You have probably thought that I’ve fallen off the face of the earth by now! It’s been almost two weeks since I’ve posted anything and I have a stack of about 40 posts that need to go up ASAP. Part of the reason is I’ve been trying to stay off the computer while we move to self-hosting. It’s much easier to post once not twice so even though I have a backlog and have to go back through my pictures and piece through what I’ve made the past couple of weeks that is easier in the long run.
Another reason you haven’t heard from me is I cracked my old computer and though it is still working I needed to get another computer so everything had to be transferred over and installed on the new computer. Plus, I came down with a virulent and nasty cold/sinus infection courtesy of my granddaughter! I’ve been kind of down for the count as a result—got a steroid shot so I could finally breathe and I’m on antibiotics but I’m still not over all of it. As a result, I have kind of fallen off the cliff when it comes to any new posts. Hopefully, that will soon change.
My youngest son is helping me move to self-hosting. There is so much more flexibility, more ability to load pictures (of which I have a lot) quickly and without limits, as well as more apps that make the web site more eye-appealing and easier to navigate. So for Christmas he purchased the platform for me and did all the techno stuff to get it up and running. I sent him a list of things I really wanted my site to do and he incorporated as many as were possible. Still, trying to get everything exported has been a real chore. I had to manually reload 400 featured images which took me a few days to accomplish since our Internet speed here is so deficient. We still don’t have all the plug-ins functioning but he didn’t want the site to be stagnant any longer so we are going with it as is and will continue to make changes on the fly.
One feature I really needed was the ability to print just the recipe or text in my blog posts and not 50 pages of pictures! Talk about annoying. Now Can’t Stay Out of the Kitchen will have that capability. While I’m keeping the Delicious Magazine theme there will be some new features I wasn’t able to incorporate before. Another feature I really wanted was the ability for my friends and family and those who visit my blog who are not WordPress bloggers to be able to select “like” option especially if they’ve actually eaten one of the recipes I’ve posted. This is really important since currently only fellow WordPress bloggers can “like” your post. The problem is there are hundreds and thousands of others that don’t have that simple capability. It’s a lot easier to click the “like” button than to have to sign in and make a comment each time you want to let others know a recipe looks great or tasted great.
We are hoping my posts will still appear in the Reader for WordPress followers, but if not, you may want to get an RSS feed or subscribe by email if you want to see daily posts on this blog in the future. Now WordPress followers will not be able to “like” a recipe in the Reader. They will have to go to the blog or do it on their smart phones via email.
My sister suggested I clean up the blog a lot and get rid of anything not pertaining to cooking and keep it more focused. After giving it a lot of thought I decided to remove one section that I probably won’t post enough in to keep up on it, but the other stuff even though it has nothing to do with food is going to stay. Probably because I’m not a one-dimensional person (even though it may seem so at times!) There are lots of things I enjoy and cooking and hospitality are only a couple of them. At this time I have no desire to operate more than this one blog though that may change in the future. Believe me, one blog is a full-time job!
I’m going to continue my thriftshopping section because I love thriftshopping and I’m always finding great deals (even though I don’t post all of them)—like the beautiful white soup tureen, lid and ladle I found last week for $9.56 at a Goodwill store in Irving. It’s perfect for my food blog and it didn’t have a knick or scratch in it. I’ve had soup tureens before and rarely used them. Now that I have a food blog I can use them frequently—probably every week since I make so much soup now.
Even though this is mainly a food blog I’m going to keep the thriftshopping section, the crafts section, the hospitality section, and all the stuff on health and nutrition. I may not post to these sections as much but I want the flexibility when I do. I could have easily had 50-100 posts in the hospitality section alone since I started this blog but I thought that would get to sounding too prideful and overwhelm most of you. I haven’t known quite what I should do to help encourage others in this area of ministry. I love taking meals to other people but I realize that’s not everybody’s gig. My hope in having this section was to take some of the difficulty and time-management issues out of it and show others how it works effectively. If you have suggestions for what would help you in this area, by all means send them on to me by email.
My husband also purchased a high quality camera for me so I can take better pictures. While the iPhone doesn’t do too badly it has its shortcomings. Plus, my house has so many trees it blocks out a lot of the natural light. Since my kitchen is in the middle of my house and not next to a wall with windows I have to use artificial light at all times. Yikes! Not the greatest for pictures, plus you see all the reflections of the ceiling lights in most of the pictures. It will probably take me awhile to get up to speed with the camera, so for the time being I’m going to use my iPhone camera to take all the pictures of how I put a recipe together and use the Canon for display pictures (once I figure out the basics). I also plan on purchasing Lightroom 4 (Thanks to Sally’s Baking Addiction) so I can touch up the pictures and make them look more presentable. My hope is that at some point my readers will be able to enjoy some really decent pictures in the future and not the cringe stuff of some of my older ones. I’m trying to improve in this area and make progress, but there is certainly a learning curve.
Please help me. If you are a WordPress.com follower and are able to see this in your Reader will you please let me know?
We are still trying to figure out all the kinks and it is helpful to get other eyes to look at stuff sometimes. Hopefully, these changes will be good for the blog, helpful to you, my readers, and easier for me. I hope to be really up and running by the week’s end but I’m still not really sure if that’s entirely feasible. Thanks for your patience.
Hoping to get Can’t Stay Out of the Kitchen back on track really soon!
Hi Teresa, Thanks so much for letting me know you moved. Congratulations on self-hosting! All the changes sound great. I am looking forward to your posts on entertaining tips.
You’re welcome. I hope to get everything the way I want it over the next couple of months.
I am so glad you let me know you moved! So exciting to see you have your own domain now! I get so frustrated with the limitations of the wordpress.com hosted site. I haven’t gotten the courage yet to move to my own domain. It does suck that you have to almost start over with your followers, but it will be worth it in the long run. Good luck!
Thanks. There sure seems to be a lot more traffic than before….maybe it’s all the spam I’m getting! Twice as much spam as before!
Congrats and good luck with your move to self-hosting. I won’t be taking that plunge for a long time. I don’t have any techno help at hand. I just moved my wordpress account to pro and I’m not sure about everything that I’ve done yet! It all just takes so much time. Good thing we like blogging!
It is certainly an adventure! It’s almost like starting over – learning how to interface with the dashboard and everything, plus starting from scratch with all your followers!
reCongratulations on going self-hosted! Let me know how you like it after you’ve tried it a bit! I’ll subsribe through RSS!
It will be a bit before I get all the plug ins that are available installed. But I hope it will be a lot better in many ways. The hardest part is losing my blogging family. I have to start over from scratch!
The hardest thing is starting over from scratch to rebuild your community! I was hoping I would get a lot more to transfer over. Not sure why I am getting a lot more views than before–also double the spam! There are so many plug ins and cool things you can add to your blog though. Give me 3-6 months to figure everything out and I’ll let you know if I’m better off or not! Thanks for your continued encouragement along the way.
Congrats Teresa — so excited for you as you make the big move. The site looks wonderful!!!!!!! Continued success as you venture off on your own
All the best, Danny
Thank you so much. Now I understand what you meant when you weren’t sure if your followers would follow. I’m really starting over from scratch! But hopefully once I get all the plug ins working I will be up and running and find another audience.