Excuse the random code, I’m once again trying to prove to Technorati that I own My Happy Crazy Life. Hopefully this time it’ll believe me…

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Maybe if I put the code in a lot of times it’ll help…

NMRE49KRMM9K
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If this doesn’t do it I’ll need y’all to send tons of emails telling them that I am indeed the owner of this blog. Maybe they’ll believe you…

Crossing fingers.

Update:
” My Happy Crazy Life- http://www.myhappycrazylife.com/
Feb 25, 2010. We are evaluating your claim. It may take quite some time for evaluation.”

It’s looking hopeful!

Crossing fingers and toes.

I wonder how long “quite some time” is.

Crossing fingers, toes and eyes.

I hope it’s not long, I can’t keep this up forever.

Crossing fingers, toes, eyes, and legs. Looking very silly. Hoping no-one takes a picture.

I am mortified.

Embarrassed.

Ashamed.

And other words I can’t think of now.

I just discovered that I’ve been irresponsible.

Careless.

Negligent.

This afternoon I set up a Facebook Page for My Happy Crazy Life.

Then I decided to set up an email account through myhappylife.com, and discovered that there already was one!

Not only was there already an email account that I’d obviously forgotten setting up, there were a bunch of emails there.

You emailed me and I never got back to you.

I am so, so, so sorry.

I can’t begin to tell you how upset I am.

I sincerely, deeply apologize.

And I promise that I will never, ever forget about that email account again – cross my heart and hope to die.

Forgive me?

Please?

Pretty please with sugar on top?

Sugar and a cherry?

OK, two cherries.

P.S. Now that I’m forgiven, have you joined my FB page ?

Wait – don’t go! You’re in the right place. I know everything looks different but it’s still me, and my happy crazy life.

Why?

Well, I liked the theme but was getting tired of it. And I decided that since my blog encompasses all facets of my happy crazy life the design should too. Most of all it was Pietra’s fault.

Who?

Pietra of Homestead Emporium. She’s been a fellow Lily Pad Landing artisan and friend for years. I was reading her blog and loved how the simple design highlighted her photos instead of distracting from them.

Of course with me nothing is as simple as downloading a theme. I felt her theme was a little too simple for what I had in mind. I wanted a 3D look with shading around the main area, and of course I couldn’t give up purple entirely. So I went on a quest to find a new theme.

To make a loooooooong story short, I searched, searched, searched some more, found one I could work with, then spent months customizing it. Literally, months! I collected design bits and pieces all over the internet and put them together – kind of like Frankenstein but without the torch and pitchfork-bearing neighbors.

Why not just design my own theme?

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Soooo funny! I know enough html and css to be dangerous, but that’s it. I don’t know php, which is the language needed for a blog, so I had to find a foundation to built on.

Wanna take a tour? Follow me…

First off you’ll notice the purple theme has been replaced by white. Much easier on the eyes, and it really makes the photos pop.

Next take a look at the gorgeous header at the top. It was created by my friend Tina of Joyful Rose. I made one myself, but couldn’t get it quite the way I wanted so I handed it off to her. She did a fantastic job as usual.

You’ll notice that I kept the sidebar on the right as before. It’s better for SEO search engine optimization reasons, and leaves nice wide content area. I can’t stand blogs that are so cluttered on both sides that you can barely concentrate on what you’re trying to read.

The sidebar itself has been tweaked. One of the coolest additions is a plugin my friend Michelle of Creo Communico clued me in to. It’s called Lifestream and will display your “social media” and photos automatically. How cool is that?!

Notice the cute little pencil and comment bubble graphics? I won’t admit how many hours it took for those, but I think they’re totally worth it. There’s a couple other cute little graphics on other pages – have fun discovering them on your own!

Old:

New:

I totally love it – what do you think?

Act TWO

I searched for a solution online, trying everything on the Dell support site and combing forums for answers before finally giving up and contacting Dell Support. Despite an extensive list of possible solutions, there was only one thing I hadn’t tried. I tried it, but the poltergeist wouldn’t leave. “Zha-zha-zhee! zha-zha-zhee! zha-zha-zhee!” There was nothing else I could do – my new laptop had to go back to Dell for repairs. Nooooooooooo! I just GOT it, and now it’s going to be gone for TEN business days?! That’s like TWO WEEKS real time! Waaaaaaahhhhh!! I didn’t take the news well.

