Transfer a domain from GoDaddy

by Judi ~ June 29, 2009 (5 days ago)

I had a domain expiring soon. I went to my host (bluehost.com) to renew it and realized it was one I purchased from godaddy.com. GoDaddy.com is more expensive for domains than my hosting company. I decided to just transfer the domain.

In my host control panel, I clicked on domain manager, then on the domain about to expire. I was given a few options to choose. I ticked the transfer domain option. It asked for an EPP, a.k.a. Extensible Provisioning Protocol, code, which I needed to find from godaddy.

So off to godaddy.. once logged in there, I navigated over to the domain manager page. I clicked on the domain I needed to renew and wanted to transfer. To initiate the transfer make sure your domain is unlocked – otherwise, keep your domains locked and safe. Then, under Domain Information, click “Authorization Code – Send by Email” This will quickly send a code to you via your email.

Enter this code into the request from your host. On the next page, my host sent a verification email to me with another code.. it came quickly and I finalized the purchase.

Now, typically it can take a few days (like 4) to transfer the domain from godaddy to the new registrar… but if you don’t want to wait around for it, head back to your godaddy Domain Manager. In the current design there are tabs across the top, one says “Domains”. If you hover over it, you’ll see the option “Pending Transfers”. Click it. From there choose the domain you just transferred. Click “Accept” and the process will complete within minutes, rather than the standard days.

Several years ago, a friend of mine, Heidi (from Healthy Kids Snacks) ran a great magazine, called Mindful Mother Magazine. We had so much fun with it too! We decided to transfer to a new hosting company.. but somewhere along the way our domain transfer was done wrong.. and we lost the name. The registrar who snatched our domain up wanted $80 for us to buy it back… we were having more fun with the whole thing than making any money from it. It was an expensive lesson.

If you need help transferring your domain and this didn’t help enough, give your host a call. They will be happy (or should be) to help you get things done.

Egads… I hate doing wordpress updates

by Judi ~ June 24, 2009 (2 weeks ago)

Just upgraded Momma Muse to the newest version of wordpress.  I never get too far behind as I get stressed out knowing I’m not “up to date”.  On the other hand, with all the plugins I use, doing the actual update is stressful.

Tonight was not fun.  I backed up my database, backed up the blog and upgraded… once installed, I had to activate all my plugins.. and everything broke.  I got the fatal error not enough allotted memory.  I thought for sure I would have to call the domain host to have them do something from their end.  But I was able to edit the php.ini file and wa-lah… all was good again.  Well.. something was wonky with my background color, so I just set it to white.  I’ll mess with it another day.

But I am wondering.. how many plugins do I really need?  Hmmmm…..

Posting Multiple Blogs to your Facebook

by Judi ~ April 16, 2009

For several hours now, I’ve been searching for a way to import multiple blogs into my facebook account. Unfortunately, Facebook only allows for one RSS feed to post. So those with more than one blog need to get creative if you want to share all your posts.

After searching for an application on Facebook to suit my needs ~~ and not finding one – I did not want one for another tab.. I wanted it to seamlessly post into my “notes”… I moved on to Wordpress plugins (because, if you read Momma Muse with any regularity, you know I use wordpress and *love* plugins).. and finding nothing there to suit my needs… I just started googling my keywords.. multiple blogs facebook and came across my fix.

Chris Osborne of Juggle Chainsaws, shares the frustration I was feeling with only being able to import one blog. Chris even rotated importing each blog… I’m not nearly so dedicated to that sort of maintenance so was glad to see the offer of a better solution.

Using an RSS aggregator, Chris uses ChimpFeedr, which I used and seems to work great, you add your feeds one at a time and them Chomp Chomp to mix them together… the output is one RSS feed which combines all the blogs. Add that to your facebook and you are good to go.

ChimpFeedr was so super easy.. no sign-up, nothing to do but go there and immediately start adding your blog feeds. Way simple.

As Chris notes and I will too, keep the ChimpFeedr RSS feed it gives you in a safe place, as there is no way to go back and find it – only way is to add all your blogs and Chomp/Mix it up again. Not a big deal, but keeping it handy may be just as easy.

Favorite Wordpress Plugins – Revised

by Judi ~ January 30, 2008

Check this page for Wordpress Plugins currently used on Momma Muse.

MommaMuse.com is happily wordpress powered.. And, I’ll admit, I’m a wordpress plugin addict. So.. it’s been almost 2 years since I totally updated my first favorite wordpress plugins list. Here you go. If I’ve left out one of your favorites, please feel free to comment it.

Akismet – I did not active akismet when I first started using wp… it took me quite some time to activate it actually.. but anyway, here’s what it says today “Akismet has caught 23,705 spam for you since you first installed it.” Woo hoo.. go akismet!

Breadcrumb Navigation XT – You can see this in action on each page – what can I say.. but I like it.

