MPL PA Update

Hello you fellas, I've probably said this a lot, but I have some upcoming plans for My Paranormal Life and Paranormal Activities, mainly this site will be a catch all for all the paranormal videos I find and Paranormal Activities will be for more in depth analysis of certain videos.

I'm hoping to have things more streamlined, an easier work load on me and more videos for you.

Paranormal Activities Features

I'm starting to get a little confused, I'm adding new features to Paranormal Activities everyday, but I've calmed down a bit and I think it's time to review.

First off the homepage, first thing you'll probably see is the features gallery, it looks like a slide show, this is for blog posts that I feel need a little extra attention. Then we have the blog excerpts, quick snippets from blog posts along with thumbnails for easy browsing, click on through to read the rest or watch the videos, the rest should be pretty self explanatory.

Next is the image gallery, makes things easy and pretty and I'm looking forward to adding to it and playing around.

Lastly is the paranormal directory, located through the nav-bar link "links". I was going to use a blogroll on a page, but I found a pretty powerful wordpress plugin that makes it easy to create and maintain a directory.

It's fully automated, there's a drop down form where you can add your links, it has categories and for me is far more exciting than a blogroll. If you have a paranormal blog or site please feel free to add it to the directory.

Well that kind of helped, I still feel a little lost in the options, but hey I'm gonna let it settle in for a few days and work on getting some blog posts out.

See ya at Paranormal Activities,

Rand

Do you guys want to see the new site?

So basically I think the new site is ready, minimal at the moment but ready for posts, I still need to do some drawings for the design of the site and also have to add a lot of content.

I could probably tinker with the site for months before it's properly finished, but man that's just to long to wait, but then again, maybe I should hold back. So should I share the new site or hold off until it's a little more complete.

What should I do?

Update new site

Just a quick update on the new site, every thing's coming together nicely but the little tweaks are taking awhile to get right, though it shouldn't take to long.

Once the sites ready there'll be a bunch of posts and content for everyone to explore.

I'm still here

This new site is actually a lot of hard work, I'm trying my best at learning php (I've been dreaming about moving code around) but right now it's still an up hill battle.

I'm thinking at the moment the main difference between this blog and the new one is that visitors will be able to go directly to what they're interested in as opposed to the messy system with blogger.com, plus a few more community aspects and stuff.

Hopefully it'll be time to reveal it in a few days, the bare bones that it is.

New Site - Still haven't overcome the Learning Curve

So it's been awhile, lots to catch up on but that probably wont happen until I get comfortable with the new site I'm making.

I've finally settled on Wordpress as the new platform. I found it hard to get my head around Drupal and Joomla, Joomla is very commercial, templates seemed very cookie cutter and I found good guides were hard to find. Drupal, well their lack of backwards compatibility scared me a little. So I decided on Wordpress.

It may not have some of the features the other two may have, but so far Wordpress seems to be able to do a hell of a lot. Loads of support, loads of plugins and a whole bunch of templates to download.

Though I still haven't overcome the learning curve even after a week of exploring it, just to many options to explore. Give me another week and hopefully I'll have a preview to show y'all.

CMS are like blogger.com on steroids

I've been a little ill lately, so I've taken the time to get to grips with the CMS (content management systems) that my hosting provides.

I thought it would come easy, seeing I know the ins and outs of blogger.com, though to put it this way, blogger.com is the bare bones and the content management systems I've been exploring are the fleshy bits wearing a hat and carrying a bag full of rocks.

I thought I'd be able to have a website up and running in a couple weeks, but it looks like I'm going to have to take my time with it.

So far I've tried out 3 content management systems, Wordpress, Drupal and Joomla. They all come packaged with my hosting account at Hostgator, I just had to install them.

Wordpress was to similar to Blogger for me so I thought I'd try out the scarier looking options.

Drupal was great, heaps of plugins (they call em modules) to add more functions to your site, though customizing the look of a template looked pretty tricky.

Drupal's very community driven and it seems very dependent on everyone who contribute keeping everything up to date with each new version of Drupal that comes along.

The one thing I really hated about Drupal was I spent a lot time tinkering around in the file manager on my hostgator account, at this point that's a very scary place to me.

Joomla is much the same as drupal, community driven, though there's a huge commercial side to it, half the templates out there cost money.

What I like most about Joomla over Drupal is it seems I can do everything I want from the Joomla dashboard thingy, upload pictures, edit the CCS and what not without having to go into my hostgator file manager thing, very comfortable and reminds me a little of blogger.com.

