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Changes and Rainbows

water-dried-rose

First off, after five years, I have switched my CMS from ExpressionEngine to WordPress. The switch itself didn’t take long, only issue I’ve noticed is that it didn’t import commenter emails so I am going to figure out a way for those who frequently comment to get that into the database manually.

The basic reason for the switch is because I was simply unable to do, what I wanted to do, with EE. Even after posting on their support forum, I was told that unless I personally figured out a solution or paid someone to create a plugin, I was out of luck. Granted, WP tends to have more of a “fanbase” thus most of the features I wanted are already included in the WP software or already available as a plugin.

However I do miss some features of EE, such as the membership module, templating system, and the weblog system itself (easy to have MANY weblogs even on the index page, trying to figure out how to have a “mini” blog interspersed through the regular entries at this point with WP). Those features were not enough to convince me to keep paying yearly for software that was not able to do what I wanted to do “out of box”.

Since the switch I’ve made some minor changes in the design, in the top header you can now see my RSS subscriber count and my twitter follower count. I’ve also added a sidebar that includes my recent tweets and flickr uploads. I’ve updated the info/about page, the links page (by the way if I somehow forgot to link you back, let me know!), and ever so slightly the comments (I’m still working on that one lately). I also enabled a mobile version of OSN so you can view it super easy if you’re using your iPhone or Blackberry to view the site for example.

Onto other things, as you can see at the bottom of this entry, a ton of photos. Yesterday we (my boyfriend, my 7yr old, and my practically 8month pregnant self) decided to take a drive, the drive took us from the Chicago ‘burbs, up through Wisconsin. I think my boyfriend drove 10 straight hours (aside from bathroom breaks) since I wanted to take photos. We saw FOUR rainbows! It rained on and off, but thankfully wasn’t muggy or hot out. It was really nice and everyone enjoyed themselves. Granted we got home at 1am or so, and my son is still sleeping, but he loved all the rainbow sightings, the many dairy farms, and just the drive in general. The photos are also in order, via the time they were shot.

After we got home and ate dinner, I noticed right before bed my feet were extremely swollen which made me freak out a bit as I was very swollen for a very long time when I was pregnant with my oldest and had some high blood pressure issues at the time, thankfully it turns out that sitting in a car for over 10hours straight and paying more attention to rainbows rather than hydration, caused the swelling.

Onto other baby stuff, we still do not have a name, I would really appreciate any boy name suggestions at this point, I had wanted something more nature based but can’t think of anything really. Also, per my previous entry, it appears as though we will not be getting any help in purchasing cloth diapers for this baby. Meh. Not surprised but it sure doesn’t make me happy to have this happen less than 9 weeks before my due date!

Well off to eat something, I think we are having BLT’s, yum!

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Link CSS Changes

In post content only, I now have external links with a little arrow and made affiliate links orange plus the arrow.

I feel like that will, hopefully, make things clearer visually if a link is affiliate, external, or internal.

Spring Equinox

A blessed Ostara / Spring Equinox / First Day of Spring to you!

Small OSN Refreshes

Changed the following to OSN:

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Sarah
posted on July 26th 2009 at 4:35PM CDT

Wow what lovely rainbow pictures. So pretty. :)

posted on July 26th 2009 at 4:44PM CDT

Aww thank you so much! It’s not only awesome to see one rainbow, but FOUR! I still am giddy thinking about it!

Nikita
posted on July 26th 2009 at 9:39PM CDT

AWESOME photos. <3 the one of the rain. I'd love to see some prego belly'ness too. :) Can't give you any name suggestions. It was so hard to pick out mine. Maybe telling you what my boys' names are, will spark a name for you to choose. My 5 y/o is Vincent Delano and my 2 y/o is Miles Oliver ( I call him Mo.) Good luck with things. It will all be over soon enough. <3

posted on July 27th 2009 at 2:35AM CDT

Thank you so much Nikita! Ugh lol, my boyfriend is after me daily to take belly shots, it just makes me feel weird… maybe guilty even, because I have like no photos of being pregnant with my oldest.

I like Vincent, problem it’s the BF’s last name lol.

posted on July 27th 2009 at 1:03AM CDT

The very first photo and the water reflection photo are my favorites. Stunning!

I’m glad the switch was easy for you. I actually just installed WP on Lisa’s Thoughts. Hopefully I will have everything looking the way I’d like it by next weekend.

Before we decided on Ethan we were thinking of Evan and Ryan. Have you tried going to a bookstore and looking through baby name books? That’s what we did although it wasn’t much help. It kind of gave us a headache. But it’s worth a shot, right?

Where abouts were you planning on getting the cloth diapers? Send me the link. Also, have you looked into making your own? I’m sure you have a lot of other stuff to worry about right now, but it might be worth looking into. I’m planning to do that with baby #2. I’d really love to learn to make my own. That way I can pick out my own fabrics and whatknot. I bet it would be a lot of fun too.

Anyway, don’t forget to send me that link.

posted on July 27th 2009 at 2:39AM CDT

Thank you Lisa Marie!!

