At the end of last year’s cherry season (it actually may have been closer to mid-fall), I bought a push button cherry pitter from the farm store where we buy our vegetables.  It was a few dollars and pitting cherries is enough of a pain in the ass that I tended to not give them to the twins because they couldn’t really grasp the concept of spitting out the pit.

I used the push button cherry pitter for the first time on Wednesday, and I fell so deeply in love with it that I immediately started calling people to see if they too knew the beauty of the cherry pitter.  People didn’t react well to my effusive questions, brushing me off as if cherry pitters are not something to be cherished or discussed ad nauseum.  Some friends actually seemed concerned when I offered to drive out to the farm store to buy them one, and they muttered things like, “that won’t be necessary.”  I want to give people the gift of cherry pitting, and people seem unsure of whether they want to take it.  Odd.

If anyone has a good recipe for cherry preserves, the twins and I would like to try our hand at making our own cherry yogurt filling.  Yes, it is just an excuse to pit more cherries.

*******

What are your thoughts on this idea of pay per use of the Internet?

I use my home Internet for play, but I also use it for work, and it doesn’t really bother me to use it for work because I have unlimited usage.  But if I had to pay every time I used the Internet, would it make me feel cranky to answer work emails off the clock?  Would I cut corners instead of giving it my all?  We’ve created a culture in America where we meld business with pleasure, being accessible outside of work for work-related questions/actions.  We can’t create that culture and then set up obstacles that don’t allow us to follow that culture.  Would having to pay every time to used the Internet make you use it less, or would it not affect your usage at all?

And dude, if I was being billed for spam getting past the email filter and coming into the inbox, I hope the government would do more to curb spam.

I know this isn’t imminent, though capping your Internet usage in tiers is something that companies do for smartphones.

*******

Because the twins have to share a birthday, we created for each of them a floating family holiday called ChickieNob Day or Wolvog Day.  They float along the family calendar and each pop up once a year.  The way one knows that it is ChickieNob/Wolvog Day is that you go down to your chair in the kitchen and it is decorated in a big sign and lollipops. When it is your special day, you get to choose all the activities and meals.

It was ChickieNob Day last weekend, so we ate doughnuts for breakfast (I was thankfully spared and allowed to eat yogurt though I still ended up smelling like the doughnut store which turns my stomach) and painted pottery and swam.  And then the ChickieNob cried when it was time for bed because she wanted every single day to be ChickieNob Day.  Don’t we all.

*******

And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week as well as the week before.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Visible Life” (Slate)
• “Right Where I Am: 2012” (Still Life with Circles)
• “Belief, Discussion, and Dissent in the Cloud” (A Half Baked Life)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Life As I Know It has a post about witnessing pure joy.  Until you see unadulterated joy, you can’t really understand the difference between extreme happiness and what lies beyond.  But she got to witness it when an adoption was finalized.  She writes, “Sure I’ve seen plenty of happiness, but this was something different. This was more. It was a couple who had truly given up on this ever happening. Today I literally witnessed a dream come true.”

A Thousand Oceans has a gorgeous post for Angie’s “Right Where I Am” project that recounts what life is like 2 months and 3 weeks after a loss.  I will give you a heads up that you — like me — will bawl reading this, especially when you consider the most enormous part of her move: “Leaving this place, packing these boxes with our books and pots and pans, is leaving my children behind. So on this day, 2 months and 3 weeks since Aminadav and Naava came and went and returned to the land, my land, I hope you can understand why I can’t interrupt my moping to thank anyone for enabling me to leave this place.”  And you will suck in your breath when you read what her MIL said.  It is a gorgeous, heartbreaking post.

Lastly, A Half Baked Life has a post about what she learned about between-ness from an exercise she did in yoga.  Instead of moving right into the next position, her teacher had them hover close to the position for a moment before completing it, creating a slow-motion effect.  She explains, “I am not good with in-between-ness.  It’s not that I don’t enjoy the journey from point A to point B, but rather that I generally live with my end goals in sight, and I tend to be hell-bent on arriving at them.”  The post really resonated with me, perhaps because I feel similarly about between-ness — both struggling with it and knowing there is a lot to learn there.

