Deborah Woehr

I started this blogazine over Memorial Day weekend, following the model and promotion strategies I’d used for The Writers Buzz. So far, the response has been slow. Not as slow as it was for TWB, but not as quick as I’d hoped for.

So last weekend, I posted an announcement to let readers know that I will be profiling bloggers this weekend. This earned me three interviews, which I posted on Friday. Not a bad start.

I’ll have to get busy this week and seek out bloggers to profile for next Saturday. Another thing on my to-do list is to write a press release and submit it to the freebie distribution services.

This is nothing new or anything to get really excited about. I’ve lived in the Bay Area for 32 years and have experienced only one Big One. In December of 1981, we had approximately 10 earthquakes that hit us in the middle of the night. They would startle me out of a dead sleep, but that was all.

The Loma Prieta Earthquake (1989) caught me while I was driving home from work. I was about two miles from home when my ‘72 Duster started bouncing all over the road. The first thought was I was that I’d hit an oil slick. In the next second, I saw the road sidewind in front of me. Now, that was freaky!

There was one car ahead of me and three behind me. All of us bolted to the side of the road in one choreographed-like step. I watched the light poles swaying to the point where I worried that they were going to snap. I heard a binging noise, but couldn’t place where it was coming from.

Then the ground stopped shaking. A Hispanic man ran out of his house and shouted, “What the hell happened?”

The people behind me started honking because I was blocking their way. The woman in front of me didn’t move, and I was too close to her to pull out. I knew she was petrified and felt bad about having to honk at her.

She drove off. We were hit with the first aftershock moments later. I had driven a mile by then and was very anxious to get home. I found my future mother-in-law (I was living with them at the time.) standing in her front yard, babbling at the neighbor.

She had been unloading her dishwasher and had all of her glasses lined up on the counter. When the earthquake hit, she couldn’t do anything but hold on as the glasses marched off the counter and shattered around her feet. Luckily, she wasn’t cut.

Now, here’s something humorous. I like to paint with acrylics and had been trying to open a jar of brush cleaner, without success, the weekend before. I’d left it in the bathroom, along with my brushes. When I went into the bathroom, I found that jar busted open. I joked to everyone that it took an act of God to open that damned jar.

My family was very tense, but no one had gotten hurt. My father had the TV fly at him. My mother was also on her way home, sitting behind someone at a stop sign before the 280 overpass. After the quake was over, that lady got out of her car, ran up to my mom, shrieked, and then jumped back into her car and sped off.

I remember being very afraid of doing simple things, like taking a shower. I didn’t want to drive to work, which was located in Sunnyvale. Since I needed the money, I went. But everything felt so surreal. I couldn’t shake the sense of vertigo, which stuck with me all day. When I complained to a coworker about this, he said that he had the same thing.

To be continued . . .

I woke up yesterday morning and found an article about Dean Schwartzmiller, who San Jose Police fear is the worst serial child molester they have ever seen. This guy kept a notebook of over 36,000 names, each with its own creepy category.

Quoted from Inside Bay Area

Police also have arrested Schwartzmiller’s roommate — another convicted child molester — in the home they shared in a middle-class San Jose subdivision. The beige, stucco ranch is a 10-minute walk from at least two elementary schools.

As a parent, this frightens me. I don’t let my sons walk to school, even with their friends. The police are always parked at the church across from their elementary school because weirdos have assaulted six children.

It doesn’t matter which neighborhood you live in anymore. You have to take extra precautions for your kids. Last year, I read in the paper that there are 25,000 registered sex offenders in Santa Clara County who are required to re-register themselves on their birthdays for the rest of their lives. I’m sure another thousand were added to the list by late last year.

Those people should be euthanized like rabid dogs because there is no rehabilitating them. But no, California puts them on permanent probation, allowing them to molest more kids. I’m just sick.

Xoops was actually my favorite out of the three programs. They have some really cool plugins. My biggest problem with Xoops was the ability to customize the skin. After searching through their forum, I was able to figure out how to upload my logo. At the time, I had no knowledge of CMS and very little HTML. So, it was a very frustrating experience.

Also, my site loaded very slowly on my dialup connection. I continued adding content and installing new plugins. The more plugins I installed, the slower the loadtime became. Then I started having problems logging in. I would have to enter my information twice. After my experience with Geeklog, I was afraid that I was eventually going to get locked out.

I may return to Xoops when I have the spare time to fiddle with it. The biggest frustration with these CMS programs was the wasted weeks of writing time.

Drupal is a very good program on the surface. It offers clean looking theme templates and a variety of plugins. However, it was buggy right from the start, especially after you install a few plugins. Some of these plugins require you to build tables in MySQL.

I found this out the hard way and was forced to learn how to do this. That wasn’t a bad thing. But some of the code these plugins came with didn’t work. I started receiving all kinds of error messages both in my Admin section and in the header of the main site.

Once again, I found myself having problems switching themes. I’d click on one of the other templates, hit the Save button, and . . . no change. WTF! I found nothing in the support forums at the same time and decided not to bother.

Instead, I focused on writing the rough draft of my story. About a month ago, my CPanel announced the latest upgrade. I clicked on the upgrade button and found my header littered with error messages.

By this time, I was done with Drupal.

Oliver asked me to clarify why I gave Geeklog, Drupal, and Xoops a poor rating in my prior posts. I’ll start with Geeklog, listing the positives as well as the negatives.

