Happy Monday Tuesday, friends!
I have two things to tell you today, but I’m going to lead with the pretty + interesting one since the second matter is helpful but might make your brain hurt.
The fun thing: Matilda Jane! We’re fans of this pretty little boutique clothing line, as evidenced, well, in these and many other photos of Hazel…
I’m hosting a trunk show at my house tomorrow tonight (Tuesday) for all my girlfriends (I don’t know about y’all. But I really hate it when I feel like I can’t go to a party like this unless I’m planning to buy something. I never want my friends to feel that way! My rule? GIRLS’ NIGHT FIRST – buy something only if you like!)
That said – I did want to open my trunk show up to y’all (even though we can’t make it a bloggy girls’ night…). If you don’t already have a Matilda Jane trunk keeper (you can’t buy things straight from their website – it has to be through a Keeper… I know…), this is a good chance to try Matilda Jane or pick out something bright and cute for Easter or (in my case) a Spring birthday.
They just launched the new spring line, Good Hart, and it’s a little bit painfully cute.
–> Know now that I am shamelessly inviting you to shop through this trunk show not just so you can have an opportunity to order pretty things for your little girl (or yourself). I’m totally hoping to earn a few free or half-price frocks for Hazel for Spring. Just full disclosure :)
At the top of my wishlist are the red school dress (Hazel’s 3rd birthday frock??) and the Chic A Dee Tee (the shorts shown with that are sure cute!). Also, two of my staple favorites that Hazel wears at least once or twice a week are this and this.
I know, it’s not cheap stuff. But everything washes and wears so nicely, and the dresses are so well made that they can be worn for years and years if you add leggings and call them tops when your girl gets too tall. Also, half of this stuff sells on eBay used for more than you bought it for new. I’m totally comfortable with this investment.
So: if you want to order anything, here’s what you do: Put together a list of the item(s) that you want with sizes and email your list directly to my Trunk Keeper (Kathleen – she’s super nice!) here: kathleens@matildajaneclothing.
I believe my show will be open today-Wednesday, but if you need more time just let me know.
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And now, on to the big, bad world of behind-the-scenes blogging. If you have a blog of your own, this is important to know. Read on now, take action, and thank me later…
**Updated: This is the first bit of trouble I had with blog being taken down. It was originally posted on Monday and then my blog was taken down – again! The second time was related to unused plugins. Argh!**
Many of you may have noticed (and many of you may not have noticed) that my blog was down for a little over 24 hours this past Thursday and Friday. If you tried to visit my site during that time you probably got a message that said something like:
Forbidden! You do not have access to this site!
… and then a bunch of other stuff that – if you’re like me – probably made you feel stupid and overwhelmed and like you wanted to run and hide your head under a blanket.
No, I don’t handle back-end-of-the-blog things well sometimes. Anything past a little basic coding makes me sweat. A lot.
So my site is back up now, why do we have to talk about it?
Well, it turns out my blog was actually taken down by my host (DotEasy – I really do like them by the way!). When I contacted them Thursday night to inquire about the interruption in service, they reminded me (I totally did not remember this) that they had sent me an email in the middle of January warning me that there was some “suspicious hotlinking” going on with my site, and more:
“We advise you to use the hotlink protection tool in your cPanel to stop the hotlinking, as hotlinking will cause your site and the server which is hosting it to be slower.”
I’ll be honest. I remember that email now. It made me sweat so I ignored it. (I know, totally rational thinking.) It sounded like I was being falsely accused of doing something spammy. I knew I wasn’t, so I figured they would clear things up on their end and my little problem would go away.
That’s how the world works, right?
Moving along quickly because this story is about blog management and I fear I might lose you!
Clearly, this was not going away. I had ignored the email and they shut down my blog. I didn’t even have access to whatever cPanel they were talking about to see what was up (as if I would know). Fortunately for me, I have a very smart and kind husband who does not sweat at the talk of FTPs and cPanels – this is his thing!
And if you’re thinking, “I’m so happy for you that you have someone who can help you with this kind of stuff”, then sit tight. I’m telling you this to share the love!!
Hotlinking (in simple terms) is when a site other than your own is using/loading an image that is hosted by your site.
The best example I can give (and why my site was flagged) is those “grab my sidebar ad with this code” widgets. Back in June when SheReadsTruth began, one of my jobs was to create the sidebar grab-it buttons. Without thinking anything of it, I created the code using the image link from my own blog’s media library. (In my defense, I had NO idea SRT would become a big as it is now.)
Now, nine months later, anyone who has ever loaded that code into their sidebar is displaying my image that is hosted on my blog. That means that (conservatively), if 1,000 blogs are using that code I provided, every time someone opens their site, they are calling up that image from my server.
Let’s say each of those people only get (conservatively) 100 hits/day. That means my server is providing that image 100,000 times every day. That’s not even considering the sites loading that image that get 60K or 200K hits/day. Eesh.
My server is tired. And so is DotEasy.
No wonder they got a little big grouchy with me.
The solution (it’s actually painfully simple):
You just need to use a photo host! Photobucket and SmugMug are great options. In fact, I walked y’all through the Photobucket process when I made a tutorial for blogging large photos on Blogger.
The good news is that we figured it out and were able to remove that image from my media library to cease the hotlinking. And thus, my site is back up!
The bad news is that all of the people who had that SheReadsTruth code on their sidebar now have a sad little ‘x’ for an image. (If you are one of those people, you are welcome to grab new, appropriately hosted code right here.)
When are you closing out the trunk show? I don’t think I will have time tonight to decide on what I want for Isabella!
I would love to order something from your Trunk Show if it’s not too late.
Sorry, it is :/ But you can email my trunk keeper (kathleens@matildajaneclothing.com) if you want something. She can help you out! :)
i read every word of the bloggy under-the-hoodness and your insertions and exhortations throughout were PERFECTLY timed and in tune with my heart. way to make even the boringest awesome.