The roundup to the Roundup: Profound love of the cherry pitter.  What do you think of pay per use for the Internet?  It was ChickieNob Day.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between May 24th and June 1st) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

Heads up: this post may have triggers for you if you’ve experienced pregnancy loss, stillbirth, or neonatal death.  Tread carefully and close without reading if you’re in a raw space.

The ChickieNob made a potential gift list for her birthday; things she would love for someone to get her.  Josh warned me that the list would break my heart before he handed it to me.  I started reading it aloud:

I wish for a kitty for me and the Wolvog to share.

I wish for a sister.

I wish for a baby alive.

I wish for some nightgowns.

I wish for some new shoes.

I wish for some little plants.

I snorted on the first one (there is no chance in hell that I am getting yet another pet when I am the only person who truly cares for Cozy Jackson).  And I paused on the second.  And then I busted on through and read the third, adding in the word “gross” afterwards.

“Gross is your reaction?” Josh asked incredulously.

“I’ve heard horror stories from people who have them.  You feed it the ‘food’ and then it starts rotting on the inside of the doll and smells after a while.  I’m not getting her a Baby Alive unless she agrees not to feed it, and then what is the point?”

Josh stared at the list again and said, “It’s a doll?  I thought she meant she wants a baby… who is alive.”

“Oh.” I paused.  “No, Baby Alive is a doll.”

But isn’t it just six of one, half dozen of the other if we’re going to focus on the request for a sister?  The wish for a Baby Alive?

*******

The ChickieNob knows vaguely about miscarriage.  By which I mean that she has asked what happened to all the other babies the doctor tried to put in my belly.  But the two of us had a girls night out a few weeks ago: just two ladies out on the town, getting dinner with one another, riding the train at the mall, trying on dresses just for the sake of trying on dresses, getting chocolate cake at the diner.  It was a night of questions.  We were talking about something else — I don’t even remember what; perhaps vacations we might want to take in the future — when she asked, “how can a baby die right after its born?”  She had read a biography of Betsy Ross which mentioned that she had two daughters who died in infancy.

Which brought us into an age-appropriate exploration of stillbirth and neonatal death.  The focus at first was on the baby, and then slowly she switched to thinking about the mother, essentially asking in thirty different ways how someone could possibly grieve through that.  How life could go on after that.  I didn’t have a good answer for her, but instead just let her ask the question as many times as she needed to ask it before she went on to the next thought.

I’ve always thought it was a failure by the medical community to not prepare women better for the possibility of pregnancy loss, stillbirth, or neonatal death.  That it does women a disservice to imply that all children are born.  It’s great if your life follows that continuum: sex = baby = birth = rest of life.  But for anyone who doesn’t, I feel like it’s an extra cleaving: not only is your heart split in half from the actual event, but in addition, you were essentially promised via language choices that this could never come to be.  And suddenly, it is.  How do you trust again after that?

My intense love for the ChickieNob turned me into a total hypocrite.  “I want you to know how rare it is,” I lie, knowing full well the statistics for miscarriage as well as stillbirth and neonatal death.  And beyond that, statistics don’t really matter when you fall on the wrong side of them.  Rare is only rare if it doesn’t happen to you.  “That you will most likely never experience that.  I don’t want you worrying about this.  But if it did ever happen, I would be there for you, I would hold you and love you and take care of anything I could take care of.”

Because what else do you say other than that?

*******

Rather than focus on the doll or the request for a sister, we dissected the rest of her list, laughing that she sounded like a little girl living in the shtetl in 1914.  Just some nightgowns.  A new pair of shoes.  A little bit of green to brighten up the dreariness of the tenement house.  Part of me feels that we did something very very right if she is asking for clothing and ficuses rather than Bratz.  And part of me sometimes worries me that we’re doing something very very wrong.  Not for any one reason, but because I think all parents worry that they are doing or saying something that will forever change the fabric of their child.  And I want to walk that fine line between telling the truth and quelling fears, leaning heavier on the side of quelling fears with the hope that she will never know anything otherwise.  That I will not have inadvertently created the cleaving I judge the medical community for.

