As some of you might be able to tell, my website has had a make-over!!
I was planning on being in Pittsburgh and San Francisco (not at the same time) this week, but instead, I am here in Gotenborg, Sweden. This means I have had more “spare” time on my hands than I was expecting. Since Herrang last August, I’ve been meaning to do a big overhaul of my site, but didn’t have the knowledge and time to do so. One book, many help sites, and eight months later, I can now do some basic wordpress stuff =).
What have I done, really?
For one, I am using the Jessica-Fletcher Redux theme and previously I was using Pressrow. I liked the flexibility that I had with pressrow, but I much prefer the look for the JFR. Just check out some of the goodies in my sidebar (look up and to the right)!! Now, let me just say I thought twitter was just silly, butnowihaveoneandIjustLOVEit. Haha, you too, can now follow along with Jo as she tweets her way around the lindy world *big cheesy smile!
Secondly, I have a new gallery. It’s very time consuming to set up, or at least the way I did it, but I adore the thing! It’s called NextGEN Gallery written by Alex Rabe and it’s awesome. I am sure there are other plugins that are as good as this one, but I don’t know about them (so I can’t tell you about them). Check out My Photo Page and take a look! Oh yeah, the first picture will open, and can still be downloaded, but for some strange reason I cannot get the gallery to show it. Oh well.
Finally, my video page. This has take me HOURS. I probably spent an hour and a half today and 4 hours (intermittently) yesterday finding a plugin I liked, installing, learned how to use it, and then found/created content for it. I am using the plugin Tubepress and I really like how thumbnails have been created, you click on them, and can watch them in one place. Now, I know that isn’t outrageous by any means, but this is the type of plugin I’ve been dreaming of for months, and I finally found it. l
“So why did it take you so long to get it set up?” Well, I wanted to use my videos from my Vimeo page so I put in my user name and the plugin pulled the information off the web, and BOOM, it was working. Pretty cool, eh? Unfortunately, Vimeo stopped playing videos, and I am not sure why. Maybe it’s because I am in Europe? Maybe it’s my internet connection…..whatever the reason, I didn’t want to take my chances. The great thing about Tubepress is that you can use your vimeo or youtube account so with a few clicks of a button, my youtube video’s came up and there lies the time-consuming part. I could tell Tubepress to go find videos on youtube that had “Jo Hofberg, Lindy hop” as the tags, but then there are duplicates and rahrahrah, so instead you can have a place list embedded into your website. Love the idea, but I had to make the play list. I had read that you can’t reorder the play list once you’ve got it up so I meticulously searched for videos starting back in 2001 and did the best I could to mentally go in order of competitions and performances. Then I found out you can reorder it on youtube, just not on Tubepress. Gar. After finding the videos I had to save them to a playlist and then tell Tubepress where that play list was located. Once doing all the legwork, putting in the code was simple…..there was just a lot of stuff to do before getting to that point. The long of the short of it is that this is an awesome plugin and it was well worth my time to search out those videos.
So yeah, those are the three big changes on my website. Let me know what you think about the site, if you liked the old one more, and what plugins do you use that you really like. Thanks!!
The site’s looking great Jo!
Looks wonderful!
I take it the next line, at the top, is “brick house”?
Hey, It’s nice to find a good website like this one. Do you mind if I use some of the information here, and I’ll leave a link back to your site?
Yeah, no problem. Just throw me a link! =D
Thanks – I was just wondering, can I use this content on my page, if I provide a backlink to your site?
Hey, I really enjoy your site. I found it in Google yesterday and I’ve been browsing through your posts, but this is my first comment 🙂
Another very strong and powerful post. I’ve been reading through some of your previous posts and finally decided to drop a comment on this one. I signed up for your newsletter, so please keep up the informative posts!
Good luck on your blog, and feel free to comment and subscribe to my blog as well! 🙂
– Dino Vedo
great post here as always wroth checking like usual when i come here
Hey, I’ve been reading your blog a lot, and I’m leaving my first comment. I don’t have much to say besides I enjoy reading all of your posts and have bookmarked your site 🙂
thanks friend this information really helped me
This may be off base, but how about changing the layout every now and then? Maybe not if it won’t look right, but I just get tired of seeing the same thing all the time. My own computer has about 1000 wallpapers that randomly rotate every 15 minutes, lol. Adult ADD I guess. Good post though, thanks.
T. Johns
Custom software development
Hey there, I was just wandering the internet and came across your blog. Thought I’d say hi and tell you that I’ve enjoyed my visit here, hope you have a lovely morning !
Hi. I have been hiding for a while now on this website and finally wanted to get the courage up to say thanks to you. You’ve motivated me to start out my own blog. which I don’t have a confident if that will eventually work or not. Anyways..thanks for your insight into this crazy blogging world!
Right on !! Damn I am becoming addicted to your blog 🙂
just placed this article on my facebook. it is an interesting article for all.
I like the layout of your blog. It is really wonderful and I’m thinking about a similiar design and style for my site!
i really love your blog, keep up the good work =-)
Super-Duper web ! I am loving it!! Volveré de nuevo – la toma que se alimenta también, gracias.
I really enjoyed your article and would like to know if I provide a link back to your site if I can use your article on one of my sites?
😉 I Like you blog, I´m bookmarking it!
Wow! Che idea! Che concetto! Bella .. Amazing …
found your web site on del.icio.us nowadays and really liked it.. i bookmarked it and is going to be back to check it out some more later
Hallo adminstrator , i love w/ ur web blog. LOL Please come to my blog
These may be some of the funniest comments I have read in a while!