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Moveable Type, Plugins, Sidbars, reCaptcha, and Burning Popcorn
What a day....actually, what a couple of days. I have been hard at work at my blog. On Thursday, I upgraded to the newest version of Moveable Type. At one point I was in tears because I thought when it upgraded, I would see everything and then have a reference point to work from as far as where to put things. But it didn't work that way. However, once Daniel reassured me my stuff was all safe and sound (remember the copies I was busy making?), then I just bit the bullet and got to work. By the end of the first day, I had worked out several things on my own, but my sidebars weren't showing up, my captcha wasn't working and my picture wasn't showing up in my header of my individual posts.
Yesterday we sat around and just enjoyed having Daniel home. He did help me figure out the fifty million steps I needed to go through in order to get my captcha working. You should have heard me whooping and hollering when it was working! But then I found out it was so hard to read, that regular commenters were running into problems. I ran tests and I could get the comments to go through, but that was no good if others couldn't. I wanted to stop spammers, but didn't want to stop my friends!
So I did some research this morning and found out that there is a plugin of reCaptcha available for Moveable Type. reCaptcha is one of the coolest captchas out there because not only is it reasonably easy to read most of the time, if words come up that you can't read, you can refresh without losing your comment. And there is an audio component. I went through several steps and learned some new things (like how to download a file to my ftp server), but the last step is one I can't complete, because I don't have the template referenced. So I am still working on that particular problem.
Then with some help from dh, I got my image working in all my headers and I got my sidebars up. Then after diligence and testing I got my old stuff into my new sidebars. I am ver pleased with how it all turned out. I still have some tweaking to do. I would like a bigger font for instance. But overall, it is in good shape and I am proud for having figured most of it out myself (be sure to notice I now have 2, count them...'2' sidebars!)
As to the burning popcorn. I was outside chatting with the two fellows who were restaining our deck when a really bad smell erupted from the house and I was instantly transported back to my college days. You remember...the ones when the fire alarm went off on a regular basis because someone left the popcorn in the microwave too long?
Well, Katrina had put some popcorn into the microwave. Something she has done numerous times over the last couple of years. It's simple. Unwrap the popcorn, insert in microwave, shut door, push popcorn button. And viola!
Well, apparently, my darling daughter hit the wrong automatic button. We think she may have hit the baked potato button. By the time the people in the house realized what was going on, we were steps away from having a full blown fire in the microwave! The inside of the microwave was covered in popcorn ash, there was virtually nothing left in the popcorn bag and the smell....yuck!
So, be careful, gentle reader! Remember to always watch the button ou are pushing on the microwave! The consequences could be very exciting!
like the new look
you clever thing you :)
we have a popcorn maker I like it the only thing that can really go wrong is you get popcorn all over the floor
Melissa if this goes though this time as I hope it does not only will you be very pleased so will I
but alas and never fear even if I still had problems I would still read and comment (via email)
so here goes are you praying??? I am I so hope this works
Jen
