Ohmystinkinheck

Me, My, I

Howdy! My name is Heather OMSH. In short, I’m a Christian, wife, momma, friend, blogger, and amateur click girl. Every single stinkin’ day I trip-up at any or all of those, but I try … oh, how I try. And? I tell my kids that’s what counts. Speaking of kids…

I have a full house (to me) with three kids, a husband, 2 dogs, 2 cats, one hamster … and one snake named Ringo (we’ll not discuss our secret chicken farming project). I look forward to having my own patch of land so I can live out the dreams that have played in my head since I spent blessed weekends and summers at my grandparent’s ranch.

I’ve been creating this, that, and the other online since 2000 - and yes, I’m addicted to the internet and how it can both expand and reduce our lives all at the same time.

I am interested in snapshot photography, blog customizations and web standards (no thanks to my equally anal retentive friend), chocolate, chocolate, and more chocolate, all things eclectic, simplicity and function in home decor, self-organization, reading, and last, but not least - cuz it touches me to my core, country and western music. I am an enigma.

Oh, and though I tried not to fall into the “100 Things About Me” tradition of bloggers across the web, I … er … sort of failed. Not only that, but I failed and then only did 50. I’m a lazy follower, you see. If you are interested, read my post, Never Say Never.

So, this website couldn’t be possible without…

• Liquid Web. Plain and simple - I wouldn’t ever have my sites with any other host. Customer service is around the clock and absolutely supreme. When I ran my web hosting business, my virtual server was through them. They are top notch. I know there are cheaper web hosts, but experience has shown me that web hosting is not where I want to count pennies.
• The amazing Wordpress blogging/publishing platform and all its various plugins.

Plug it in, plug it in.

• Subscribe to Comments 2.1 plugin that allows readers to recieve notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry.
• Eightface which basically lets you place Flickr pics on your weblog. Between this and the WordPress upload, I hardly need to FTP pics to the server anymore.
• I always say Less is more. Less is a WordPress plugin that allows readers to view the full page article when they click thru the (more…) link to read on. It doesn’t click you to the bookmarked page, but rather to the whole stinkin’ thing.
• The spam-reducing capabilities of James McKay’s Comment Time Out automatically closes comments on any blog entries after a set period of time. Plus, he’s really responsive and active with questions about his plugin.
• Sideblog which I use for my “brain bits”, thankyouverymuch.
• A deliciously simple contact form plugin that keeps me from having to utilize run.php these days OR finnagle with the likes of sendform.php! WHAHOOEE!!
• Feedburner Plugin forwards all my feed traffic directly to FeedBurner. It forwards main posts feed AND you can choose to have it forward main comments too.
• Oh, and fArc, which allows my Archives to actually show the posts with links under the months and year, as opposed to just categories. I *heart* fArc.
• My absolute favorite text editor for a PC is Editplus; Jeff still uses it. I now use CODA on my Macbook Pro; it also acts as a FTP
• Mosaic Maker - I create photo mosaics from my Flickr sets with this tool.
• When I need to post a poll, Andrew Sutherland and his friends have created the Democracy AJAX Poll at Jalenack. Thumbs up to this highschool lovely … yes, you read that right … because his poll VALIDATES XHTML PEOPLE!
• Speaking of ugly - YouTube … you can’t make it pretty and it pops up two warnings for XHTML validity, BUT if you must (and sometimes I must) embed YouTube videos in your post, Vaam Yob has detailed how to install the MyTube plugin, but left out one important detail. BEFORE ACTIVATING (in order NOT to lose all the text from previous posts) create a /ytube_thumbs/ directory within /wp-content/uploads/, making sure to set permissions to 777. THEN, activate it and all will work wonderfully. Oh, one thing - your server must have curl enabled. There. Clear as mud?
• Dofollow - y’know, as opposed to nofollow. I’m sharing my outbound links. Don’t be stingy … if you’re a blogger, share yours too. A special nod to MomGadget for her write-up and kerflop for bringing this little plugin to my attention.
• Because I like to use the <–more–> tag in my long-winded posts, CompleteRSS keeps my entire feed available to those who view solely through their feedreaders.

Permanent + Linkage = PERMALINKAGE