The fabulous commentluv contest was a winner all round. There was one winner on my site, but I earned the moniker Jammy Cow for bringing in six, count em, six prizes.

A lot of new readers came to my blog because of the contest. Some of them were generous with their stumbling as well. I hope that everyone who entered and participated in the contest found it as beneficial as I did.

I’m still working on getting Zoe’s blogspot site installed with commentluv. The problem is on the JS-Kit site. It will retrieve her comments, but fails to write them. I have been trying various things such as using the original blogger feed rather than the feedburner redirect, but so far, no joy. I’ve been waiting for JS-Kit to get back to me. It seems they were recoding the core all week.

I’ve also been playing with my site, upgrading Wordpress, upgrading my theme, and then pasting the modified CSS into the new theme so things look like my site. If you look at the original theme, you would see quite a difference.

All of this is because there is a bug in my wordpress theme code. Don’t worry, it isn’t catching. But this bug prevents me from altering my plugin settings, and I have been trying to find a workaround so I can use the fabulous new Twitter plugin from the equally fabulous Andy Bailey, who brought us the commentluv plugin and the contest.

For some reason, right now it only works for me on this post. Go over there and see if it works for you, will you? You’ll see it’s working if a little twitter bird shows up after your comment.

Thanks, Andy, for the great plugins and the great contest!

I expect I am going to be doing some housekeeping on this site. There has been an upgrade to my original theme, which was modified beyond recognition. I’m hoping that the bug fixes will allow me to install the twitter plugin that Andy has been engrossed in last week.

If things look wonky, it is temporary. I have backups.

You may now return to your regular programming.

If you want to increase traffic on your site (and really, who doesn’t?) you might want to consider the mighty StumbleUpon. Most people who are signed up have installed the StumbleUpon toolbar in their browsers, and merrily hit thumbs up when they find a site or a post that they like.

One review I wrote got 7000 unique visitors from that review alone. The author was so impressed that she linked to my page as a mighty stumbler. I make it a policy to stumble a post that has a link to my site or to a post on my site in it. Everybody wins.

If someone else has already reviewed your site, then with the toolbar, your only option is a thumbs up if you like it. The review is much more powerful. It only takes a few words, and a click, and Bob’s your uncle.

To accommodate those who would like to write a short review of your post, (even if it’s already been reviewed) there is a lovely plugin called Slashdigglicious that puts a bunch of social networking icons at the foot of each post. If you have a page that you don’t want it to appear, like your contact page, just put the tag <!–noslashdigglicious–> in the page or post. (in code view)

Users just click the last icon on the right, and a review box will pop up. This will review the post itself, rather than the entire site. Write a sentence or two, add tags, and for pete’s sake, do not select yes for “adult content”. That will label it as porn.

If you would like me to invite you to StumbleUpon as a friend, just leave a comment or use my contact form stating that you would. It’s worth signing up for, and lots of fun to use the toolbar. I’ve spent hours stumbling and discovering new sites.

Okay, that will do it for some time. I just felt that the author of this plugin should get some recognition, since I’m so happily using it. Now I have all the WordPress stuff out of my system, there will be regular, goofy posts after this.

One more thing: This guy is having a link contest going on. He wants to see how many links to his site he can get in a few days. The winner will be randomly chosen. Minimum prize is $50, maximum is $1000, depending on the number of links. He’s upping the prize by $1 per link. Stick a paragraph in your post, and get in on it. This is the guy I won $20 from before, and he paid promptly.

I wanted to make me a shiny new blogroll, like Heather’s at OMSH
I went to the quintessential go-to geek guy Andy Bailey
and my heart, it did sing, with a mere line of code to insert in my sidebar. Andy wrote the fabulous WordPress plugin CommentLuv
and I have been thrilled to have the use of this brilliant plugin. It allows your commenters to leave a link to their last post, sharing the linky love.

(Unlike the grinchy Blogger/Google, which no longer allows the “Other” option, so you can link to your website outside Blogger, just by signing in. That is gone now. If you want a link with your sign-in on Blogger, you have to create a profile. Then the clever folks delete their blogger page and just list their real blog page under “Contact Me”) Whew! That was a mini-rant, but I feel so much better now.

What was I talking about?

I was so happy, I think I may have offered him my firstborn. Then I pestered Heather some more, and Andy some more, and neither has made outright death threats, although there might have been muttering somewhere. I’m hoping that Tell her to go suck an egg
wasn’t meant for me.

Andy also helped me to pretty up my categories without all that pesky, long-winded html, because, you know, php has all these built in functions.

Are your eyes bleeding from geek talk? Perhaps the fork you are sticking in them?

For those lucky WordPress bloggers (and my, I do love me some WordPress) who want to do their own, I will share the brilliant line of code that allows you to rotate your screenshot thumbnails. In your sidebar code, under this: <div id=”blogroll_headers”> Why, just pop this line of code in:

<?php wp_list_bookmarks(’title_before=<div>&title_after=</div>&show_images=1&show_description=1&orderby=rand&limit=3′); ?>

And your image blogroll links, they will rotate, showing three per page load.

If you want to be on my blogroll, just leave me a comment, and I will be happy to oblige. You should mention in the comment that you want on the blogroll.

Now, go forth and make your own! And go leave Andy some love.

Shameless self-promotion: Show me some freaking love. Go on, vote. You know you wanna. You have to register first, but you will make me very happy. Check your junk mail folder for the registration confirmation.

I spent the past two days tweaking my CSS, and I still have that incredibly huge header.

I want to move the photo to the upper left, and have the title to the right of the photo. Then 86 the whole “Hi! I’m witchypoo.” blurb. The header is way too big. It’s a bit tricky working with somebody else’s code. Way easier to do your own, because you know what the selectors mean to you. I’m going to upload WordPress to another server for testing purposes. You cannot mess with a live site when you are altering the layout of somebody else’s code.

I cannot emphasize enough, if you are using Internet Explorer 6, find yourself a CSS compliant browser, preferably Firefox. You will love me for that, send me your firstborn, etc. It is that good.

Okay, I see your eyes glazing over. Two things. Just admire my sidebars awhile if you will. I made a new blogroll from images, but haven’t found a way to caption them, so you will have to mouse over to get the blog title.

Second thing: There is a “Deck the Blogs” uncontest over at Memarie Lane so just click the button on my sidebar (the sidebar that does not show up if you are still clinging to the evil IE6) and it will take you right to the un-contest. All you have to do is send her a Christmas type of image, or post it on your blog. I went through all my images on my D drive before I realized I had already posted the perfect one right here. Fabulous prizes for this one!

Alright, enough out of me. You luddites with IE6, bite the bullet and get you some Firefox.

Shameless self-promotion:If I’m the Freakiest Blogger you read, show me some freaking love. Go on, vote for me. You know you wanna.