Web and Technology

Finally upgrading my WP sites and their plugins!

March 7, 2008 by Tricia

Over the last few days I’ve spent a good portion of my time updating all of my blogs. All of the new ones – the hush hush ones – have been updated to WP 2.3.3. It was easy to do because I was able to use Fantasico in my web hosting C-Panel to do it.

Now I have to update all of the blogs on this domain! Argh … I’ve moved those blogs to new web hosts twice in the last year and the last time was a manual update so this time round all the blogs will have to be manual updated too. It’s ok to do one or two manually, but when you have seven or eight that need to be upgraded manually it’s a pain in the butt! By the time I’m done I’ll be the WordPress upgrading queen! (17 blogs later!)

I’d also been having trouble on all my blogs when I’d try to save or publish a new post. A few months ago I had some kind of conflict occur when I upgraded my bad behavior plugin and the Google Sitemaps plugin on the same day. Ever since then I’d always get an error message when I saved or published a post. The posts were published but I’d have to check to be sure. It was a pain! I didn’t realize it but it was also messing up the do follow tags on my sites too. So there was a conflict between three plugins!

Luckily I discovered that there was yet another new Bad Behavior plugin update as well as a new Google XML sitemaps plugin. I updated those two plugins and refreshed my permalinks and TADA everything works right again!

Now I just hope that I don’t have any problems with my wordpress themes when I upgrade the sites on Feverishthoughts.com to the most recent WP upgrade. I think all my blogs on this domain are using 2.2.1 so it’ll be a big upgrade. If you drop by and notice that one of my feverishthoughts blogs is sporting a new very plain bare bones theme then you’ll know something strange happened when I updated the platform. It will only be temporary.

Once all that is done I can get back to work on the new blogs. One is a home and garden blog that will discuss mostly home type topics (my gardening blog will go back to mainly gardening!) such as decor, interior decorating, great recipes, tips for around the home and so on. The other blog is a shopping blog where I’ll talk about fashion trends, cosmetics, new home decor designs – who knows I’m sure I’ll even talk about platform beds on one or both!

Working on those two sites has inspired me again. I’m full of ideas and of course every time I find something cool to write about I also want to go out and buy it. I’ll be unveiling these new blogs shortly and I really hope that you like them. I’m trying to keep it fun, interesting and of course full of helpful information.

Have any of you updated your sites recently? Did it go well?

Anyone start any new blogs too? What is your new blog about? Are you being re-inspired as well?

I love Dogs and I’ve found a great site for dog lovers

March 1, 2008 by Tricia

I adore my puppy. She’s become my new muse. I’ve spent an awful lot of time over the last three month researching everything dog.

Whenever I become interested in something I tend to do a lot of research on the subject. I go to the library and borrow books, I search the internet for more information on the topic and I also tend to talk to others that are also interested in the same topic. Often I read so much that I end up creating a website to not only discuss my latest intense interest, but also to create a place for others so that they can quickly learn all the things that I’ve learned on one site. I certainly did this when I became interested in reptiles! I’ve got two huge reptile related websites as some of you probably already know.

I haven’t gotten to the “make a website” stage yet and I may not this time round, but you never know. What I have been doing is visiting a number of dog and Labrador Retriever related websites, joining dog forums and reading up on dogs in general.

You might remember that my puppy was quite sick when we got her. I had to learn as much as I could in order to try to make her better. She’s doing a lot better these days. She’s still got some problems, but over all she’s doing quite well. I thank the many great sites that I discovered for helping me help her recover from her many ailments.

One of the sites that I came across along the way is the I-Love-Dogs.com website. If you’re thinking of getting your first dog or getting another doggy companion you can spend some time on the site reading the pros and cons of various dog breeds and of course looking at the many dog pictures that proud owners are more than happy to post.

I-Love-Dogs.com is a major dog portal where you can talk to other dog owners, discuss dogs in general on the forums, talk about your dogs health or behavioral problems or share some tips that have worked for you and your dog companion.

Along with the extensive dog forums you’ll find sections with dog games, lists of great dog names, free stuff for your dog, recipes for home made dog food, articles about dogs and dog training and many other great dog related categories. Heck you can even shop for supplies for your dog too.

If you are a dog owner you should take a moment to visit the I-Love-Dogs.com website. I’m sure you’ll find something there of interest and you’ll probably learn something new too.

25000 emails later …

February 26, 2008 by Tricia

On Sunday I fired up my desktop computer for the first time in a month. I then had the displeasure of going through the 25,000 emails that had come in over the month! Yes, twenty five thousand! Isn’t that absolutely sickening?

These days I mainly use my laptop and most of my email accounts are collected on the laptop, however I have the email accounts set up to leave the mail on the server as I’ve always considered my desktop computer to be the main one. So most of the email that I have collected and stored or dealt with in the past month on the lap top came in again on the desktop computer.

