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Page Templates?

So, while I was fiddling around trying to get my house in order here I discovered that my current theme doesn’t have archives.php and links.php included with it. Now, I know how make these pages generally, but having to add them to this particular theme will be cumbersome. I’m a busy person and am looking for out-of-the-box usability. I know that’s harsh and/or selfish, but it’s true. I will modify and personalize my chosen theme eventually, but there are things I like to see right away.

So, I noticed that these two page templates were missing and went hunting for them. Or at least hunting for the default page so I could suss out how to create my own. But, like I said, this is a complicated theme and adding my own page templates is going to take some learning, googling and visiting the forums. If I were trying to do something more complicated with the theme– something that isn’t customary — that would make sense to me. Most themes are usable straight from the download because many people just aren’t coders and/or don’t have the time. And most of what I know personally about theming has come from tearing apart someone else’s theme and learning what was going on.

Remember when themes didn’t normally come with archives.php or links.php templates? Yeah, that’s when I learned how to make them. Because I’d seen something somewhere that interested me and I wanted that on my site. So the first time I built a WP page was so I could add a links page. It was awesome and got me hooked.

Now I’m more interested in learning higher functionality. I don’t know how to do all this fancy stuff that a lot of these themes do and I want to learn that. Then I want to write. I don’t learn to write a default page template for a theme that I probably won’t use for very long anyway(1).

Sadly, I’m much to lazy to change the themes right now because the alternative theme requires me to make images and choose colors for customization. I took the time to learn a bit about that theme’s language, but I did that over a bit of time. I didn’t have to immediately code any page templates. Still, I’ll probably look into how to do just that so I’ll have that knowledge. Once I figure out how to work the theme I might actually keep it. Right now I’m just frustrated that I don’t know what’s going on under the engine. I’m so used to being able to look right at the files and knowing what’s what. I feel like I have to learn a whole new language.

I don’t have time right now though. I have a finals project to do and two exams to study for. I’ve got information overload going on right now.

Update:

I’ve changed the theme for now. I’ll much around with the other one later. I live this one a little bit better anyway.

  1. I love to change my themes. [↩]

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By Jennyjinx – May 7, 2009

And the Evolution

I started this post with a thought that “mommyblogger” is an inclusive term about an exclusive club. Of course, I didn’t finish that post that way, so I’ve decided to go with that thought here.

“Mommyblogger” is a term that began in reference to women who blogged almost exclusively about their children. They told endearing stories of first steps, potty training and sleepless nights. Most mommybloggers were stay-at-home/work-at-home mothers with younger children. They craved adult interaction and sought it out online. It worked for them and a specific blogging subset was born.

And though many “other” bloggers are mothers, who also stay at home or have in some way been cut off from regular adult interaction, the term didn’t really apply to them unless they blogged about their kids and families. Some women, who are bloggers but didn’t identify themselves solely as mothers, rebelled against the term because they were more than just mommies—political bloggers, technology bloggers, personal bloggers—all could have been included in the “mommyblogger” club, but didn’t want that distinction.

Mommybloggers communed in a big way amongst each other. They connected over dirty diapers and soiled bedsheets. They became a targeted demographic by the marketing companies because of their wider audiences (other mothers who were seeking exactly the same things). Money was to be made and freebies to be had. Mommyblogging evolved into a business.

Blogs popped up with “Mommy” attached to the name “Cooking Mommy”, “Tech Mommy”, “Chic Mommy”. Mothers who had previously rebelled against the term were suddenly embracing it. They wanted in. Stories about children were told, because one must tell the stories to be in the club. Instead of women simply being empowered by other women because they were women, they were embraced for their reproductive status. Yes, they were lauded for their expertise in other areas, but many of them were included only because of their mother-identification.

And then there are the women who are mothers to children older than 5. The stories they tell of their children aren’t nearly as cute as the stories of the babies. Everyone loves babies, but not everyone cares to hear about Jane’s identity crisis as a teenage girl. These are blogging women, but they’re not “mommybloggers”. Even though their own children once called them “mommy”.

I have never wanted to be in the mommyblogger club. I’m a little too crass for some of the sensitive souls that blog hop through that part of the blogosphere. And I’m not really interested in what someone else’s child pooped out this morning. I am a mother, though, with two girls: one age 18 years and the other age 4 years. I don’t talk much about them at my other blog (and won’t here) because I started blogging for the adult interaction when I was a stay-at-home mom. And my interests don’t include "Dora the Explorer” and whether children should be vaccinated or not. I’m interested in empowerment of women as a whole group, though, so I have peeked in over there occasionally (hence this post). Most recently they seem to be focused on marketing, branding and getting the attention of corporations which has caused a slight rift in the community.  They are arguing because so many new “mommybloggers” have joined their numbers in search of quick money.

