First Edition of my novel Sun Child, Prince of Egypt, NOW available online.

I designed a new book cover with my own graphics, photos and design (click on image for lightbox popup with the full size image):

Online Now

–> Tales of King Tut eStore

If you prefer an Amazon site:

–> Tales of King Tut A-Store

Hope you all like the new cover.

Can’t tell you just how thrilled we are to finally make it to print.

René O’Deay, Tutankhamen and Paaten

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Would you believe? Another Update before I even get the last one fixed! –>WordPress 2.5.1! and I made some changes to my editing/writing panel. will they work in the new update? Can I find them again?

I didn’t post about them right away. Okay, found it. Here’s the –>WordPress 2.5 hack to fix the write panel. special thanks to Judy at PersistantIllusion.com, she surely ‘knitted together’ a great hack for the administration.

I’m using a new browser that is lots easier to use: Camino. Only for Macs though.

Also if you are having problems with the Add Media and Media Manager, check out this post on the –>forum by Otto42, I used the no-flash-uploader plugin listed at the bottom. I loved it so much, I checked out –>his blog, and invited him to connect on LinkedIn.

The newest upgrade is not available on my host’s Fantastico yet, though I know Moderators and Developers always say to do a ‘Manual’ upgrade/update. I’m too cowardly to try it. And, considering how fast this new upgrade came up and how many complaints on the –>Wordpress forum, I think I’ll wait awhile. And I’m not updating/upgrading my other –>WordPress blog yet, it’s already messed up for no reason that I could see. Maybe Firefox messed with it.

René O’Deay

Spread the Word!

Here we go. I’ve been putting this off. Another upgrade and all the problems that go with it. I’ll be working this today and will update this post to let you know how it goes. Hope my Anubis Neopet Theme still works.

UPDATE: 7 hours later and I’m still not done. Well. Do Not Use Firefox to Upgrade!

Don’t UPGRADE!

Don’t UPGRADE to WordPress 2.5! Warning! Wait! Wait! Another Update is already online!

Media Loss! Doesn’t work! BAD! BAD! Bad!

I’m so screwed!

the only way to get Media to add is to handcode it as the “Add Media” button doesn’t work. A popup lightbox starts to load then goes to a page where images are listed with ‘Show’ links that do not work. Haven’t tried the upload method, but I am not inspired.
Here’s a little animated banner I made for Tales of King Tut:

Here’s the same image with the popup lightbox added? And of course it won’t work since the media editor is all messed up.

There are complaints all over the WordPress Forum. See for yourself another blog rant. There is a small inkling that these problems might be fixed in a ‘new upgrade’. Shudder!

Trying to add –>Syndicate Links in the Sidebar. My theme does not use sidebar widgets. Everything has to be handcoded. but I like my theme. So does Tut and Paaten.
Easier look for the –>Add Me links at the bottom of posts, but cannot figure out how to add or delete icons and sites, yet.

More adds include the –>RSS Footer to keep from getting ‘Scraped’. UserOnline is interesting.

Will add more links later.

So what do you think about my new widgets and whatchits? “UserOnline”, ‘OthersOnline’, ‘Spread the word’ and ‘Syndicate’?

Oh, please let me know what you think!

René O’Deay

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Well, it worked alright.
But only because I used Lester Chan’s –>WordPress DatabaseManager plugin.

Talk about panic. I was ready for a drink. took a break. I had run two back-ups, plus Fantastico ran one too.
but they now want money (!$) to back up for you. Was it a warning?

When I reloaded my blog, the header, three items in the sidebar and nothing else showed up!

This never happened before on an upgrade! But every upgrade has had its problems, some taking literally weeks to solve.

So went to my plugins, reactivated the WP-DatabaseManager plugin. Went to the Database panel, and ran Repair DB.
Like magic. ooh la la. All my posts and sidebar and footer widgets were back. Yeay! Even my active plugins were reactivated and I was still in WP 2.3.3! it did not revert.

I gotta buy him a beer!

René

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Widgets ‘ –>wadjets‘ and whatnots!

My Favorite so far is the NeoCounter with the flags of my visitors’ countries.
See it on the Sidebar.
Available at –>NeoWorks.net
They are skinnable, I love the revolving earth on mine.

As cute as they were, there were scripting problems. So I removed them.
Not sure if it was my problems or theirs.

Then there are the Babelfish translators, My Foreign visitors can get just a few words, whole pages, and actually whole sites, translated into their own language. Probably not totally accurate and clumsy with an auto-translate, and will lose some meanings and nuances. But…

(These scripts will also slow down your site. Especially when you use lots of flags, so I removed those too. You can get browser plugins to do it better.)

Next the Favorite.me new app. It makes it easier to fave someone on Technorati, unfortunately just from their list, but it opens technorati on the same page in a frame, and once there you can add a list of new favorites before exiting back to favorite.me dashboard. You keep it all on one page, not having to open new windows for each one. Great idea. Join up.Just Use the Link Icon on the sidebar. Or go to –>Favorite.me

Favorite.me has been discontinued due to lagging interest in technorati. Hmmm. Maybe it was just too hard to implement, and favors were NOT returned! but you can see who got listed when you click the Favorite.me link.

But I love Technorati! You can get all your Favorites feeds on one technorati page and not on your own site!

Then there’s –>MyBlogLog, a new networking community. What’s great is you get to see some of the faces of those who drop by your blog, even though many use avatars that are cartoons or other. Still you see the image they project of themselves. find out what kind of visitors are actually coming by. and you can send them emails, drop off messages on their boards, and get more visitors who might get interested.

And then there’s the Blidget, you can see it on my –>MySpace
Page. Blidget makes your blog into a widget, and easily installs
it for you on Myspace, or other blogs. –>Get
Blidgets

I like the Blidgets the best. Users can get your feed in this cool widget, and then get their OWN!
Compare feeds for yourself two kinds of feeds on Google’s Blogger, plain feed vs Blidget on –>René O’Deay gBlog

This train idea is rad, but really time-consuming. Do you just want links? Or do you want interested readers? You have created some interesting content?

Yes, Content is King.!!!

The Technorati icons, the ads from my webhost Siteground and Google and Amazon.
Blidget is available from WidgetWorks.
I’m keeping those to an unobtrusive minimum. I absolutely hate those sites whose ads snag you just by brushing them or even just coming close with your cursor!

I do highly recommend my host –>SiteGround, there’s lots of great features, and their customer support is really fast.

Do let me know if you have used any of these and your experience with them. Or if you like them or not.
Give us a comment.

René

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