Skip to main content

The Trouble with Being a Renaissance Woman

bloggingI have run into a little snag with my blog. I am trying to cover too many subjects and so find it difficult to submit the blog to be included in sites. I guess, that is the problem when your interests are all over the place rather than limited to just a few.

So I am trying to figure out how to solve this problem. My main website is called Marlies' Creative Universe for exactly that reason. When I started it in April of 1997 it was manageable, but now after all that time it has grown to humongous proportions and is more like 5 websites in one. On top of it due to the amount of traffic I am generating and the fact that I am using TYPO3 as CMS the site literally crawls. That is not good for visitors, as they have to wait for the pages to load.

So temporarily, I have solved this slowness problem by making most of the pages static rather than dynamic. It helped, but I still will have to figure out a way to improve this on a permanent basis and that brings me to the problem of switching to a different CMS.

TYPO3It took me a year to figure out how TYPO3 really works as most of the tutorials were written for programmers and not lay people. That experience has lead me to discover that I am great at tutorial writing by taking 'geek talk' and explain it in plain English.

After using Blogger now for almost a year, I like the ease of use, but not for a website of my site. I looked into Drupal, but that was even more 'geeky' than TYPO3, so I scratched that off the list. Currently I am immersing myself in Wordpress and think I will go that route. The problem I have with Wordpress is learning to understand the templating system better and figuring out how to translate my TYPO3 experience to Wordpress.

You might ask why I don't just go and pay somebody to help me? Well, that is not my style. I am totally self-taught with computer stuff and like leraning at my own pace. Yes, sometimes it would be great to have a mentor, but taking official classes or paying for help is a no.

I have found some Wordpress templates that I like and even figured out how to install XAMP on my computer so I can test locally, but sometimes the themes don't quite do what I want them to and then I have to do some more research and that is time consuming and progress is slow.

So my next step is to create a blog for each of my main interest and link them to that section of my main website. I hope that it will make it easier for visitors to subscribe to a blog that is more narrowly focused. This blog will stay, but focus more on my thoughts and interest that don't fit into a neat category.

Does anybody have any ideas how I could approach this transformation differently? I am open to input and would love to hear from you.
Labels:

Comments

marliescohen said…
Thanks for your link. I will check it out.
March 29, 2009 at 7:04 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sleep Tip from the Mentalist TV Show

I like watching the Mentalist TV show and yesterday I got finally around to watch my latest recorded show. To my delight and surprise Patrick Jane's character gave this tip to help you fall asleep: If you have falling asleep you can count sheep or on your in-breath say or think 1 and then when you breath out say or think 2. On your next in-breath say or think 1 and when you breath out say or think 2. Keep on repeating this and you will be surprised that when you wake up it is morning. Give it a try and then connect with me on Facebook and let me know what happened . . . counting sheep
1 comment
Read more

How to Make Simple Square Foot Gardening Templates

backside of template with holes drilled I am just about ready to start planting my square foot garden . Until now I have used string and sticks to mark things, but then I got an idea of how I could easily make some templates from old plastic election signs. The material was easy to cut with a knife and a permanent marker would help with the design. At first I thought that I would need a whole bunch of templates, but as I got going I realized that I could actually get away with only 2 templates. First cut 2 12x12 inch pieces from the plastic signs Draw a grid:  template 1: 3 rows and 3 columns template 2: 4 rows and 4 columns Mark the center of each square of the grid by drawing diagonal lines Use the electric drill and a ½" drill bit and drill a hole at each center point. Template 1 Template 1 Grid of 3 row and 3 columns (9 plants - holes circled in blue) This can also be used for 1 plant per square foot (hole circled in black and then blue) ...
6 comments
Read more

Companion Planting Chart

Have you ever heard of companion planting ? Wikipedia explains it very nicely: Companion planting is the planting of different crops in proximity (in gardening and agriculture), on the theory that they assist each other in nutrient uptake, pest control, pollination, and other factors necessary to increasing crop productivity. Companion planting is a form of polyculture. Companion planting is used by farmers and gardeners in both industrialized and developing countries for many reasons. Many of the modern principles of companion planting were present many centuries ago in cottage gardens in England and home gardens in Asia. Check out this helpful chart to find the benefits of companion planting: Let me know if you found this information helpful and write a comment.
2 comments
Read more