Why are they surprised? Why is it wrong for newer bloggers to make money for their motherhood when so many have cleared the path for them to do so? Because of disclosure? Honesty? When I see a mommyblog now, I don’t just see a cutsie theme with lots of badges declaring their mommyhood. I see marketers trying to sell something so they can reel in their next client. This is true for almost every mommyblog I’ve visited for at least the last year. Some of those women aren’t able to jet around the country to conferences and employ nannies/cleaning women to help them at home. Some of them are trying to supplement their income without leaving the house. They will do the posts sans the “disclosure” for the money/products if that’s what the advertising agencies want. They didn’t start their blogs for the love or ethics of it.

As someone who isn’t a mommyblogger and who doesn’t market her “brand” I have become so accustomed to the paid “conversations” that I expect all mommybloggers to be getting products for the “review” posts they write. I assume it first and if it’s not a paid review I’m usually surprised. To me, a woman who loves politics and technology, the term mommyblogger has evolved from “Hey! I’m a proud mom who wants to connect” to “Hey! I’m a blogging money who will tout your product to other mommies doing the same.” I don’t necessarily see the ick about it, except that I’m still not going to stick around for too many posts.

Posted in Blogging.

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By Jennyjinx – May 7, 2009

With Passion

I was reading an interesting post at ReadWriteWeb (though admittedly, it’s from March and about sponsored blogging). There was a particular quote that I found interesting:

[…]many of the other participants in the KMart program are marketing bloggers who approach blogging in the style of John Chow, who says plainly: "I make money online by telling people how much money I make online."

This is interesting for me because it tells of the reason why so many bloggers are spending so much of their time trying to get traffic to their blogs, get subscribers, increase all of their "major" numbers—to make the kind of money online that John Chow et al make (et al encompassing any of the major bloggers that are blogging about how to make money from blogging). They get the big bucks because they tell others how to make the big bucks.

That frustrates me as a blogger because it seems that every online social venue that I entered is inundated with these kinds of bloggers. They aren’t overly interested in blogging for the sake of blogging. They don’t want to hear that the most interesting blogs are written by bloggers who are passionate about their material. They don’t want to know how to make a career out of writing for someone else. They want to make the big bucks from their blogs that these other people are making.

But they can’t. The market for it is completely saturated. And the market where they could make this money is the “make money online” niche. They would have to use all of their influence to convince other people that they are great at making the big bucks, so that more people—who are looking to make the big bucks—will somehow find their blog amongst all the noise. At this point it’s nearly impossible to break in to get at the top of the search results for getting paid to blog because there are just so many of them. And the only people that are going to care what a new MMO blogger is saying are those just entering the market—who are using Google to find the advice.

So, they read what the big names are writing, follow their advice and find themselves disillusioned because they aren’t making the money.  “Am I a good blogger? Am I doing it right? Why aren’t people flocking to my site in droves? How I break out? Tell me what I’m doing wrong!”

Why they’re doing wrong is following the advice of those who initially started the MMO craze. They are on top because they gained the audience early on and they managed to market themselves as experts as well as get to the top of the search results. They got in early and they cashed in on that. Now they’re continuing by convincing new arrivals that they have all the answers while not giving the one answer that matters—it was a matter of timing with regard to their niche. That’s all. Timing and the ability to enamor the poor saps who really think they have a chance to grab the same brass ring that is now so far out of their reach they’ll never even get a glimpse of it.

I’ve actually seen the questions posed above. One person was upset because she didn’t feel that her writing was any good. She thought she just wasn’t a good enough blogger. I looked at her blog and noticed that she used keywords “effectively”, tagged her posts “properly” and asked the “right” questions to get people to converse in the comments. She was a good student of the experts. But she forgot something incredibly important—passion. None of the posts on her front page inspired anything in me. They seemed mechanical. Which is good according to the “experts” but if you’re not making mega-bucks off your blog right away, lack of passion can lead to lack of inspiration and lack of blogging.

I’m not an expert on making money online. I’m not even an expert of getting thousands of hits a day on my blog. But I do know what keeps me blogging and why writing to my blog is almost necessary for me. I also know that generic, non-passionate, emotionless posts won’t do it for me, because I’ve gone that route. And it only works if I’m trading boring, uninspired comments with other bored and uninspired bloggers. The really good bloggers, whether they make money or not, stir some kind emotion in their readers—that happens when the passion flows from the heart through the keyboard and to the blog.

Posted in Blogging.

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By Jennyjinx – May 7, 2009

Hello world!

I like to talk about blogging and blogging related things. I like to read about the same. I like Twitter. I like to talk about and read about that too. But some people (who shall remain nameless) don’t appreciate my obsessions and would rather I didn’t contaminate Fabulously Jinxed with such drivel. Fab Jinxed is for politics and personal discussion.