The switch really wasn’t so bad, more like time consuming to redo the coding/template tags, redo plugins and such.

I like Evan, I reallllllly want this baby named ASAP! I don’t want to be giving birth and still have no idea what to name him lol.

For CD I was looking at the prefolds at Green Mountain Diapers, I have a registry at Jillian’s Drawers although really I would just prefer WAHM products. I’m leaning towards pockets, like BumGenius or Fuzzibuns for the majority of the stash.

Alicia
posted on July 27th 2009 at 7:47AM CDT

Not only did you SEE four rainbows, you got pictures of them? I’m lucky if I get a picture of a rainbow when it’s almost completely faded.

posted on July 27th 2009 at 7:50AM CDT

It made the 10 hour drive worth it lol. I started calling it the rainbow road trip!

C
posted on July 27th 2009 at 9:19AM CDT

I ALWAYS come back to expressionengine for some reason although I don’t know why. I guess for me it’s so just deadly easy I get scared to do anything else. Rainbow catcher!

Name suggestions: Beau (?) for all your rainbows ;), Aiden – I like old-fashioned names too; Cilus, Parker

posted on July 27th 2009 at 9:23AM CDT

Lol, most type of coding or CMS software usually make sense for me, thankfully right!!

hehe If I named the baby Parker, my son would think I gave birth to Spiderman!!

Kristina Brooke
posted on July 27th 2009 at 11:35AM CDT

I cannot believe that you switched to WP after all this time. Because of you I bought EE years ago and fell in love with it. LOL. Unfortunately, I never quite learned to design for it so most of my sites use WordPress too. Anyway, I hope you will be posting more- I miss you!

Kristina

posted on July 28th 2009 at 3:47AM CDT

@Kristina Brooke, It finally got to a point that, here I am, PAYING for software that isn’t able to do what I want it to do. The support was lacking (until I bitched about it on twitter), and even then the answer was pretty much “figure it out yourself or pay someone else to do it”. Not what I was looking for at all.

Design wise, eh, it’s all the same to me really. Code is code!

Aidan
posted on July 27th 2009 at 12:25PM CDT

I have not commented on your site in a really long time. Forgive me. I read it in my rss reader though.

I just love your picture, they are all so amazing. What a great boyfriend you have to drive that much so you can capture some amazing shots of the world around you. Not to mention great family time together.

If you ever need any help with trying to figure something out on wordpress I would gladly try and help. I have never heard of EE before. I have been a wordrpess user since day one, even before it was called wordpress it was b2.

psst. how did you do the rss and twitter count up there? That’s really cool!

posted on July 28th 2009 at 3:50AM CDT

@Aidan, Yay for RSS! I am awful at commenting on sites, I never know what to say (weirdly enough), or I just feel silly. Isn’t that odd?

Thank you so much about the photos! He thankfully appreciates my photography obsession lol. Plus he likes exploring just as much as I do!

For the RSS I used this tutorial and for the twitter I use this plugin! Naturally, I feel like I can be doing so much more to tweak OSN in general right now lol so hopefully I can make it a touch more fanciful!

Erin
posted on July 27th 2009 at 12:53PM CDT

The reflection shot is my favorite. Just lovely.

I know a boy name that I wanted to use was Darius but there was no way I could convince Andy so it went into the Good Rejected Name Bin For the Future. I also like Skye, Brock, and Rowan. Those are all in the bin as well, unfortunately. =P

posted on July 28th 2009 at 3:50AM CDT

@Erin, Thank you so much!! I’ve been pondering the name Skye for awhile, but my BF is old fashioned in general and thinks it’s a bit much for a first name lol. I can’t believe how hard it is to name a human being!

Mama Kelly of 2 Witches Blog
posted on July 27th 2009 at 4:57PM CDT

Im happy to offer up what wouldve been our pick for a boy’s name:

Aaron Connor

posted on July 28th 2009 at 3:51AM CDT

@Mama Kelly, I like the name Connor, it’s the name of the neighbor’s boy who occasionally plays with my son.

Caity
posted on July 29th 2009 at 10:08AM CDT

Yay for WordPress! I highly recommend it to everyone. I just think it’s fantastic and have been using it for years.

These photos are absolutely amazing. I love them. Rainbows are one of my favorite things in the world.

posted on July 29th 2009 at 1:37PM CDT

So far I have to admit I am enjoying WP, could be the “new” factor, but I like that I have an app for my blackberry, and really I seem to be able to customize it pretty well so far.

Aww thank you!! I LOVE rainbows too!

Damita
posted on July 30th 2009 at 8:15AM CDT

Love the pictures, I always love yours though :)

Mmm BLTs… I want one!

posted on July 30th 2009 at 11:24AM CDT

Thank you so much!! The sandwiches were super tasty, I lucked out and got a boyfriend that knows how to cook lol.

Brocc
posted on July 30th 2009 at 12:23PM CDT

Beautiful!

posted on July 30th 2009 at 12:29PM CDT

Thank you!!

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