I liked Geeklog’s layout. For one, I could post static articles without having to install a plugin. Geeklog offers hundreds of plugins that give your site added functionality. The older version allowed me to switch themes very easily.

However, customizing them to upload my logo was a chore. At the time, I had very little knowledge of HTML and none of CSS. After some fiddling, I was able to upload my logo and tweak the code so it would show. But the image was too small, and I couldn’t figure out how to change that.

Then I made the mistake of upgrading Geeklog on my server. The toggle to switch themes was gone. So, I searched the Geeklog documentation and found it useless. This made me Google for Geeklog tutorials. I found this link: MindFab.com - How do I change the default theme on my site?

I followed the procedures to the letter. Within 24 hours I was locked out. I tried editing the config.php file back to the original, with no result. By this time, I was so frustrated with the header bugs that kept appearing on my site that I wiped the software off my server.

I would not recommend Geeklog for newbies who have no knowledge of HTML. The code is so intertwined that one mistake can destroy your website. Read the complaints (and praise) at Opensourcecms.com and Geeklog Installation Forum.

I’ve been writing fiction for eight years and participating/lurking in writer’s discussion boards for about five. The main gripe I was hearing, other than rejection letters, was how to get your book in front of your potential readers.

I read about the pitfalls of booksignings and booktours. I also read about how the traditional publishers expect writers to do most of the book promotion. The POD publishers do nothing, although they will charge a hefty fee for a measley presskit.

Most writers have no idea how to market their books. I didn’t, either until I decided to research the topic. John Kremer’s Book Marketing Update and Dan Poynter’s Para Publishing are the best sites I’ve found if you want to learn how to market your book.

My ever-continuing research took me into the world of Internet Marketing, which was quite an education. I spent much more money than I ever wanted to. However, I came out knowing a lot more than I did when I first started. So it was worth it.

Then I discovered blogging. I had no idea what a blog was until last Spring, when I clicked on an AdSense ad for writers during one of my many searches. I figured the link would take me to a freelance writing site, but instead I found BlogIt!, where you get paid mere pennies every time someone reads your blog.

My stay at BlogIt! didn’t last very long, due to the philosophies of several of the bloggers. But, I was hooked on the concept of blogs and started one on Blogger for my self-publishing company. The big problem I faced was getting people to read my blog.

The Writer’s Buzz was just an idea in September. I had seen a newsletter (which had a circulation of 50, all aimed at writers) that announced new books and was thinking about starting my own newsletter. I’m glad I held off because in October, I discovered Blog Explosion.

The traffic for this blog went from zero to 50 in a matter of hours. Light bulbs exploded inside my head. I registered The Writer’s Buzz domain, and started planning. This site would not only serve as a blog to announce publications of new books, but as an article repository for book marketing and promotion, Internet Marketing, press releases, media promotion, etc.

People started bookmarking my blog when I launched it in December. I got some great feedback from other bloggers (who happened to be writers). Some of them signed up as a member. This was a very good sign.

Then Geeklog (the software I was using) started doing funny things when I updated to their latest version. Within 24 hours, I was locked out of my own site. I had to erase the program off my server and start all over again. Fast!

I decided to try WordPress and so far have had good success. As it turned out, this setback was a good thing because The Writer’s Buzz was starting to go in the wrong direction. Basically, it was becoming another writer’s site and I was starting to see my blogmark number (on Blog Explosion) shrink.

As I rebuilt my blog, I retrained my focus and gave a better clarification on what this site was about to prospective members. I also included tutorials on how to sign up and post commentary, plus privacy and policy pages.

The last detail (privacy and policy pages) turned out to be more important than I realized when I first started this blog. Not only did people start signing up, but I received an email from a publicist to review books and post excerpts. I’ve had a working relationship with that publicist ever since.

The lesson learned: keep it simple and tightly focused.

Like I said in my first post, I’m not new to blogging. I started my first blog on July 11,2004, using Blogger. Since then, I’ve tried several blog and CMS (Content Management System) software in order to find THE perfect blogging platform.

I came to the conclusion that the majority of the Open Source Software leaves much to be desired. Geeklog was the worst, with Drupal coming in second, and Xoops third. I wound up venturing over to WordPress, which I use for my blogazines. You’ll find the links in the sidebar.

I’ve also used a blog to write the first draft of God’s Last Twilight. Writing a book on a blog was quite a challenge, but it was fun. I’m writing the second draft here.

That’s all for now.

I’ve found that since I started blogging, I’ve had to learn about HTML and CSS if I wanted to have a decent looking blog. WordPress has been the easiest so far because all I have to do is take the image files in a theme and manipulate them to suit my needs.

Movable Type is reminiscent of Nucleus, which forces you to code your links into the sidebar. I’ll admit that I’ve gotten awfully spoiled with WordPress. If you’re an MT newbie like me, then you’ll appreciate Learning Movable Type: Tutorials and Tips for Beginners.

I’ve found that since I started blogging, I’ve had to learn about HTML and CSS if I wanted to have a decent looking blog. WordPress has been the easiest so far because all I have to do is take the image files in a theme and manipulate them to suit my needs.

Movable Type is reminiscent of Nucleus, which forces you to code your links into the sidebar. I’ll admit that I’ve gotten awfully spoiled with WordPress. If you’re an MT newbie like me, then you’ll appreciate Learning Movable Type: Tutorials and Tips for Beginners.