Well that's as far as I've come with creating my website and as I've realized it's going to take awhile to achieve what I want, it'll be back to blogging here a lot more.

Don't worry loads more paranormalness on the way.

Just an update on Hosting and Domain Names

So my domain name went live, it's not My Paranormal Life, I went with something different and I may buy another name, not sure yet.

So here's the deal, with Hostgator they give you a bunch of CMS (content management systems) pretty much just more advanced versions of blogger, I've chosen to play around with Wordpress first, it seems similar to blogger.

The problem I've just realized is that Hostgator have so many options like this that I'm going to be learning a lot of it for quite awhile, so the new site wont be live for a long long time.

Though what I've been noticing is that you can have loads of these CMS packages added right to the same domain, for example the Wordpress blog would be like this www.dominname.com and if I add a forum package I'll make a new directory like this www.dominname.com/forum. Having a proper website should keep everything consistent.

It's certainly doing my head in, but so did blogger when I first started using it, I just hope I complete my learning curve pretty soon.

Just got me a domain and some hosting

I've been thinking about making a proper website for awhile now, but I'm not a huge spender, the thought of buying something I really know nothing about put me off a little, but I thought what the heck, I learn best when I'm thrown in the deep end.

Buying some hosting and a domain name.

This is what I just did, well a day ago. I went looking for hosting packages and it was tough, there are so many out there it's almost painful, it certainly did my head in. In the end I picked one from the tabs I had open which was Hostgator, seemed to have a good rep with all that I had read in searching, so I went with it.

I purchased the baby plan, shared server I think, which cost me about a 120 bucks for a years hosting plus 15 bucks for a domain name for a year.

I could have bought the domain name cheaper somewhere else and pointed it to the server (or something like that).

Now all I have to do is wait for my domain name to be propagated (activated I guess) across the web and I'll be ready to do a whole lot more reading. You have to wait a couple days before you can even start working on or even seeing your new website, well you could work on the site, but it's a little hard not seeing what your doing.

Right now, the idea of the whole thing I have and judging by the options available to me in my hosting control panel it shouldn't be to different from using blogger, though it looks like it'll be a whole lot easier to control and manage. They have many packages that you can install, including Wordpress, which hopefully I'll use to learn it all, not to different from blogger.

I'll keep y'all updated on the experience, I know I have a lot of blogging friends that may find this info useful.

Traffic Plumets and I quietly sob in the corner

My traffic has plummeted over the last week or so, mainly due to Google re-indexing my blog and dropping the rankings for each of my blog posts, maybe it'll correct itself maybe not.

It's tough coming from 1000 page views a day to a couple hundred if I'm lucky, but hey, it just means I'll have to change my ways or come up with some better stuff for y'all.

What I think caused it is I'm a huge social bookmarking junkie, the only problem is I'm not to social when using services like Digg and Propeller. As a result I feel the link juice that was passed on from my submissions to those sites no longer cuts it with Google and my blogs rankings have dropped

Or it could have been the change to the layout.

Just have to wait and see what happens, though what I've learned from this is to not put all my eggs into one basket, diversify my traffic sources and to try and not force it, if it's link worthy content, it'll happen naturally.

And that's the thing, what you find here on this blog can also be found on many other blogs, so expect to see loads more original content on MPL along with the best paranormal videos and news I come across.

Paranormal Reshuffle

Hope y'all like the reshuffle, I've been meaning to do it for awhile, still got a few tweaks here and there to do and a little culling of what I don't need, but for the most part it'll stay the same.

I know there's been a lot less posting around here lately and it's mainly due to creating original content for the blog, I've been saying that for years now and well, that's what it takes for me to get warmed up, years lol.

Well, I've been working on a series of drawings for something that will hopefully be very useful, as well as a web comic and more videos. Hopefully I'll have them start appearing on here in a months time.

Other than that I hope to be back to my normal rhythm in the next few days, winters getting me down.

Paranormal Rest

Was gonna go full steam ahead tonight, been a little occupied lately. Working on a few things that hopefully everyone will enjoy.

But until them remember to check out Our Paranormal Boards, moving along quite nicely.

If you've got any photos on flickr you may want to add them to the Scary Creepy Weird group I've got set-up there.

Also if you have a paranormal event you want to promote them check out my Paranormal Promotion post for details.

Well, see y'all in the new dawn.

My Paranormal Life now has a forum!!!

