Crystal Writes A Blog

My Cyberspace Journey

I don’t know if anyone reads these journey posts, but at least I have them for my own memories. I just read all my posts on this page, and it’s hard to believe it’s been over 5 years since I updated.

So much changes with age that we never truly understand until we experience it. So many losses of those I’ve loved. So many bumps in the lives of friends and other family. And so many changes in the world. It’s hard to keep up with the day-to-day even when officially retired. And these changes greatly effect technology.

I haven’t updated any of my many pages regularly for years. We have no writer’s meetings anymore due to COVID-19, so I just don’t know what to write on that page. I feel like I was juggling and dropped all the balls. But since admitting the problem is the first step, maybe updating this page will help. The one thing I have increased this year is my photography, so visit my Flickr page to see my weekly pics for my “52 Weeks of 2022” group. And check the images I’ve made for people to download for free phone wallpapers at my Zedge page at https://www.zedge.me/CrystalWriter if you are like me and love color and kaleidoscopes. In the meantime, I hope this is just the beginning of getting my many facets of cyber presence updated.

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PROBLEM WITH GETTING A MAP MY NAME SERVICE ON BLUEHOST LIKE I HAD WITH FORMINISTRY.COM

So, I've tried to talk with the tech people there over and over again, and I keep getting different answers that just don't work. The "map my name" service at For Ministry (which was a wonderful, template-based, web host for churches and ministries) allowed me to replace the www in our <a title="Louisville Christian Writers website" href="http://www.lcwriters.com/">LCWRITERS site</a> with the word "map" and link it to our <a title="Louisville Christian Writers map page at Google Maps" href="https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=208804282254023942862.0004a796bf7384ce55b82&msa=0"><em>Google Maps</em></a> page.

At For Ministry, it was as simple as entering the map URL into the CNAME field replaced by map and http://www.map. At Bluehost, it would not let me enter the URL in the CNAME field. My LCWriters domain is a subdomain of my crystal-writer.com page, but it has its own domain name, so Bluehost said I only needed to go in and do a redirect. They tried different things, each time asking me to wait 4-6 hours (once 4 days) to let their servers update. The last guy even told me the CNAME would update itself or point to the A Record or whatever it needed to do. Guess what, it's STILL not working. Now it opens a download window when I try to visit map.lcwriters.com, so can anyone tell me what I need to tell the tech support people at Bluehost to make this work for me? Thanks!

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TECH UPDATE AS OF NOVEMBER 1ST 2013

I see that people keep reading this page even though I haven’t been doing any updating on it, so I’m going to do a bit of catching up now. It was my intention to log everything I did, but that was harder than I would’ve expected. In addition, just watching a video one time and thinking you’ve got it down is just not the way it works. I frequently go back to the videos at Bluehost and watch them again to relearn something I don’t know yet. That’s why I’m not even doing the marketing for my site yet because I want my site to look like I’m not just always under construction and learning to make it better phase.

I will tell you that this building stuff is hard when you have plenty of time, but when you then introduce jury duty, allergies, a couple bouts of influenza, new babies and family moving to town, and then a big move from a home of 18 years on top of it…it’s a ride with a lot of bumps and turns for sure. Oh yes, and then add my Adult ADD (which is more aptly described as “easily fascinated”) to the mix, staying on task until any one curve is learned, or any one plan is complete, is nearly impossible for me.

But here’s the good thing; none of this is a complaint. It’s more of a confession of my weaknesses than anything, but at the same time, I am happy to have so many avenues of little bits of information that my ability to reach out and help people is greatly expanded. I may not be able to build someone a corporate site, but I can help a grandma get online to see pictures of her grandkids, and I can help an author find more places to share her books. Above all, I can do it all with more real-world language than your average super-techy person. Maybe that’s why God has allowed me to be good at a lot without pushing toward greatness in any one thing. I never feel like I’m above anyone, and I love that.

So, keep a watch on me and my many sites, and feel free to grow with me. If you have a question, never hesitate to ask. I will do my best to help, or I’ll find a person or a site that I feel I can give as a referral. I am reasonably happy with Bluehost except in one area, which I’ll post above here in case one of my readers might have the answer I need. Thanks for your time, and keep reading if you want to see the first post I made on this page. (By the way, I don’t see a way to add posts, so I’m just going in and editing the original. If someone knows how to add posts to a page that is not actually another blog, feel free to let me know.)

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FIRST UPDATE HERE ON FEBRUARY 18TH, 2013

I don’t know if I can use this page as its own diary-type blog, but if so, I hope to share my journeys down the fascinating paths that wander through cyberspace. My most recent journey is turning out to have more learning curve than I had anticipated as I learn the other side of WordPress (the dot org side) and try to build my own centralized website.

While this is not my first step into site building, it is the first where I plan to blog about my progress and issues along the way. I started this journey on Friday, February 15th, and decided late on Sunday evening that I should keep notes about my activities. I’ll keep them for my records, but my main reason for recording these events is for use in teaching others–primarily the writers in my local group who depend on me to walk them through their own journeys one day soon.

So, as a little back story, I’ve chosen a host and a domain, and I’m currently working through the instruction videos to try and figure out what I’m doing. I’ll give the details about who I chose for a host, the name I chose for my domain, what I’m paying for the service, etc., on my next post. For now, I’ve got to end my night and go to sleep since I have my 2nd week of jury duty starting in less than nine hours.

Good night and bye for now,

~Crystal