Working on Meta Tags in the Headers

Tomorrow I am going to work on new meta tags for the headers of each of my sites. I started today with this site but meta information has changed since the early days when a title and description were enough. Not even a mention of adding keywords now. I guess the older tags are mostly abandoned for the new Open Graph, Twitter and Facebook tags. Everyone thinks they need to be famous. But that leaves no one left to just applaud.

I am using a post from the Moz site to update my meta tags.

I am also changing all my WordPress formatted content to sit back in a subdomain. I have done that much today, and put in temporary redirects. Then I am going to make a one page HTML page to lead into each part of the domain. Not everything is on WordPress. This has the bonus of making it MUCH easier to move out of WordPress while leaving my content unbroken.

Too much time spent today on looking at HTML editors, trying to find a simple template to adapt. When I ended up using one from One Page Love which I adapted in plain old Notepad. I notice my age when it comes to things like this. Before I would not have been intimidated by just going the mad scientist route and changing the template in Notepad. Now, I second guess and try to find a short cut or something that feels safer, with a guarantee of success. That is the sad part about being older, becoming just a little leery of stepping off into adventures.

It would be easier if I could see better. Each time I get the store to fix these glasses they seem ok. But, a few days later everything is blurry again. Not so bad for TV and such but harder to read anything on the computer screen. Most of the time I am reading with my head tipped far back so I can use the bifocal part of the lens to read what’s in front of me.

Old is as old does. Has anyone ever said that?

It Could Work

I have a book to start learning Scribus, an open source desktop publishing program. That seems the best way evolve (still having content but not being dependent on WordPress).

Two things about WordPress are bothering me lately.

I’ve read about a partnership between Google and WordPress.
WordPress continues to support Gutenberg and plans to pull out the current, simple, unblocked editor.

Google collects and sells the information about you. Do you really want WordPress being in a partnership with that? I have written personal thoughts, ideas, and information into my WordPress sites. I never thought of it being picked up by machine algorithms and used against me. (Read more, search for “marketing dystopia”).

Gutenberg, I tried the demo and the test plugin, just leave me feeling aggravated. I know how to type into the current editor, save it, check it and publish it. Then I can go on to do other things. (There are a lot of things to do when you run a few sites by yourself). Gutenberg is something else I am going to have to learn and those content blocks are one more complication I can do without. No thanks!

Add to that the other things which keep going missing from WordPress, the tools I use day to day. I am especially thinking of those bookmarklets, again. PressThis and LinkThis have made my life (the time I spend writing online) so much easier and smoother. It was so nice to collect a link as I find it in the web browser, add a note and then come back to the saved post later to finish and publish it. The reasons WordPress and WP enthusiasts have given for removing the bookmarklets sound hollow and phony to me. Since when did WordPress care so much about protecting content on other sites.

So, I am going to change how I do everything. Why not? I can think of a few good reasons mostly involving time and patience (mine). But, I have loved the zine scene, small self-publishing, with very few rules (other than those you choose yourself) for a long time. It could work.

Happy 2018

I have set up new email addresses for some of my domain sites. I’m still going to use my Gmail for almost everything. But, I’ve been getting attacked by spam emailers, mostly from Subaru USA. So I can use the new addresses for people I actually want to hear from. Which will likely be almost nothing really. Even family email may as well go to the old account. I’m not so likely to check the new accounts often. Unless I set them up to work with something like the email part of SeaMonkey. Tried once and it did not work, but how can you tell when you don’t have activity in the account. Yes, I did send myself a test email. Anyway, that is all more to work on.

I’m looking at various ways to keep my niche web resource directories, without WordPress. Everyone seems to suggest WordPress plugins. But they don’t understand that all those plugins are dependent on WordPress. WordPress, which says it is standalone software but requires a lot of plugins.

I am trying RSS feeds but, some sites do not use RSS any more. I don’t understand why. It is such a simple way to distribute your content and you don’t have to do anything. Just put the link up somewhere and forget about it.

Yesterday I was looking at a lot of ways to set up a holiday and event site. Calendar software, address book software, PIM software… No luck so far. Most of the software I find is dated or forgotten/ abandoned. If something isn’t popular they don’t want to bother with it. Popularity being dictated by Google overall. I am fed up with marketing and that whole mentality. Why do people want to be Google automatons?

I am starting two online shops. One for Ontario Exploration and the other for ASCII Artist. Both of those sites are still on WordPress due to the web resource directory I have built for them. Also, I’m just not feeling the patience to move all the images and figure out this and that to make them work on b2. The image thing on b2 is still bugging me, a lot. Really it shouldn’t. It is just a matter of changing the way I create a post, adapting to different software. But, it did seem so much easier to add it while I wrote the post, instead of before or after. I guess I am just letting myself be stubborn about it.

Another change, I allowed Grammarly to attempt to take over my life. It feels that way, even though it just sits in every post window, waiting to boss me around and tell me I should be spelling everything in US spelling, not Canadian. I did not set it all up, registering with the site. If I had it might stop nagging me about every word I spell with Canadian spelling. I don’t want to register and give my information to them. So, it will be a battle between trying to catch typos and getting fed up with being corrected.

On the homefront, outside of this computer, I am dealing with hoarding, trying to make myself exercise and other things. Go me.

Happy New Year! Possibly the last time I type that, until the end of this year.

Bookmark Files From Scratch

Several things may be driving you crazy but, if links, text files and bookmarks are one of them, I have some help for you! (Little things help a lot, right?)

