You can see the most wonderful spam catcher Akismet has caught more than 31 thousand spam comments on this blog and needless to say blogging would have been a nightmare if all the bad comments had not been caught at the entrance but when my own comment got caught as spam, I got a bit worried.

Have the spammers got so good that Akismet cannot distinguish between a legitimate vs spam anymore?  And that too from the blog author?

Spamming yourself is not allowed? is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

Well, as you can see, Fresh Perspectives gets a new theme couple of days ago.  The previous theme BloggingPro worked fine for some time but I used it for too long, more than a year and I needed a change.  This theme, Options by Justin Tadlock as you can see, displays a lot more content for you to browse through and I'm loving the navigation.  

I had tremendous help (truck loads of it I should say) from my dearest friends Mig from Online Public Relations and Deborah from Life In The Fast Lane.  So, although I was a bit afraid of the change,  I'm starting to really like it. 

There are some features that are not working right now and we are trying to fix them but in the mean time, would love to hear from you guys.  Please let me know in the comments if you find something broken or not working.   If you are seeing this post via RSS, you'll definitely have to come out here to see it.

One of the things that's not working and it has nothing to do with the theme, is inserting images in WordPress 2.5.1 If you follow that link, you'll see so many others who are having problem with inserting images. Some have found the solution by modifying the .htaccess file which I want to refrain from since WordPress 2.6 has been just released today and I am hoping the upgrade will solve this problem.

So, then.. what do you guys think?   Are the colors okay, better or worse than the previous one?   What would you like to see and what feature can be remove?   

What do you think of the new theme? is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

photo by mysza831

So I finally upgraded to WordPress 2.3.2 this weekend but now all of my comments are going to the moderation queue. I have checked the Discussion Options and do not have the option “an administrator must always approve the comment” box checked!

What could be going on?

Getting Stuck in the Moderation Queue is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

Below is just a fraction sample of all the comments this guy has been spamming me with!

Daniel | k.daniel@msn.com | listfind.org | IP: 64.22.110.34

I have to say, that I could not agree with you in 100% regarding Reading Your Blog? | :: Interesting Observations ::, but it’s just my opinion, which could be wrong

Not Spam — Aug 20, 8:27 AM — [ View Post ]

Daniel | k.daniel@msn.com | merchant.listfind.org | IP: 64.22.110.34

I have to say, that I could not agree with you in 100% regarding eStore Split in Half? | :: Interesting Observations ::, but it’s just my opinion, which could be wrong

Not Spam — Aug 19, 12:37 PM — [ View Post ]

Daniel | k.daniel@msn.com | wayweb.org | IP: 64.22.110.34

I couldn’t understand some parts of this article Yourself First | :: Interesting Observations ::, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.

Not Spam — Aug 18, 1:30 PM — [ View Post ]

Daniel | k.daniel@msn.com | blogging.allask.org | IP: 64.22.110.34

I have to say, that I could not agree with you in 100% regarding Yourself First | :: Interesting Observations ::, but it’s just my opinion, which could be wrong

Not Spam — Aug 18, 4:10 AM — [ View Post ]

Daniel | k.daniel@msn.com | findabookonline.net | IP: 65.98.35.234

I have to say, that I could not agree with you in 100% regarding ware of Now | :: Interesting Observations ::, but it’s just my opinion, which could be wrong

Not Spam — Aug 17, 5:22 AM — [ View Post ]

Do you think this guy could be a bit confused? is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

messing up my template!!   come back to see growing pains =)

DUH is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

Tomorrow Interesting Observations will complete full two weeks on wordpress! So I think it is time to let you guys in on a little secret.

You see these stars here? They represent the best bloggers I met in the last two weeks who helped me not only with my migration from blogger to wordpress, but also helped set up my template!

So this post is dedicated to the awesome bloggers who helped make it happen!

My first shout out goes to beautiful Jordan McCollum, the most passionate, caring and knowledgeable blogging expert out there!

If it weren’t for Jordan’s undivided attention and support during the migration, I would probably still be struggling with this stuff. As I was browsing the Internet looking for guides and instructions on moving the blog from blogger to wordpress, I came across Jordan’s Ultimate Guide to Migrating from Blogger to Wordpress and needless to say wrote her an email. Jordan was not only quick in replying back, but was extremely cooperating in working with me on my schedule! After contacting her I got busy for a few days and honestly did not even read the guide. I guess Jordan’s assurance that she would walk me through the migration, had spoiled me.   Jordan,  not only guided me in moving all the files to wordpress,  she also worked on modifying the theme I had picked out…   Needless to say,  the transfer was extraordinarily smooth.

