Writing Tips at GarySpeer.com

As 2007 draws to a close, I note that autoposting software and autoresponders handling email are becoming better all the time. And before you ask: I don’t know whether “autopost” and “autoresponder” are the correct style. But I like the way they look, so I’ll use them. If you know otherwise, please post and enlighten us all.

As the marvels we call high-tech continue to develop, it’s getting harder and harder to know who the “real” people are. I belong to some email lists that sound very personal/personalized — but I’ve never been able to contact a “real” person when I’ve sent email to them. In fact, as we speak (read?) I am in the middle of a two-week effort to get a response from the Yahoo! people regarding a website issue. They have such a warm, friendly “Contact” form on their site — and no known way to contact them by email or phone — that I had hoped I would get a response. So far, though I’ve used the form three times to submit a detailed question/help request, I haven’t even gotten an autoresponse telling me they received the information.

But as for me: If you get an email from me, it really is from me. If you look at the “About Me” page on this site, you’ll see my rather seedy looking mug, though I’m a year or two older now and I need to replace that lame photo. If you have a question or comment regarding something on this website, or something in general you wish to contact me about, you can use the “Contact Us” page — and you really will get a response from me.

I’m sitting here right now looking around our living room at the Christmas tree that needs to be undecorated (probably next weekend). Our 12-year-old cat, Tigra, is sleeping peacefully on the back of an old worn out recliner chair we keep setting in front of our main living room window just to give her a spot to snooze. My wonderful wife, Shirley, is busy doing her file clerk “day job” so I can sit here and make serious moves at an online business.

So, very little that I do is done on “auto” anything. I own some excellent autoresponder software for running a newsletter — which I never use any more because of all the spam problems in the email world. I also own some really snazzy “autoposting” blogging software. I never use that either, chiefly because I write just about everything on my blogs “by hand” and it would take longer to pre-write a ton of blog posts, then feed them into that software to post at intervals, than it does just to write ‘em as I post ‘em.

Yup. It’s really just me. I’m glad to be here, and I’m very, VERY happy to see all of you here, too. Come back and visit with me often.

Meanwhile, get busy today and write something that will make us all proud.

Technorati Tags: personal stuff, who I am, blogging, autoposting, autoresponders, writing tips at garyspeer.com

I was abducted by a dragon just after midnight Sunday and taken to a far away land …

No? Okay. I’m lying. There was no dragon. I wasn’t abducted. And the real problem started more like 6:00 a.m. on Monday morning. But it has been a harrowing tale, and it is far from over …

My webhost sent out an emergency notice early Monday morning that the server I happened to be on crashed. Not only that, but the DOUBLE REDUNDANT backup array also crashed. What are the odds?

Pretty good odds, I would guess, since that’s really what happened. The good news is, it gives me a chance to revamp the 29+ marketing sites and blogs I run. The bad news is, I have to rebuild/re-create most of the stuff because I’ve been a BAAAAD boy and not done adequate backup.

For instance, I will now need to create most of the posts in this blog the hard way: I will be copying-and-pasting as many entries as I can from the backup FeedBurner/FeedBlitz emails I get each day of the day’s posts and putting them back into this site’s database.

Yes, well. I’ll do what I can, but mostly I know there’s no way to recover a couple of years worth of posts and comments.

So you’ll see changes around this site. But stick with me. You hang around and I promise I’ll restore everything I can.

With everybody helping, we can make this a really useful, worthwhile site.

This is a quick “heads up” about the work I’m going to be doing in the next few days on this website.

Yes indeed, it’s time for a new look. Same excellent, sparkling content, but a new “skin” on the old blog. I’ve located a couple of nice looking WordPress “themes” — that’s what they call the layout and design for sites using WordPress software — and with about three days of back breaking work I should have one of them in place. I’m leaning toward one which randomly cycles through large horizontal photographs at the top of the page. Should I choose that theme, I might even invite you, dear reader, to send me digital photos to display on the site as part of the random graphics.

So if you pop in and out of the site over the next few days and see it suddenly change from one style to another while you’re visiting — don’t be alarmed. Chances are that means you hit the site just as I was tweaking it.

Technorati Tags: website layout and design, site redesign, writing tips at garyspeer.com