So, I decided to have a second blog– again. I checked to see if Fabulously Flawed was still available and what do you know! The spammers must not have liked this domain and so left it alone. I grabbed it back up. And here we are.

I’m not sure what else is going to be happening here, except that my techy jargon and junk will be featured prominently. As someone who hopes to one day work in the internet/tech industry, I figured I might as well get started with focusing on that more. I spend way too much time on Internet drama and politics and that’s just taking away from my ultimate goal.

There might be a few how-to related things here, but I’ll normally leave that to the “experts”. This will mostly contain opinion pieces and things of that nature. If you’re interested, pop on in. If not, well too bad, so sad(1).

  1. Which, I’ve discovered, came from the movie “Police Academy” [↩]

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By Jennyjinx – May 2, 2009

Don’t Cheat- Unless Your Wife Doesn’t Put Out

I’m still alive, if you can believe that. Things have been so hectic around here lately. Don’t worry, though, I’m not going to bore you with the mundane details.

I did have an interesting conversation with TheMan’s women folk. We were all up at Millie’s stepmother’s house (you remember that Millie’s dad just got put in a nursing home?). Well, Hildie (the stepmother/stepgrandmother) was telling how her granddaughter left her husband after finding him with another woman. But she wasn’t angry with the granddaughter’s philandering husband. What galled her was that her granddaughter refused to take him back even after he apologized! I told her that I’d be the same way. Sorry, but an apology ain’t gonna cut with me. That’s when the conversation evolved into the most asinine shit I’d ever heard.

TheMan’s female relatives began lecturing me on how it’s appropriate and expected that a man go find some other tail when his wife’s not putting out. “A man’s got to have sex!”, they told me. I laughed. “If the husband can’t keep his penis to himself, then he shouldn’t expect his wife to stay around. So, if TheMan can’t get an erection because of prostrate surgery, or something like that, it would be all right for me to take a boy toy?” Gasp! Shock! Faint! OMG! Millie looks me straight in the eye and says:

“You don’t need sex like he does. It’s a sin for you to cheat on your husband.”

That’s when I pretty much fell on the floor pissing myself in laughter. I have read that people thought like this in the past but I was pretty sure that was hundreds of years ago. Boy, was I wrong! I told them all that if my husband felt he needed to get sexed up by some hussy other than me then he could file for divorce, and don’t expect me to be nice about the whole situation. I then informed them that women are designed, just like men, to enjoy sex and if they didn’t know that then someone wasn’t giving it to them right. Cue the big eyeballs and dropped jaws of shock. TheMan’s aunt promptly asked me “You’re a feminist, aren’t you?”

Oh, for the love of any and all gods… I don’t think I laughed so hard in months. I have never, ever in all of my life actually heard a woman say the things these so-called classy and educated women were saying about women, sex, and male infidelity. I grew up knowing not only my grandmother, but my great-grandmother and great-great grandmother and none of them ever said that kind of shit to me. I was rolling. It was comedy to me, but oh-so serious to them. Very funny. At any rate, I made one more observation: “The Bible says “Thou shalt not commit adultery”, it doesn’t say “Thou shalt not commit adultery unless your wife isn’t putting out, in which case take as many harlots as you want- but keep in mind this only applies to men”. What’s your argument about that?” Fuckola, I got to hear some stories about some guy’s wife who couldn’t have babies so he had babies with the maid– Her name was Ruth, I think. Anyway, I lost that battle. What can I say? I was outnumbered three to one. And those chicks can get loud. Good grief. Don’t even try to mention the risk of the unfaithful party bringing home something nasty. They won’t hear of it. Wow.

Still, I hold that if I ever caught TheMan dipping into someone else’s ink well we’d be splitsville. Period. And to me it’s not the part that he didn’t love me enough to keep it at home, it’s the fact that he wouldn’t love me enough to keep me safe. There’s the dangers of STDs and psycho women who will boil rabbits on the fucking stove. No lie. If he would do that to me then I don’t want him. And if he wants to play the field, more power to him, there are plenty of women that will be happy to play with him. But he needs to let me go because I’ll be looking for something better. Ya know?

I still can’t get over how they were thinking though. I was completely amazed. Luckily, Hildie was the only one with any daughters and they are both way past their prime (though, from the way it sounds, somehow a feminist (heh) got into her family line. Oh the horror!). The only female that Millie could possibly pass that bullshit down to is my Baby and, well, she’s got me for a mother- Millie will lose that battle. Baby won’t be a roll over and take the abuse because she’s female kind of woman. I can completely understand, though, the kind of abuse and humiliation my feminist foremothers bore to bring women in this country to a place where we don’t have to accept that our men are going to cheat on us, or beat on us, or be complete fuckwads. No matter how you feel about radical feminists, you should still be thankful that it was feminists that brought us out of place where that kind of thinking was the norm.

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By Jennyjinx – February 22, 2007

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