every mom wants to be an all-powerful wizard
When you update to WordPress 4.3 you now have the ability to add icons, or favicons to your site without a plugin or uploading files. These will show up in your browser on the tab, as well as places like Pinterest Rich Pins.
I go through how to add you icon in WordPress 4.3 step by step below….
To move posts to this new site, or URL, I needed a plugin to add 301 redirects to the posts on my old WordPress site. I was planning to do it with SEO Yoast, which I already had installed. Unfortunately, they released a new version a week before I started trying to make my 301 redirects, and removed that functionality. AGH! However, I think it’s because it was impossible to keep up with your redirects, which is something I looked for in the plugins reviewed below.
What I was really hoping to find in a 301 redirect plugin was one that would let me add redirects easily from the post edit page (easier to keep up with what I’m adding and I only have to copy and paste one URL, the new one), and one that would also show me a list of my redirects. …
… because every mom wants to be an all-powerful wizard.
Don’t we?
We want to create magic for our children with wonderful birthday parties and trips. And we want to be in control of everything. Be honest now!
But really we have no idea what we’re doing.
Here at the Mom Behind the Curtain, I’ll give you a little peek behind the curtain and share a little of my magic. Otherwise known as hard work and research, for everything from trip planning to web page development, with a little bit of creativity thrown in. We’re a family of big readers, so I’ll also share my best book lists for kids and how to encourage your kids to read, read, read.
But why should you listen to me?
Proof that I know what I’m doing:
– My kids refused to eat chocolate cake for breakfast. No, really! I tried this the morning after a big birthday party when they were younger. They were appalled!*
– My teens don’t approve of the music I listened to when I was a teen. Listening to a country music station in the car has been met with, “Um, Mom. I don’t think this song is very appropriate,” and Bon Jovi got, “That’s not singing! That’s just yelling.” (Ah, yes. I give away my age with that; I know.)
So let’s get started!
BUT
Don’t forget…
Pay no attention to the Mom Behind the Curtain.
(Wizard of Oz reference. If you don’t recognize it, then you clearly didn’t watch the Wizard of Oz enough as a child. Didn’t you know it came on every year? Oh, and there is also a book. A series in fact and I’ve read all of them.)
P.S. You might have noticed that I mentioned web page development. When you are learning your own web page development, things can go a little slow. I’ve been in the process of moving things from esivy.com to this site and highschoolcollegesuccess.com for a long time, and I really wanted to get back to writing posts. So when this site goes live, there will still be a lot of work left. Please be patient.
* The irony is, that as wrote this post, I had to tell my teen daughter that she couldn’t eat cheesecake for breakfast. <sigh> They still need me. Ha! Like I said, “Pay no attention to the mom behind the curtain.”
My posts on high school, college and success – challenging the way schools teach success – are now officially up at my new sight at www.highschoolcollegesuccess.com. Come on over and say hello!
I have been working on getting this new site up and running for, um. Quite some time. 🙂 When you do your own development, things can take awhile. It can take even longer if you’re trying to do thing “right.” For example, Austin has a very active WordPress community, so attending WordPress MeetUps about web site security. For example, I wrote a post, WordPress Security Tips for Beginners.
Even so, most likely this site will end up going live before it’s completely styled, so a few things might look out of place. For example, that image right there to the left? Says esivy.com.
There is a point to telling you about all the pain I’m going through! If you happened to design your own website – which is known as being your own website developer – or want to, I’m working on either and ebooks, and or an extensive post series of WordPress tutorials. For beginners to the more advanced, on everything from buying your domain, setting up local test sites on your own computer, migrating a designed site to another location and styling Foodie Pro for Genesis into a Lifestyle blog. So be sure to keep up with the changes or sign up to follow my blog in email! (Note: it will look like you’re signing up for my old blog. Yep, on the list to change that!)
Blog Signup – get all posts in email
And we are live!
Well, kinda-sorta. Since I’m doing all my own web development, it will take awhile to get this site structured. But the posts are at least up at this new domain.
This site, High school, College, Success!, here at www.highschoolcollegesuccess.com, will be the new home for the educational and life success posts from my ES Ivy website at esivy.com. This is where I plan on exploring the question of whether or not the current education system, high school through college, is teaching what’s really needed for our kids to be successful. Or at the very worst, is actually hampering the best students. Until I get an About page up and running, you can find out more about this website by starting with my first post on this subject, Success factors 1: What’s the Best Way to Guide Your Child Through High School to be a Success in College and in Life?, and following through the next posts.
If you’re looking for my posts on the best children’s books, recipes, DIY crafts, or family trip planning, you can find them on my other new blog, The Mom Behind the Curtain – because every mom wants to be an all-powerful wizard, at mombehindthecurtain.com. (That site might still be in the process of migrating.) If you want to know more about me, E.S. Ivy, then for now the information up on my children’s author page, esivy.com, will have to do. Or look up at the top of my sidebar, and you can connect with with on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest.
Start your Independence day off right with some patriotic waffles! Whip cream and berries. Mmmm….
You do know how to make fresh whip cream, don’t you? It’s so easy, and so delicious! So I thought I’d quickly find a link to a recipe on-line of how to make it.
To my surprise, the first 5 recipes aren’t like I do it. The first three do it with a hand whisk. Um. No….
Yesterday I attended a WordPress Meetup about basic security presented by Nick Batik. WordPress Meetups are awesome free gatherings where developers volunteer to teach others all about WordPress and I’ve been to quite a few. I’m working on a whole series about making a WordPress site (my How to Install a Favicon on WordPress tutorial will also be part of that series), but this security information is too important to keep to myself until I get this site moved and the series completed.
If your site gets hacked, to add to all the other headaches you can get blacklisted by Google. (Understand Google Website Blacklists) But below are are some basic WordPress security tips, practices that even a beginner can easily tackle, that were my take-away from the discussion.
…
Over at my blog the Mom Behind the Curtain [insert link] I have a post about Disney’s Tomorrowland. I talk about how it might inspire kids with what “can be” in the future. (If you’re curious if we’ll really get any of the cool technology of Tomorrowland any time soon, check out the post Jetpacks! Robots! ‘Tomorrowland’s’ Awesome Vision of the Future.) I also talk about the main message of the film – dreamers doing something to change the world. And I think it’s important to support the inspiration of dreamers as kids. Read more on mombehindthecurtain.com.
I was not compensated in any way for this posts; we paid for our own movie tickets. Thoughts about Tomorrowland are my own. Media from Walt Disney Studios.
Our family was able to catch Tomorrowland during it’s premier holiday weekend, and we’re glad we did! Because…
They showed the trailer for Star Wars the Force Awakens!…