I've been thinking about setting up a forum to go along with this blog for awhile now, I don't have a credit card and probably never will, so that was kind of a block, plus it looked like it would cost a few hundred to start it up.

But luckily I've found a free solution that looks like it should work out well. Seems like it has unlimited bandwidth and space and that's what a lot of the other free forum options don't seem to have.

I've called it Our Paranormal Boards and I've kept it pretty simple for the time being with two main boards, the General Discussion board which I hope to be the hub for pretty much everything and the Paranormal Videos board where you can post up interesting paranormal videos, you can even embed youtube videos directly into the threads.

The other thing I've done with it is add a blog section, so if you're a paranormal blogger and want a board on this forum to share your latest post, make announcements, gain links etc the choice is yours, just hit me up with a reply in this thread here and I'll set you up.

So feel free to register to the forum and start posting to your hearts content, I'll be posting a lot of things on the forum that I won't be posting on this blog, stuff that I don't have the time to look into more.

A bit blogged out

Sorry things have been a little slow around here, I'm feeling kind of blogged out, see how things go I may have a burst of energy, usually gets me up to speed again.

Oh and please excuse all the ad posts, I got hit with an extra amount of assignments to do, I usually like to follow up such posts with 3 or 4 on topic ones, just haven't had the energy lately.

What topics do you like, poll ended

The What topics do you like to see most on MPL? poll has ended and here are the results.

There were 37 votes in total.

Ghostly Tales - 14
Close Encounters - 8
Creature Comforts - 2
All of the above - 13

"Ghostly tales" is the winner by a margin with "all of the above" close in on second.

I think with the results I'll try and post more ghostly things on here, I guess it's what people come to expect from a blog tittled "My Paranormal Life", I do consider the other topics some what paranormal as well so I'll keep posting about them also.

Thanks to all who voted.

About to Blitz

I hope... I just updated my Tourism Area 52 post with a two part video which shows the two entrances to Area 51, pretty informative.

With that I think I'm about to go on a blogging marathon, I have loads of bookmarks in my "to post later" folder that I feel the need to empty it, I'll see how it goes, some videos and stuff may need more looking into.

I'll follow up the blitz with an index post for it all.

On a side note I just heard the sound of ripping paper coming from my kitchen, it's 2 in the morning and I'm the only one up and it's freaking me out a little.

Well see y'all on the flip side.

Poles and Paranormal Media

So hopefully I'm back on top, been pretty sparse on posts around here the last week or so, I've been lurking in the background, touching up my various blogs, figuring out how I can improve and what not, pretty low key, I've been working on updating My Paranormal Media with all my images and art work that I've done for my blogs, just a picture blog really.

The What would you like to see more of on MPL poll has ended and the overwhelming support goes towards Paranormal Videos with 62% of the votes followed by Current Paranormal News with 28%. I'm gonna throw up another pole now which is What topics do you like to see most on MPL, if you'd like to vote the pole is in the right sidebar.

See y'all in my next post.

A refreshing non paranormal weekend

Had myself a great weekend under the sun by the local rivers and beaches, well Sunday was sunny, Saturday was a little overcast, still hot though. I think it was just what I needed, two days off in a row to call my own.

Got a few photos of my weekend, hope y'all like.

Bloggers Block of the Living Dead

I've got the meanest bloggers block at the moment, I have so much I want to post about that I end up not posting anything at all. Time to slow down, relax, maybe watch a movie and enjoy the sun by the river tomorrow. This place we are going to is one of the most beautiful places I know of and hopefully I get some good photos to share.

As for a movie, well I've been meaning to download Night of the Living Dead from archive.org for years now. It's public domain and perfectly legal to download and so are many other things on there, it's like a freebie basket full of hidden gems.

Not such a Paranormal Life after all

It's getting really hot down here in New Zealand, feels hotter than it usually is at this time of year, the silly season has taken its toll on my work life with most of my rostered days off being filled with shifts, though in the new year I'll probably struggle to get any.

It's left me with less time for this blog, but it's also left me with time to reflect on what I want to do with it, so hopefully when things settle down I can bang all these ideas out. I think my brothers house may be haunted lol, that should make for good viewing hopefully.

The poll to the left has gone pretty good, I asked "What would you like to see more of on MPL" and Paranormal videos is winning by a large margin, there's 3 days left to vote so if you haven't already give it a go.

I've added the Blogcatalog widget back to the blog, it's nice to see all the regular faces again, don't actually know why I ever took it off.

Anyway I'll be posting videos and such when I find good ones, but until the new year that's probably all you'll see.