I’ve got most the general tweaking done. The links on the header do work, and there are other links on those pages. I’ve updated the bio FAQ a smidge.

My gallery is still offline because it takes forever and a day to upload it. I hope to get that done by next Monday at the latest. (Other than a couple of errands then, it’s the first day of vacation and I’ll have all day long to mess around.)

On the convention front, it sounds like some folks had a decent time at the GCLS con in Atlanta last weekend. I’m sorry to have missed hanging with my buddies. Scrolling through the offerings for panels, though, I’m glad I didn’t pay the money.

But major props to my buddy, Blayne Cooper, for her award in lesbian romance! WOOT!

It WORKED!

• Happy dance! *

Yesterday I CHMOD my .htaccess file to include executable (which it hadn’t been.) It was only this afternoon that I updated Permalinks for the dozenth time. This time, however, I skipped past my custom setting and picked one of the others.

And now Pages works! Woot!! I can put my site’s specific links THERE instead of the blank pages they are now. YAY!

After all that work, I’ve discovered those text boxes on the sides aren’t… They’re graphics designed to look like text boxes. sigh So, it’s back to the lesser colored theme.

... a new theme. This is closer to what want in that there are separate text boxes for posts and items on the menu. (And three columns.) I shall now fiddle with it.

Or And More Geeky Goodness

To divert myself from the website tweaking, I focused on my browser. I have a Mac, using OS X 10.3.9. Up until the last few months, Firefox 1.5 has been an excellent browser. Works fast (and I tweaked it to work faster,) which is a good thing for the fickle StumbleUpon clicker I am. But it’s been slowing up considerably, enough that the impatience has won out. (It’s a sad thing when Safari is faster.)

So, the rest of yesterday afternoon and evening was utilized in synching my bookmarks. Found some interesting ones I’ve forgotten, too, so it’s been entertaining.

I’ve downloaded the recent update for Firefox. I’ll give it a shot today and see if there’s much of a difference.

I think I need a list of files I need to transfer over to my iBook before I leave on vacation IN 9 DAYS! Gods, I can’t wait!

Unless you’re my wife and have had to listen to all the heavy sighs, muttered curses, and occasional stomping out of the house lest the computer go off the balcony…

Tweaked the style sheet as best I can. At least I have the background and image correct. Originally, I had darker text boxes for the main content as well as the sidebars. Can’t figure out how to do that now… I’ll continue to ruthlessly scan my previous style sheet to see if I can piece it together.

Additionally, each menu item on the sidebars had their very own text boxes (as opposed to simply changing the background color from top to bottom. Can I even do that? Ugh.) I’m not sure, but I think it had something to do with an ’ li ’ thingamajigger I added. I could be wrong (and most likely am.) Can’t find the original WP 1.5 website I used to create my site.

Other than that, life is good. Boring, but good. Most of my online buddies are at GCLS in Atlanta, so it’s kinda lonely. And I even got the weekend off, too! What a rip! Still, we went to Waterfront Park where the Rose Festival is in full swing. Had a bratwurst that was eh and a frozen chocolate covered banana with almond toffee covering it. Sheer bliss, I’m telling you!

to see if the css for my blockquotes has transferred over

(edited to add) And it HAS!

... about WordPress 2.0:

1) Widgets are great!

2) The interface is cool.

3) Widgets rock the house!

4) The three column theme I’m using is pretty nice (it’ll be better when it’s tweaked.)

5) Did I mention how awesome Widgets are?

Things I hate about WordPress 2.0:

1) Pages! They SUCK!

2) Having to redo everything on my website to make it mine.

3)  I can’t seem to make Pages work in any way, shape, or form.

4)  The whole CSS / PHP learning curve (or lack thereof.)

5) Have I mentioned the sheer headache I’m suffering from the Pages thing?

Akismet ROCKS!  Thanks again, Storme!  I’ve only been back up for an hour and its caught four spams!
Looks like all the hard work tweaking my site to three columns, colors and header image are all in the can.  I have the files, but it’s not working with WP 2.0.  I’ll have to spend my weekend putting things back in order (as soon as I find files on how to change Kubrick.)

For now, things are working, so I’ll be happy with that.

At least I have WordPress back up and running. I had to delete everything from my site to do it, though. I’m now going to reinstall my story files.

Sorry if I interrupted anybody’s reading today!!

Thanks to Storme for info on a WordPress plugin that blocks comment and trackback spam! YAY!

Unfortunately, it only works with WP 2.0, and I’m at 1.5. This means a total upgrade. I’m laying the groundwork now, backing up the mysql database, downloading what I need, backing up the individual files of the program on my site . . . I work today, so that’s as far as I’m going to get today.

Tomorrow I’ll be dumping the current WP program and reinstalling it, so expect an outage. Don’t know how long it’ll take. My webhost, DreamHost, has it as a one-click installation, so it’s just a matter of how long they take to get me up and running. Then I’ll upload Akismet, the individual CSS files and the like. Hopefully it won’t take too long to sort out.

So, be warned. Writing in Shadows will be down tomorrow from approximately 9am PST to . . . the gods know!

I’ve removed the ability to comment on this site. I’ve had to delete and attempt to block over sixty spam messages the last three days. It’s an ongoing thing now, and I just don’t have the time to deal with it.

Not that big a deal, really. Not many of you comment here. (I get more responses at my LiveJournal.) I’ll reinstitute it in a few weeks.

Done! Complete! YAY!

Born of Silence now awaits the eager attention of a half dozen first readers. Total wordcount for today was 16,376.

I have 2 weeks before vacation . . . and lots of books to be reading until I leave! Woot!

Thanks to all who volunteered. All bets are down and the wheel is spinning.

I hope to complete the final draft by Sunday night. Monday afternoon at the latest. I’m trying to get a section of my site password protected so y’all can download it from there, but it’s proving to be a pain. I might find some other way to hook you up.

Now, off to bed. MTX dose last night and I’m really, really tired, per usual.