Commentluv – Just installed this recently – works great and I love the concept – basically when a visitor leaves a comment, commentluv looks for the last post they made on their blog, if there is one, it puts it under their comment, if not..no big deal.. have been seeing this on more and more sites… like it, like it.

Contact Form 7 – I like this form, but wish the form itself was a little easier to edit – size, etc.. works, and that’s good for me.. though at some point, I may look for something else.. maybe, maybe not.. whatever.

Dashboard Editor – This, for me, is just to clean up the dashboard. I don’t visit that tab very often, but when I do, I want to see exactly what I want and that’s it. This works just fine!

EmailShroud – Jumbles an email address on the site to make it harder for email harvesters.. works, but I probably don’t have email address on my site so I could probably do without.. but then.. maybe I do and I don’t want to take the chance.

Google Blog Search Preview – On the wp dashboard it shows backlinks in google.. it’s ok..

Google XML Sitemaps – I have this installed and on my google analytics site.. but I don’t pay much attention to it. If it helps alert the bots to what my new posts are great.. I don’t think it hurts anything and when it comes to SEO, I read a sitemap is good… hmmm.. now that I think about it, maybe this is why google visits me so much more than any other search engine? Anyone know?

In Series – I haven’t tried this one yet, though I see it, right down there in my write post tab… hmm.. since this is the second “favorite wordpress plugin” I’ve done, maybe I should give the in-series a try… (maybe I did.. ?)

MyAvatar – You’ll see this plugin in action on comments – see the avatar that links to the commenters mybloglog? There you go.. nifty, huh?

NoFollow Free – Hey.. your link is here, and I appreciate it! I will give all the link luv I can.. removing the nofollow sounds good to me!

Popularity Contest – Just for fun? You’ll see this at the bottom of each post. I like being able to view the stats in the dashboard.

Post Templates by Category – Each of my categories have their own page, post templates.. I use it so I can add category specific info.. like my soap pages all show soap pictures… my recipes show pictures of food, etc. Makes for a lot of files in my theme template, and sometimes I want to give it all up, lol.. but really, I like the post/category specifications.

Simple Tags – I’d been using one tag system – from Jerome.. then he quit updates and passed along to someone else… with the new wp upgrades, it became essential to find a new tag plugin…this one is aweome – I mean, really, I love this one.. improvement.. !!

SRG Clean Archives – I like my archive page.. a very quick and easy way to see what’s been posted and how many comments. This one also requires another template file.. but hey.. are the archives nice and clean? (at least something gets organized around here!)

StatPress – stat program.. sometimes I obsess on the stats..who’s been here.. how many.. etc, etc.. sometimes I ignore it..

Subscribe To Comments – Simple, works fine, as far as I know… :)

WordPress.com Stats – another stat program.. again.. sometimes I pay attention, sometimes I don’t. Has good info though.

WordPress Database Backup – Quick way to back things up. Like it.. use it.. keeper.

WP-Bookwormr – I love bookwormr.. though I’m starting to suspect it’s development is at a standstill. Anyway, it shows what books I am currently reading.. like that. :)

WP-EMail – I like knowing that people can send a post to themselves or their friends.. I often look for this option when I find a good post/recipe/idea… I did take this off most of my pages and reserved it for the recipes and soap info pages.. just trying to declutter some… Oh and it also shows up in the dashboard to show when and who is emailing.. very nice.

WP-Flickr – Just installed this one.. give me some time to try it out. Although, I am able to post from my flickr site.. I just can’t add tags… so I have to come here to edit, so I hope it works! It installed easily enough, and I am able to click the wp-flickr tab in the write post and all my pics show up.. so it looks like it’s on the path to goodness.

WP-PostViews – Not a necessary plugin by any means, and really doesn’t tell much – because it accumulates, new posts will probably always have a smaller view count than some of my other older, popular posts.

WP-Print – This one is up there with the wp-email.. though I can’t see how many print pages.. it does clean up the print page and lists links at the bottom of the post. It’s nice. I also restricted this to recipes and soap info.. seems like those are the most likely pages to be printed.

~:~:~

I wanted to install Comment Relish, and tried, and tried.. and … well… it just wouldn’t work. It broke my mail sending capabilities, which I guess isn’t uncommon, since I found posts about it when I googled it. However, I really, really wanted this one to work – what it does is sends a reply to first time commenters… you can tell them thanks for the comment and encourage them to subscribe to your feed… just really a great idea… so sad it didn’t work.

Easy HTML

by Judi ~ August 24, 2007

What is html?

HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language.

HTML is the coding language used by computers to determine how the text and images on your web page will actually look. It helps determine whether text will be small, large, bold face or italics. Html makes it possible to link to other websites as well as display images.

Html is written using tags – tags are commands which tell the browser how to display the text on the page, as well as where images should load.

All html tags are enclosed in brackets < >.

When you are writing multiple tags, the tags may be nested. In other words, you’ll open and then close tags in the reverse order.
<html>
<body>
</body>
</html>

Basic HTML tags

by Judi ~ August 24, 2007

Basic web page structure tags

</html>