Domestic Geek

I've been slowly trying to get DomesticGeek.com configured so that it can go live on December 1. It sucks when you've got your blog home set up the way you like it and can't remember every step and configuration you made to get it to the point you are now on a new server on an updated version of your CMS. Marcus got me EE 1.6 a while back and I installed it over there, figuring I'd be up and running there soon. Ha! All those little tweaks I made here and there over the years are now a necessary part of my blog operation and I can't remember what I did or how I got there. I'm documenting everything from here on out.

Man, it's only a little after 8 and I'm pooped. Dad and I got our shopping done. It was a bit of a pain, though. We headed out at 7:30 am and thought the store would be empty. The King Soopers over in Green Valley Ranch is the one at which he likes to do our feast shopping. The place was full of shoppers. Also, either people on their night crew called in or their truck got in late, because there was merchandise all over the place that needed to be put on the shelves. They were out of Honeysuckle White turkeys, so we left turkeyless. Dad had to open up a carton on a cart to get me some cream cheese for the cheesecake. The bake aisle was so jammed up that you couldn't even get a cart down it. I went out later and after hitting a couple of King Soopers and not finding a turkey, gave in and went to a Safeway. It still wasn't as big as I'd liked (I usually cook a bird upwards of 25 lbs to get the most leftovers possible), but it was a HW and was 20 lbs. I'll deal.

We got part of the Christmas lights up, but there were two sets that are toast. I'll have to pick up a couple of strings at Hobby Lobby this week so I can finish up.

I haven't started my table runner yet. I can't find the fabric I know I have that was to be the background color or the fabric I was going to use for the backing. I think I might know where they are, but I'm too pooped to look tonight. I also found out the blade in my rotary cutter is super dull. While I'm at Hobby Lobby, I'll have to get a replacement blade.

Since I can barely keep my eyes open, I'm off to bed. It's going to be a busy week and I'm not going to skimp on sleep and risk getting sick.

Just a heads up that things are going to be wonky as I get my Pink October theme back up. Silly me thought I had backed up my theme right before I changed it for Blogathon, but I neglected to grab the style sheet. D'oh. Fortunately, I have a backup from last April, I just need to mesh the right hex color codes in. Be patient. I also promise this theme will not be here for the whole next year.

UPDATE: OK, we are officially PINK for October! The only problems remaining are those that I've always been too lazy to fix (like my comments sidebar). The whole purpose obviously is to bring awareness that October is National Breast Cancer month and to promote education about the disease itself. Head over to the Pink for October site for details and to sign up (once they fix the submission form). Of course, you can still go pink without signing up for the site.

OK, I got Expression Engine 1.6 all installed over at my domesticgeek.com. Got the databases and everything set up with the host all by myself. I'm so proud. Everything I set up on this domain database-wise has to be done by Marcus. I just need to finish the darned theme I'm working on and we'll go live over there. w00t!

I remember being able to save my MovableType files as external docs on my server so I wouldn't have to edit them in the the program's editor. It's one of the things I've always been meaning to see if it could be done in Expression Engine because I hate working on my templates in the editor with a passion. I think it's one of the reasons I haven't really been working on my sites. I'd much rather work in BBEdit (my mac text editor of choice) and have the proper outline format and be able to see the color coding. Makes it a heck of a lot easier to spot problems, let me tell you! Instead of just figuring it out a long time ago, I've been copying from the editor, pasting into BBEdit, making changes, copying it back into the editor — not the most efficient workflow. Anyway, I was working on couple of friends' Wordpress templates the last few days and I was tinkering with their files on my own test server via my FTP program (Transmit) and BBEdit. So much easier! I decided today I was going to figure out how to make that happen in EE or I was going to dump the platform.

Fortunately, there is indeed a way to Save Templates as Text Files. The hardest part was figuring out what my server path was. I uploaded a page called pathinfo.php into the root of the site with this code: <?php phpinfo(); ?> and loaded the page. Down at the bottom was my server path. Yay! So, now I can code directly from BBEdit via Transmit. It is done and one more thing I've been putting off for so long is crossed off my list. Now it's late, but I'll get to working on my new design first thing in the morning.

I can't find what is wrong! I've opened up a test page, stripped out everything but the nav menu, the header, the posts and the footer and IT IS STILL SLOW TO LOAD! WTF??!!!

There are no javascripts, nothing from the outside, no dynamic headers, no CSS.

Obviously I've mistakenly changed some preference in my admin panel, but what? This is going to take a lot longer to fix than I thought. Hmph.