Sadly I packed up my new laptop, my PURPLE laptop, and sent it back to Dell to get a new optical drive. After waiting patiently for two gazillion years, and commandeering Teacher’s machine the minute his back was turned, my new laptop came back home again. Carefully I unpacked it and started it up… no weird sounds. I gingerly put a CD in the drive. No weird sounds! I pressed the Eject button… and the disk popped back out. My laptop was cured – hooray!!

Life was good in technology-land, until… the very next day. Out of the blue the optical drive started trying to spit out a CD that wasn’t in there. “zha-zha-zhee! zha-zha-zhee! zha-zha-zhee! zha-zha-zhee!” My heart sunk. There was NO way I was keeping a computer that had the same problem TWICE within a week of being in my possession. “zha-zha-zhee! zha-zha-zhee!”

I tried the old “shut-down-start-up” trick a couple of times, but it didn’t help. I tried to put a CD in, but it wouldn’t go. Teacher tried to force one in, but it only got halfway and came back out all scratched up. Fortunately it was a blank one

Wondering if maybe Little Guy put a CD in the drive when I wasn’t looking, I asked him if he put anything in mama’s computer. He nodded his head. “What did you put in mama’s computer?” I asked “A Backagaengked Coweg” he answered. “A what?” I asked again. No answer. “What did you say, Honey?” Silence. “Sweetie – look at mama; did you put something in mama’s computer?” He shook his head and ran into the other room. Frustrated, I shut the computer down and tried not to think about it.

Several hours later I instinctively reached for my laptop to check my email, and remembered that it was acting up again. In frustration, desperation, and figuring that it was broken anyway, I… umm… plead the Fifth since the laptop is still under warranty… then started the laptop up. Nothing but blessed silence. Had I fixed it??? Holding my breath I inserted a CD…. it went in. Still holding my breath I touched the Eject button… nothing. Dammit, the stupid laptop ate another CD. Wait! A second later the CD popped out. All-righty – CD in, CD out, and no more freaky noises. I’m not going to complain about the delay, it could be worse.

That afternoon Teacher came home and immediately noticed that my laptop was quiet. “How did you get it to stop?” he asked. As I was explaining what I’d done with the nevermind and hoping he wouldn’t yell at me for it, he bent over to look into the optical drive. I watched in amazement as he reached over and delicately pulled something out – a cloud-shaped flap from a Backyardigans book! The “Backagaengked Coweg” Little Guy had told me about!

All’s well that ends well, right? Since then my PURPLE laptop has been working perfectly, and although Little Guy was sternly told to NEVER, EVER put anything in mama’s computer again, he’s none the worse for wear. Me? I’ve learned to listen more carefully to him when he tells me things – and next time get a laptop with a more accessible optical drive.

ACT ONE

It all started when Teacher’s trusty Palm Tungsten died. After a short period of mourning Teacher replaced it with an iTouch. I was bummed because we’d had matching Palms and matching Toshiba laptops, but couldn’t justify getting an iTouch just so we’d still match. Don’t freak, our matchy-matchy stops with technology – you’ll never see us in matching plaid shorts and polos.

Life was happy in technology-land until one fateful night… Teacher plugged in his iTouch as usual before going to bed, but when he opened his laptop the next morning there was nothing. No glowing screen to welcome him, no chirps, whirrs, or other sounds of life. Nothing but an awful dark silence.

The computer ER - aka J.J. Electronics – worked valiantly, but in the end there was nothing they could do; the diagnosis was a blown motherboard. I’m no hardware whiz, but I know that the words “blown” and “motherboard” in the same sentence are a bad thing. A VERY bad thing. For the cost of a new motherboard and labor we could get a brand new laptop, so that’s what Teacher did. Not only did he get a new laptop, he got a free iTouch too! Since he already had an iTouch he gave the new one to me and we were matchy-matchy again!

Life was happy in technology-land, until one fateful night… I plugged in my iTouch as usual before going to bed, but when I opened my laptop the next morning there was nothing. No glowing screen to welcome him, no chirps, whirrs, or other sounds of life. Nothing but an awful dark silence.

Once again the techs at J.J. Electronics tried valiantly, but once again the diagnosis was a blown motherboard. J.J Electronics was able to recover about 80% of my data, but the most important things – the ones I’d kept in folders on my desktop because they were most important – they couldn’t get.

I was devastated. My entire life was on my laptop. Amy & Kids Co photos, records, forms, site graphics, etc. Zany Zebra photos, website graphics, records, etc. Family photos since 2005 including Z-Man, Little Guy and Peanut’s birth and baptism photos. Records for band and handbells, the list goes on, and on, and on. Of course, I didn’t have any back-ups; it’s on my To Do list but I never seem to get to it. If you don’t have back-ups STOP right now and make some – I’ll be here when you’re done, promise!