After spending a lot of time trying to import my old WordPress bookmarks into Joomla I found the best way was to create a text file with just the links, all code scraped out. Then create a new file with Notepad using the code I have cut and pasted in a screenshot below:

Screenshot from It Still Works.

Cut and pasted the text also, because I’ve seen how easy images disappear, wander off and generally get lost. I want to remember how I finally got this far, no doubt I will need to do the same again with other links from my other sites moving from WordPress to Joomla.

If you feel confident with HTML, you can create a bookmark file from scratch in Notepad. Begin the document with . Then, enter the title as Bookmarks and the header as

Bookmarks

. Then, begin a list with the

tag. Each item of that list should be denoted by a

tag. Then, describe the link via an tag. For example, if you wished to create a bookmark link to http://www.google.com, your tags after

would look like this:

Google. Finish the file with a closing

tag.

So, maybe this will help you, or you may just wonder why someone would do things this way and spend so much time on links few people will actually look at anyway.

Keep wondering, it’s good for you.

Moved the Site to b2evolution

Just moved the site over from WordPress to b2evolution. People have asked me why, a few times. There are a few reasons. But, for now I am fixing glitches with moving to another CMS. I like b2 and I don’t think it will take me long to get to know how it works and where things are now. Meanwhile, images are mostly not working. Categories and tags did not make the import, not sure why. So I am manually going through my posts one by one to renovate a little. What usually happens when you move to a new place… you renovate to make it look more like the old place. 🙂 People are funny like that.

Making my life easier, I have added comments from the original post to this post. I have been moving my site content to Joomla. It’s a different set up from WordPress and b2evolution but I think it will be more active and user friendly. Still need to fix the images with posts (that was mangled by WordPress) and add my links which I will end up doing manually, one at a time. But, I hope this will end the project of moving from WordPress to some other CMS. It has been a longer adventure than I expected.

Here are the comments:

Comment from: Jane Gassner [Visitor]

I lost the entire archive of MidLifeBloggers.com and JaneGassner.com sometime during the holiday season. It was one of those, “you only have 24 hours to migrate” and for various reasons, I got in at the 25th hour. I couldn’t decide how upset I should/would be. MidLifeBloggers was a longterm venture that still got a lot of hits. JaneGassner.com, not so much. But MidLifeBloggers was old business, and I had said everything I wanted to about midlife and beyond. Jane Gassner had the potential to be new and, if not shiny, then gaining a slight glow about it after time. So I’m redoing JaneGassner.com but starting anew. It’s springtime, and perhaps that’s influencing me to not try to make it as it was. Considering that it wasn’t that successful, it’s probably a wise decision.

Comment from: laura [Member]

I really like history so that part of it would be hard for me. But, I have thought about just starting fresh too. Moving a site is never completely smooth and simple but I’ve been trying to move old content and have not made time to write new posts. That is kind of backwards. Starting fresh might have been better than trying to preserve old content (that mostly only matters to me).

Comment from: laura [Member]

I like your new site. Writing something for writers has it’s own challenge. It makes me doubt myself and compare myself with others too much. I thought about closing this site. But, I do like writing it. So… here it still is.

You have doubled images in posts with WordPress featured image. I kept having that problem too.

Blogging 101: Say “Hi!” to the Neighbors

Capture

Today’s challenge is one I am skipping for now. I’ve got a lot of blogs I follow, years and years worth of blogs I follow and I almost never read them. I would like to take time to weed through my list to find which are link rot, moved and can have a fresh link and find new sites which I would love to add to the list. That all takes quite a lot of time though, more than one day for sure.

So this day three of the WordPress Blogging 101 will have to be on the list of extra things to do later. I’d like to do the same for all of my sites. Actually, links I have on the two main sites need to be sorted into relevant topics which would fit on the niche sites too.

Lots of work to be done!

Blogging is a communal experience; if you didn’t want anyone to read your posts, you’d keep a private diary. Today, begin engaging with the blogging community, the first step in building an audience.

Today’s assignment: follow five new topics in the Reader and five new blogs.
Why spend time reading other blogs?

Publishing posts is only half of blogging — engaging with the community is the other.
Considering what other bloggers write will inspire you and sharpen your thoughts.
Part of what makes blogging such a rich experience are the relationships we develop with people from around the world. Those relationships only happen when we engage with one another — just look at The Commons. Plus, reaching out to other bloggers is the best way to have them return the favor.

The first step is finding the people you want to connect with. By following topics you care about in the Reader, you’ll discover a world of blogs. Some of them will become favorite reads, and some of their authors will become your fans.

Want to share your great finds? Visit The Commons.
To get you started, review our tips on using the Reader to find and follow blogs that speak to you. A few of our editors have also shared their favorite Reader topics. Add five topics, so you can access them quickly whenever you feel like doing some reading. As you browse the topics, follow five new blogs, too.

The Blogroll on The Commons is another great place to explore. There are over 1200 of you participating — you’re bound to find some new favorite reads. Scroll through the list, and click on titles that intrigue you, seem up your alley, or make you laugh. (Adding the “blogging101″ topic to your Reader is also a great way to keep up with your co-bloggers.)

If you don’t blog on WordPress.com, you can still use the Reader if you have a WordPress.com username. If not, there are other ways to explore — your blogging platform may allow you to browse, or you can visit blogs you love and check out their blogrolls and commenters’ blogs.

Feel free to publish a post in addition to completing today’s task if you’d like! Write the post that was on your mind when you decided to start a blog, or take a look at our prompts and challenges for more inspiration.