seemed to be a one-click operation. I had Heidi’s blog moved within minutes. Her domain showed up online within 30 minutes which I thought was extremely fast. DreamHost had a WordPress app where with one-click it installed Heidi’s blog without an issue.

Luckily last week when I was uploading photos from my computer to WordPress’s “Media Library” I had made a folder for each hound. I did not find out until today why I did that.

I followed the steps furnished to me by DreamHost. Heidi now had a new WordPress.org site, hosted by DreamHost and showing up online with her .com domain. Once I uploaded the photos again from my computer, Heidi’s folder to her new WordPress “media library”, all the photos matched up with the imported blog posts and were correctly installed.

All of her posts were there, the categories, the tags, about page, contact page … EVERYTHING … but … the theme.

Remember what I said a few paragraphs ago about ‘themes’?

Sure they only showed 20 different themes to use in the default setting but after I clicked that “add more”, I had 2,168 themes to chose from and as I scrolled through not even a 1/3 of them I notice my data counter is spinning like you would see dollar/cents on a gas pump. When you only have 15Gb per month on your internet service plan and only had 700 Mb left for the month with 5 days to go …. data spinning out of control is NOT want you want to see happening!!!

The bottom line was, out of 2,168 themes available, NONE of the themes I am using on the free side of WordPress were available on the .org side of WordPress. They didn’t show up when I searched them, they didn’t get answers back when I asked on the support forums.

By the time I had noticed and shut off my browser due to data usage going out of control, I received an email from my internet service provider that I had used my monthly allotment of 15Gb’s. Of course there are options and that is an expensive option in my book … I can buy more Gig’s at $10 per 1Gb until my new billing cycle starts on the 27th.

Now that I have ran over my limit, I still have internet access but at “dial-up” speeds … if the page loads at all.

Or I can stay up from Midnight until 5am and use all the data I want, like I always can between those times of night. High speed will be the norm during those 5 hours, it’s called their “free data” on my plan.

Let’s get back to the blog issue and a domain name.

So I have a blog with it’s own domain name and that makes it look so official, yet there is not one theme that I want to use. I like the theme that Heidi has on her blog now, on the free side of WordPress.

I’m not sure I want to move forward on moving everything to a .com domain. Really what is the reason? Those words of my friend a few weeks ago, echo in my brain. I basically have 4 blogs set up the way I want them. All I have to do from now on is post, answer comments and “let it ride”.

Oh, I thought about all of this before and even from what I read I might have to rebuild some of the blogs that I would transfer to WordPress’s .org side of the house. Other writers kept saying it was just soooooo important that I own my own blogs, not letting a ‘free’ host keep control of them.

I just received an email from my forum question about my theme or the three themes. It’s sad that the solution is so simple. It is something I saw when I chose that theme early this week. The maker of the theme, WordPress.com has a “download” button on theirs to where all I need to do is download the them to my computer, upload to Heidi’s .com site. How easy is that … and how brain dead I am at times. LOL

So with that answer you can tell where this is going … back to Heidi’s site to get her theme uploaded. If that goes smooth then I will be able to move Stella’s, Sadie’s and even mine by the end of today.

Of course that changes all the domains again. I will will post them here and on the hound blogs once I know for sure that each site works.

Back to my Exede Internet provider. Due to my location I don’t have any other choice but satellite internet. Believe me I looked and called every possible provider in June 2014. This is it. My speeds will eventually trickle to where I can’t even load an email or a website, even though they tell me that’s not possible because I will always have access, just not high speed access.

It will become so slow I will have no choice but to buy more data or have to stay off the internet until January 27th. That might actually be a good thing … lol … a little vacation.

Now I’m headed back to some computer work and it should go fairly fast now that I know how to get those themes loaded. Will I have the internet speed to do it??