Inside the Mind of Suz

Whenever winter rolls around, I always feel the need to change up whatever theme I’m using. This was especially true this year because I realized the theme I was using, Bueno, is super popular! I can’t blame my fellow bloggers. WooThemes puts out breaktaking themes and Bueno was free and wonderfully done. But I don’t like my blog looking so much like other’s. It’s harder to stand out that way!

So, behold my new theme! I added a wintery background in addition to the yearly snowfall. I like it and hope you do as well!

Enjoy!

There are a lot of things I blog about, but don’t feel like smothering my regular Twitter followers with. I’m well aware that different people follow me for different reasons, and I don’t want to alienate anyone if at all possible! I’ve found it somewhat difficult to maintain a balance between my business endeavors and just being plain ol’ goofy Suz.

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying “don’t mix business with pleasure”, right? I’ve always wanted to enjoy business so much that it becomes pleasure, therefore ok to mix. Is that just entirely too ambitious of me? I hope to get there some day!

I renamed my main Twitter account @OhhSuzannah, and have made a new one, still using @Suzdawg, where I will feed my blogging and more business-y projects. There won’t be nearly as many tweets there as my main account, but I’m hoping they’ll be more focused. And sometimes, I’ll RT my account into my personal feed, if the situation calls for it. But, for the most part, it’ll be the hub for my blog, Tumblr, YouTube video uploads, and any other online activity I take part in.

This may not work at all, and I’m prepared for that. But I thought I’d give it a shot! You never know unless you try, right?

So if you’re already following my personal account, and want to keep up with what I do here, go ahead and follow @Suzdawg as well. Don’t worry. I won’t spam you!

I was experimenting with a new theme; one I actually liked a lot! But it was lacking on the navigation side of things and didn’t allow most of the people who visit my blog, to enjoy the content I have on pages. So, temporarily, this is what you’ll see!

ETA: I’ve changed the theme about half a dozen times tonight. So don’t be alarmed if it looks different every time you visit. I’m having buyer’s remorse lol

If you visited the site within the past 48 hours, you probably noticed one or two things:

1. The site was gone all together

or

2. The site was showing the most recent posts from some time in February.

Allow me to explain.

My hosting company had what they describe as a “disaster” and lost 2.5 months worth of data. As a result I had to try and find backups of my post content and was able to do so via Google’s cache.

So, if you get here via Google, looking for a specific post, you may have to do an additional search (use the sidebar form) to get to the post you were looking for because they have new URLs. But only the posts from mid-February until now. Also, comments made between then and now are also gone. Everything else is unchanged!

So, I just realized that I haven’t written a new post here in over a month! That’s craaaaaazy!

At one point, I was up to 20+ posts per month. But then I wasn’t as big a Twitter addict as I am now. Actually, that’s probably not true. I’ve always been a pretty active Tweeter. It’s just that a lot of the things I would write about here, I just tweet about in the form of a condensed tweet. And on top of that, I may have a blog that is specifically about the subject I tweet about. (Y’all must know by now that I have 5029509 different sites) In that case, I would essentially be writing a post twice and who has time for that? Not me!

So, I guess what I’ve got to do is decide what to tweet or blog about. It’s just so much faster to send out a quick tweet because I don’t have to worry about post structure or adding pictures/multimedia. I usually put a little more thought into posts appearing here. I talk a lot of fitness, makeup, and all things iPhone here. I sprinkle in some tennis because I love me some Williams sisters.

So, I’ll figure out a way to get back to normal posting. Going a month without blogging is simply unacceptable! To get back into the groove, I’m going to shoot for one post per week. Then go from there! I need to get everyone back to kissing my black ass!

I have definitely been slacking in my post game lately. You know how it is when summer kicks into full gear, right? No? Oh well. I tried!

Anyway, I do plan on making regular posts again. I realized it’s been a hot minute since I posted anything of substance on here, so I thought I’d post to let everyone know I’m not dead and I’ll be back to normal sooner than you think!

One of the first things I’m going to do is change the theme here. I’ve really grown tired of this one and really only wanted it because it gave me the winter option. There are some other thoughts I feel like sharing, and those will come.

I’m on Week 8 of my own c25k podcasts and the homestretch is near! I feel good and can’t wait to run my 5k next month!

Just wanted to check in!

The other day, I said that I was going to take a look at the LinkShare Link Lookup WordPress plugin. I feel like it’d come in handy on the blogs I run for musicians since I’m part of the iTunes partner program. It’s such a hassle to have to log-in, find the song/album I’m looking for, copy (edit) the code, and place it in its corresponding blog.

This plugin will allow the blogger to click an icon on the post page that will bring up a pop-up that allows you to insert a link or code directly to your post or page. Here is a description:

Just click on the red arrows on the top right of the write posts page. This opens a side bar that lets you search the LinkShare databases for commission paying links in two different ways. The first lets you convert a URL from the advertiser’s site into a commission paying link. The second lets you search for items by keywords.

I’m going to try it out right now. Let’s see… I’m currently diggin’ the resurgance of Kelly Clarkson, so I’m going to try to look her up.

I tried method two, opting to choose a keyword for my search. First of all, I think only allowing one search term is ridiculous, and secondly, the results returned weren’t exactly Kelly songs. I got a bunch of results that were from A Tribute to Kelly Clarkson, as well as some karaoke singles. So, the only “real” Kelly result I found was her collaboration of “Because of You” with Reba McEntire on Reba’s 50 Greatest Hits album. I clicked the “add image” link and nothing happened. Same with the “add text” link. Nothing was inserted into this post. So, a big FAIL for that method.

The first option was to take a URL from the iTunes store and paste it into the sidebar. From there, you click a button that encrypts the link with your affiliate code so you can use it on your site. I looked up Kelly’s new album “All I Ever Wanted” and copied the Pre-Order link from iTunes. LinkShake Link Lookup did generate a link for me and here it is: Pre-Order Kelly Clarkson’s new album, All I Ever Wanted! It’s the Limited Edition Deluxe version, yo.

So, I guess the plugin only half works for me. The method that I really wanted to use, search and automatic placement into my post/page sucked. That was really disappointing. Being able to stay within my WordPress admin area while searching and placing LinkShare products into my posts would have been awesome.

However, it still is easier to do it this way rather than log-in to the LinkShare portal, IMO. Combine that with the Amazon Reloaded for WordPress plugin, and I can still get the product’s image rather easily. So, I think I’ll keep this plugin and hope they fix whatever reason the keyword search option doesn’t not work properly.

But not really! It’s basically the 3 column version of the one I already had up. It’s also optimized for Google adsense, but I don’t have ads up on here…not yet anyway. I’ll keep an open mind, but I just don’t see the point right now!

Anyway, the reason behind the switch was that I have more to share! If you look on the far right sidebar, there are some Delicious links. I’ve started bookmarking interesting things that I don’t necessarily want to blog about. It’s especially easy from my iPhone thanks to the Yummy app! Seriously, though. I keep finding apps that cut down on my computer time. It’s insane! So anyway, you can see that fresh content over there.

I’ll probably experiment with some other things in the coming weeks. Rest assured that I’ll let you know if I find any other great add-ons for the site!

So, here it is; the new theme! My ode to winter. I live in Ohio, so I need to learn how to embrace it, although I still maintain that I’m not used to it. I complain every year, just ask anyone who knows me.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the new look! I’ll probably change it again in a month or so. I’m thinking I need to create/customize a WordPress theme for King James…