Teacher knew how upset I was about what I’d lost, so he worked his magic and found a solution online. The man is a search engine god – he can find ANYTHING online, no matter how obscure! Teacher bought a hard drive thingy I warned you I wasn’t a hardware whiz and hooked my hard drive into it. Voila, all my info was there – even the stuff on my desktop! I was beyond grateful, and found a suitable way to thank him. Nuff said.

Next task – finding me a new laptop. Teacher was probably tired of me using his every time he turned his back, but he never complained. I fell in love with a PURPLE Dell, ordered it and waited impatiently for it to arrive. Finally, after about a gazillion years, my new laptop arrived! Did I mention it’s PURPLE? I hooked it up to my old hard drive, moved all my data over and was back in business!

Life was happy in technology-land, until one fateful day… just four days after my new PURPLE laptop arrived I began to suspect that it was possessed. It would randomly try to spit out a disk that wasn’t there, making a zha-zha-zhee! zha-zha-zhee! zha-zha-zhee! noise continuously. The only way I could get it to stop was to shut down, and everyone knows you can’t use a computer when it’s shut down. Finally after playing shut-down-start-up numerous times, the zha-zha-zhee! died down to occur only randomly. It was annoying, but workable. Unfortunately, the next time I put a CD in the drive, the poltergeist swallowed it and refused to spit it back out again.

To be continued…

Apparently Technorati is the place to be if you’re a blogger. As usual, I’m not the first on the bandwagon, but once I found out about it I jumped in with both feet. Is that mixing metaphors? Do you care? I don’t, but if you do I’ll be more careful in the future. Or maybe not.

Anyway, one of the steps to getting set up at Technorati is to post a special code in my blog to verify that I’m the one who owns MyHappyCrazyLife. I don’t think anyone else would want such a large amount of purple – except maybe Nicole. So here’s the code:

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It doesn’t look very special to me, but I guess as long as it does its magic at Technorati I can’t complain.

Next step… click “Complete Claim”… hold your breath, here we go!

As Teacher and I try to bring more “greenness” and sustainablity (Is “sustainability” a word? My spellcheck doesn’t like it, but I’m in charge so it’s staying) into our family life I’ve written more posts about “going green.” That got me thinking that I should add a Green category, but I can’t think of a good name.

Quest for Greeness?
Going Green?
Goodness Greeness?
It’s not Easy Being Green?
???

Help!! I need a little guidance here from some creative folk – and I know you’re all creative – so don’t be shy: What do YOU think would be a good name for a Green category? Silly, strange, whatever, I’m open to ideas so go ahead and post ‘em here! If there’s a bunch of names I’ll run a poll – democracy in action, such a beautiful thing.

I can’t wait to see what y’all come up with – there’s bound to be something spectacular!

If you’ve been reading my blog you’ll know that Teacher and I are trying to make green choices whenever we can. That’s why I was so excited to discover that our hosting company, Elemental Muse, is using the wind to power its servers!

Read all the details in Elemental Muse’s blog, then take a moment to calculate your carbon footprint.

I’m no spammer, as my recent attempts to promote my Blackhat Fish contest post proves.

I thought I’d pop in to the other contestants’ posts and leave a comment linking to my post, but you know what? It’s hard to come up with comments that include links and don’t look like spam! Plus most of the comments are moderated so I doubt they’ll get approved.

And apparently some blogs don’t support html tags in the comments. I’d been using the url in the post but I think that “http://www.myhappycrazylife.com/blackhat-fish” looks stupid in a comment. On the other hand, the blogs I tried to use html code in didn’t support it so my comment looks even stupider. I’m used to looking stupid – it happens on a daily basis – but I was so hoping to look halfway competent among the pros. (Sigh.)

Oh well, what can you do when you’re a guppy swimming among sharks. At this point I just hope I don’t get eaten!

You’re probably wondering what “Blackhat Fish” means, right? What about SEO, do you know what that is? If you have a blog or a website, especially a business website, you need to know about SEO!

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it’s the strategies that help your site come up at the top of the SERPS. That means Search Engine Result Pages. Don’t worry I didn’t know it at first either. Of course you know why you want your site/blog to come up at the top of the SERPS – so visitors come to you instead of competitors!