Jordan not only maintains her own blog at mamablogga where you can see her utmost love for her family as she finds fulfillment in motherhood, taking care of her most adorable little son, she is also a well known professional Internet marketing and blogging expert and is employed as the Assistant Editor at Marketing Pilgrim, a site that ‘brings the latest news, rumors and review for all things related to Internet marketing and online advertising.’

My second heartfelt thanks go out to Ken Xu of MySite’s Advisor Blogging Spot. Well, within the first few days of getting on wordpress, just like many people do, I felt like I wanted to change the template. When Ken realized how I was fretting over all the changes I would need to make to the blogging pro template to make it look burgundy, he went ahead and wrote the entire guide on why he recommends bloggingpro theme for my needs.

He was just determined to make me learn and wrote another guide on how to tweak this template! ALL of those posts dedicated to me!! Who could have asked for more? Well, Ken even went ahead and designed this template for me =)

Last but not the least, I want to thank the handsome pilot Tom Simon from the NetBusinessJournal

While all the template changes were still going on, the site comes to a total halt one day! If you recall me mentioning about it shortly, my hosting provider could not find the database! Needless to say, I panicked. That’s when my best blogging buddies [sorry Tom, I couldn't resist stealing that ;)] Ken and Tom Simon of NetbusinessJournal came to my rescue! While Ken took up the task of talking to tech support guys through the host’s Live support, Tom goes searching the entire wordpress support looking for any documentation on what might have caused this havoc and I couldn’t even log into the blog!

And all of this was happening at 2 am ! And I was dead exhausted while these wonderful guys were trying to help me. I wanted to say to them very politely, forget it guys, to heck with this blog, I just wanna go to sleep… But I didn’t have the heart to say that …

Oh, I forgot to mention, Tom’s laptop was running on less than 15% power and he was in the middle of his article that he needed to finish before the laptop went completely dead on him :)

I want to say to all of you – THANK YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART!!

In the few weeks of my blogging life, I have found a number of kind and nice people who are always ready to help out and genuinely want to see you succeed. From the time I started to think about moving from blogger to wordpress, to today and even as I write this, I have had many people write emails with offers to help out and to all of them, am extremely thankful.

Bloggers Helping Bloggers – Its a wonderful world! is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

As many of you might have seen (or not seen the blog) that my blog was not available since last night. I wrote a post in the evening, saw it alive and saw everything looked cool. Later when I tried to open the site, it started giving database error. Needless to say, I panicked. Talked to a few friends online who were extraordinarily helpful.. Thanks Tom and Thanks Ken! You guys are awesome!

Live chat on blue host is great – except when you lose the data even they cannot bring it back! They told me there was some problem with MySQL on the server my blog was hosted. At first they couldn’t find the database for my blog – now that was really scary.. how could the entire database just disappear from your account? But then the tech support, David (who was awesome… Thank you so much David) was able to find it in the backup – from June 28th, which meant I lost the post I wrote last night. Oh well, I was disappointed but at least the blog is saved. I hadn’t thought about it honestly. This is just the second week of this blog on wordpress. So needless to say I did some research on backing up your blog and was amazed how much is out there on the web on this subject. So many people have lost their data and some even the entire blogs.

There is a lot of information if you google ‘back up your wordpress blog’ but I found Lorelle’s site most helpful and resourceful of all.

Back Up Your WordPress Blog

I will be reading everything there is to know about backing up the blog as well as the themes :)

Do you have horror stories about your blog too? Would you like to share them with me?

Quick Update – Back Up Your Blog is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

My much awaited first step towards moving this blog to wordpress :)

Today I signed up with BlueHost . I am right now looking for a nice template that maches with what I have here on this blogger blog, but with 3 columns!

I like the color scheme this rounders 2 of blogger had, so I am looking for similar or close matches. And I would really appreciate any ideas and/or suggestions you might have on what themes work, or don’t work, look good and inviting and what does not look good!

I am browsing though the Theme Viewer right now. If you know of some good place to look for 3 column templates, please let me know..

Oh By the way, I would so happy to see this ‘continue reading’ link disappear finally on wordpress!! On Blogger, for longer posts, this is the only way to collapse them, but if the post is short, this darn thing cannot be removed! ;)

Signed up with BlueHost is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.