I have my email program, Eudora, set up so that quite a few different types of email go into mailboxes that I’ve set up for them as the mail comes in. Unfortunately my Eudora email program is messing up and it tends to put about three quarters of my email in the junk mailbox folder so I pretty much have to sort my mail by hand anyway. Grrr.

Some might be reading this and wondering why I bothered to sort it out at all. Well I keep track of all the payments I get through the month/year on that computer so that’s one reason to sort all that email out and find all those payments!

I also run several mailing lists and blogrolls. The mailing lists are fine, but I’d stored up a lot of my blogroll requests over the month and while I was sorting through that gigantic pile of email I took care of pretty much all of the requests for the Green Thumb Sunday, I am Canadian, Fabulous Photoblogs and the Do Follow blogrolls.

Lots of new sites were added to the blogrolls so if you happen to be on any of those lists please keep an eye out for the new sites and go and visit them. I’m sure they’ll appreciate your visit to their blog.

If anything, after collecting so much email and having to spend hours going through all of it, I’ve learned my lesson and I’ll be turning that computer on every few days now to keep things in check. Actually I have better work habits when I’m on that computer so I should use it more often anyway.

Do you have more than one computer? Do you end up sorting out the same emails on each computer too?

A great Toronto search engine

February 17, 2008 by Tricia

I’ve found a great site to search for all things Toronto for those of you who live or who are visiting this great city. The site is called Toronto Major League Search and it’s easy and handy to use.

Say you need a cab and can’t remember the number for the cab company that you normally use, just go to Toronto Major League search and type in taxi or the name of the cab company and a results page will come up. You’ll likely be able to find the cab company that you’re searching for with a simple search such as this.

When you do a search you can also specify a location. For example I live in a part of the Toronto known as The Danforth so I did a search for Restaurants and I wrote The Danforth in the location area. This brought up about 6 pages of restaurant results. The various restaurant locations were shown on a medium sized Google map with the restaurant listings to the right of the Google map.

I did find that I got better results with my searches when I was more specific. For example I decided to search for Greek restaurants on Danforth Ave and more of the restaurant results seems to be on Danforth.

I do like that the site is tied in with Google maps. It’s nice to be able to see where something that you’ve searched for its located. It will save a lot of time in deciding which location to give my business to if I can pick one out easily that’s close to where I am.

Just like most search engines you can search for pretty much anything. give it a try and see if you find Toronto Major League Search helpful too.

Oh and if you know of a great business that should be listed on the site you can submit it using the link at the bottom of each page.

Looking to buy or sell a property in South Africa?

February 14, 2008 by Tricia

I just finished watching the latest episodes of Survivor and Lost and looking at all of that lovely scenery has me dreaming of exotic locals.

Do you ever think about living in another country or perhaps having a second home in another country? I know that several of my readers work from home and make their income from their websites, as I do. All we need is a good internet connection and we could work anywhere right?

Here I am talking about how nice it would be to move to an exotic location and I’m forgetting that some of you live in places that I’d love to travel to and perhaps move to!

If any of you happen to live in South Africa or if you’ve thought of purchasing a home there you should take a look at the Property Home website where you can view South Africa Property Listings. You’ll find property listings by real estate agents, private sellers, property developers and property landlords.

Not only will you find South Africa Houses for Sale, but you’ll also find properties to rent or “to let”.

One feature of the site that I really like is that once a real estate agent or property owner has registered one of their properties on the site they can then go and search for a prospective renter or buyer.

PropertyHome has a database of close to 50,000 prospective home buyers. Their system is set up in such a way that real estate owners can quickly and easily search for suitable buyers for their properties. In fact, within seconds of listing your property for rent or for sale you’ll be automatically provided with a list of prospective tenants and buyers whom closely match your property listing.

This sounds like a great way to market a property! I really don’t think that we have anything quite like this in Canada … not on this scale anyway. I think it’s great. If I were seriously looking for a home in South Africa I think I’d be happy to register and list what type of property I was looking for and then be contacted by both private sellers and real estate agents. It would save me time going through all the listings on several sites!

I also like the fact that if I were selling a home I could put up a listing, perhaps one that said “Real Estate Home for Sale by Owner” and immediately get a list of prospective buyers for that property. It sounds win win to me.

The very best feature is their special introductory offer. Property Home is offering all advertisers the opportunity to list their properties for free for a total of three months. I know that it’s not possible to sell or rent all properties within three months, but I think a high percentage are sold within that time period and if a seller or renter were able to find a new owner or tenant in that time it wouldn’t cost them anything at all for the listing!

At this point I have no idea if Chris and I will ever move out of the country or purchase a second property elsewhere but it’s good to know what’s out there isn’t it? Hopefully this information about Property Home might come in for a few of my readers.

Finally upgrading my WP sites and their plugins!

I love Dogs and I’ve found a great site for dog lovers

A great Toronto search engine

Looking to buy or sell a property in South Africa?

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