Want proof that SEO works? Google search “wipe solution recipes”… Go ahead, I’ll wait for you! Yup, that’s my page in the #1 spot. Now try “seo training”… the #1 spot there is GNC Web Creations, owned by Cricket who taught me everything I know about SEO.

So how do you take your site or blog to the top of the SERPS? It’s easy, just follow the steps below! I promise to explain about Blackhat Fish too, but if you can’t wait you can learn about blackhat fish now.

First pick ONE page of your site and make sure it’s about only ONE topic. For instance, if my site sells fish: blackhat fish, orangeboot fish, redvest fish, etc, I want each type of fish on a separate page. Why? Because the blackhat fish page will attract the targeted traffic that is looking specifically to buy blackhat fish!

Next choose a keyphrase like “blackhat fish” that tells what the page is about. You need one that is specific, yet something that people actually search for. This keyword tool can help.

Now the fun starts! Start making changes on your page to optimize for your keyphrase:

1. If this is a brand new file you’ll want to name it using the keyphrase, but if it’s an existing file don’t rename it if it’s already been indexed. My filename would be “blackhat-fish” so the URL would be “http://www.myfishsite.com/blackhat-fish.htm.”
2. Title your page with the keyphrase. My title is “Blackhat Fish”.
3. Put in a description meta tag that includes your keyphrase, like “We offer hard-to-find Blackhat fish plus everything you need to care for your Blackhat fish pets!”
4. Add the keywords meta tag: “blackhat fish”. Many sites stuff this tag with every keyword imaginable, but that just dilutes the strength of your chosen keyphrase. Kinda like too much ice dilutes your lemonade.

So far my code looks like this:

Now we start working on the content of our page!

5. Use your keyphrase in the heading tags in your content. Think of your page as an outline like you learned in gradeschool. H1 is the main topic, H2 are subtopics of H1, H3 are subtopics of H2, etc. Try to use blackhat fish – or your own keyphrase – in each heading, but in a natural manner.
6. Use your keyphrase within the content of your site. A good balance will include your keyphrase often while keeping the text readable for your visitors. Check this keyword density tool to see how you’re doing – try for 3-7%.
7. While you’re writing content, try for around 1000 words on your page. I know, I know, that’s a lot of words to come up with! But that’s what Cricket recommends and she’s never steered me wrong.
8. Add alt tags to your image code, using your keyphrase. Alt tags are part of image code that tell visually impaired visitors what the image is. They also display in place of your image if the code is broken. On a photo of a blackhat fish I’d put “Blackhat Fish Swimming”.
9. Speaking of images, be sure to name your image files using your keyphrase. Like “blackhat-fish-swims.jpg”
10. Next add title tags to your link code, using your keyphrase. Title tags help visitors know where a link is going. BUT the tricky thing about title tags is that they benefit the page the link GOES TO. So I’m not going to put “blackhat fish” on the blackhat fish page, I’ll put it on the pages that LINK TO the blackhat fish page. Got it?

This is what my content code looks like:

The final content will look something like this: But the headings won’t be wonky. These are set to the blog so they’re kinda weird… just pretend they’re not.

Blackhat Fish

< - Image alt tag. I don't have a photo of a blackhat fish so it's displaying the alt tag. Cool, huh?

Blackhat fish make fantastic pets! Your child will love having one of our
blackhat fish as a pet.

Blackhat Fish are Easy to Care for

Your child will learn a sense of responsibility caring for her blackhat fish.
Clean their tank once a week and feed them daily, that’s it!

Blackhat Fish are Entertaining

Watch your blackhat fish for hours! Feed them Blackhat Fish Food for healthy growth. < - This link really works, but it leads back to this post. You can still click it if you want.

Finally, to improve your site’s position in the SERPS you need incoming links. That’s where my promise to tell you about Blackhat Fish comes in. There’s a month-long SEO contest going on to see who can rank a blog post highest using the keyphrase “blackhat fish”. Most people are writing something silly about blackhat fish, but I wanted to write something helpful for you as well as enter the contest. That’s why I wrote this huge post using “blackhat fish” in my examples. It’s not just the contest, I really do want you to improve your SERP rankings. But to be honest, I also hope that you’ll link to this blackhat fish post from your blog or links page as a thank-you… and to help me with the contest!

I truly hope you learned something from me, but for the complete who, what, where, when, how and why join Cricket’s classes – they’re fantastic and FREE!

And please, please link to this Blackhat Fish post so I don’t look like a total fool among all the professional SEO-ers in the contest! Use this URL: http://myhappycrazylife.com/blackhat-fish/
Thank you soooo much!