Technology Ins & Outs

· by · in Blog. ·

Periodically, I share my technology experiences here with y’all. And you know if you’ve been following my blog for long, those technology experiences are, shall we say challenging.

IMG_2883 Charley army crawling on a morning walk.

Let’s talk about my most recent experience. When I sent out my April Newsletter, I heard back from a guy who hadn’t received the newsletter in quite a while and was glad to get it. (The story of those lost people is a complicated one. Suffice it to say, folks signed up to my newsletter when it had one name, and then I changed the name but I failed to switch about twenty folks from one name to the other. It was while I was still learning how to do the newsletter on my own.)

In April, I sent the newsletter to both lists, and then I physically moved them all over to the main newsletter list, something I should’ve done a long time ago.  Hopefully, the May edition will work better. Well, so, the guy emailed me to thank me for the newsletter and to tell me when he checked my website, he noticed under Books that one of the blurbs was wrong. He said I’d put the same blurb under two books.IMG_2938 Dinner from Cotton Patch on the dock.

I didn’t see how that was possible, but I promptly checked and found the blurbs were all correct. I emailed him back and said maybe he’d looked the wrong place and sent him the authormarsharwest.wordpress.com addy. I asked him what he’d looked under.

He told me he’d looked under marsharwest.com.  I went there and low and behold, he was right. The blurb for Act of Trust was wrong. So, I started trying to figure out how to fix it.

Ultimately, I realized I had a couple of websites that I’d set up myself trying to make sure I had all my blog posts in the same place and didn’t lose any of them. They were FREE, which is good. (An earlier visit with WordPress folks allowed me to shift all the blogs to the one you’re in now.) I decided I need to delete the extra sites, but then I decided I needed someone to hold my hand while I did that. (Pushing Delete is as scary as pushing Send.) And I found someone.

IMG_3018 Dinner on the Dock from Cheddars

Esther on WordPress was so wonderfully patient with me and saw me through the whole process. At least all the part I did on WordPress. We got those two other sites deleted. Esther discovered that the website where my friend had found the problem was hosted by WIX. I’d totally forgotten that had been set up when I had a PR firm who set up and managed my newsletter, my FB Author page, and Twitter.

I told Esther that my friend had told me there was a way I could fix it so when someone went to that website, they’d get immediately transferred to my main site. Esther explained that was called mapping. She helped me through that process, which entailed me connecting to GoDaddy which carries my Domain names.IMG_2915 One of the recent GIANT moons

The process took several hours.

I believe we successfully completed the task. I’ll know for sure in 48 hours, when I’ll check marsharwest.com and see if it pops up to be my main site. I don’t want to get rid of marsharwest.com because someone looking me up might look me up that way first before placing author in front of my name.

Anyway, my hat’s off to Esther at WordPress. I appreciate the helper at GoDaddy, too, but never learned his name, and he didn’t have to deal with me for as long as Esther did. 😊

One of the top suggestions for a having a good blog says you should use pictures. I have none related to this subject. LOL I’m pretty sure they meant for the pictures to connect, but I hope you enjoy these random ones anyway.

IMG_3023 Taken by 8 year old granddaughter Sarah. Isn’t is just gorgeous? Even if she hadn’t taken it, you gotta admit it’s a super shot. 

Also, on Tuesday April 28, I posted on my Sisterhood of Suspense blog, talking mostly about how the editing process is going with TAINTED. Here’s the link for that post.

https://sisterhoodofsuspense.com/2020/04/28/throw-away-words/

And can I just add that as I write this post on Wednesday afternoon, my computer is acting wonky. I keep getting the message: Word is not connecting. And when I try to pull up my regular sites like Facebook, or Sisterhood of Suspense above, I get the message: We’re sorry. We cannot find this site! Very polite and very annoying.

My guess is that the major lightening storm we had last night hurt my computer’s feelings even though I had turned it off.

I hope y’all are well, and staying safely in. Prayers for all those fighting the Covid 19 in what ever position they are. Love to hear from you.

Please sign up for my Newsletter and Blog on https://authormarsharwest.wordpress.com/

Contact me at marsha@marsharwest.com , and follow me on my social media sites. https://www.facebook.com/?ref=tn_tnmn

https://www.twitter.com/Marsharwest  @Marsharwest

https://www.pinterest.com/marsharwest/

https://sisterhoodofsuspense.com/blog

https://www.instagram.com/marsharwest

9 responses to “Technology Ins & Outs”

  1. Marsha, I love ALL of your photographs. Your granddaughter took a beautiful photo. 🙂
    This gives me an idea of a gift for Corbin…a camera. He got a puppy over the weekend. He could take photos of her.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Hey, Susan. I bet Corbin would love to receive a camera. Sarah uses her phone. She got a hand-me-down one last summer when she was going a lot of different places with different folks picking her up. Her parents wanted her to have a back up plan if something happened and no one showed up. How fun to get a puppy. I can’t wait to see all the pictures you will share. 🙂 Thanks for stopping by. Be safe.

      Like

  2. Those pictures are gorgeous. Particularly the one your granddaughter took. She’s got a good eye. My laptop recently died. I can’t even do my banking anymore without one so… Anyway I asked my son for any recommendations and he called me a couple of days ago and asked what I was planning on spending so I told him. Then he said, well Mother’s Day is coming up so if I didn’t mind and I liked one of the computers he was suggesting, he’d just get me one of those. It came last night. It’s already managed to retrieve the Europe photo s I was afraid I’d lost!

    Liked by 1 person

    • Oh, my goodness, Pat. My worst nightmares to lose the computer! But what a super son and what a great Mother’s Day gift. Well, actually your son is the great mothers’ day gift. 🙂 Happy to hear you were able to retrieve your pictures. I will be sure to tell my granddaughter how so many folks have commented on her photo. (I also posted it on Instagram.) Not too proud. LOL Thanks so much for stopping by. 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

  3. Lovely photos and such kind words! I even had my own technology issues today!! It’s the first time my Surface Pro has ever needed a hard restart. Maybe I was power-using it? Or it could be the lunar cycle. Who knows? 😉

    Liked by 1 person

    • Hey, Esther. Thanks for jumping on here. The kind words were definitely deserved. Do you use your Surface Pro for everything? I have one but use it mainly if we travel (when we used to travel) and for meetings–lots of those now all on Zoom. I’m betting on the moon. When I was an elementary school principal I used to hate to see the full moon. Kids, parents, staff–everyone went nuts! And sometimes even the principal. 🙂
      Again, thanks for stopping by. 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

      • OMG, yes! I love trading stories about how the lunar cycle affects public service. I worked in public libraries for a decade. Lot’s of great stories with that! Also, yes, I use my Surface Pro for everything. I got the docking station (actually I think I have four of them now) that I have used to connect to a large monitor so I can see everything better. Best tech equipment I’ve ever bought. 🙂

        Liked by 1 person

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s