Welcome back to IComLeavWe. It stands for International Comment Leaving Week, but if you say it aloud, doesn’t it sounds like “I come; [but] leave [as a] we”? And that’s sort of the point. Blogging is a conversation and comments should be honoured and encouraged. I like to say that comments are the new hug–a way of saying hello, giving comfort, leaving congratulations.

Here is the vital information, pure and simple (a more detailed set of rules follows below the list):

• The list opens the 1st of every month. It remains open until the 21st. You can add yourself at any point. The list is open to everyone in the blogosphere–blog writers and/or blog readers.
• Add yourself to the list by filling out this form:  The June list is now closed.  The July one will open up at the end of the month.
  
• Click here to cut-and-paste this bit of code to add to your sidebar (if you have the old code from another month, remove it and replace it with this one). You need to add the icon or a link to the current list on your blog (see below) and will not be added until it’s up.
• Commenting kicks off every month on the 21st. Please mark it somewhere (calendar, post-it note taped to your computer…), though I will be sending out an email reminder on the 20th. Commenting week runs from the 21st to the 28th. Every day, leave 5 comments and return 1 comment for a total of 6 comments. You are highly encouraged to choose the blogs you comment on from the participants list below, but this is not required.
• I will send a second email on the 28th to remind you to remove the icon from your blog.
• Read below if you want to find out about Iron Commenters.
• The commenting ends on the 28th. We catch our breath and the whole thing starts again the next month on the 1st. Drop in and out according to what is happening in your life between the 21st and the 28th.

1. Stirrup Queens (twins, books, writing)
2. Adrift on a Dandelion Breeze (stillbirth, secondary IF, IVF)
3. Lavender Luz (open adoption, living mindfully, yoga)
4. The Future Fords (unexplained infertility, TTC)
5. Nest Building 101 (family, DIY, photography)
6. 1000 Oceans (twin loss, ivf, very early pregnancy)
7. Looking For That One (IVF, waiting, ttc again)
8. Outrageous Fortune (twins, cerebral palsy, self-publishing)
9. Searching for our silver lining (FET#2, RPL, balance)
10. Life As I Know It (twins, toddler, life)
11. Created Family (ttc #1, social worker, unexplained infertility)
12. The Road From There To Here (pcos, faith, simplifying our lives)
13. A Page In My Book (family, differently abled children, support)
14. My Lady of the Lantern (parenting after IF and loss, jittery, adapting)
15. Breathe Gently (IVF, PCOS, anovulation)
16. Feeling Beachie (life, humor, family)
17. Musings of a Hormonal Egg Basket (parenting after infertility)
18. Our Pathway to Parenthood (IVF #1, infertility, hope)
19. CD1 Again (infertility, TTC, life)
20. It Is What It Is (Or Is It?) (pg w donated embryos, ttc#2, pg over 45)
21. Babylicious Tales (motherhood, unexpectedly expecting)
22. I’m Just Ducky, Thanks (surrogacy, adoption, rpl)
23. Baby-Making Merry-go-Round (IVF, pregnancy, quads!)
24. My Journey to Get Fit and Battle PCOS (early pregnancy, pcos, weight issues)
25. The Elusive Second Line (miscarriage, PCOS, TTC #1)
26. Life is hard!! (stillbirth, living children, almost ttc again)
27. A Life of Choice (life, infertility, couchsurfing)
28. If You Don’t Stand For Something (MFI, geekiness, general life ramblings)
29. Bring on the Babies… (recurrent loss, IVF, preterm labor)
30. A Blanket 2 Keep (IUI, life, hope)
31. Syringe Sisters (IVF, pregnancy, twins)
32. Our Growing Gardunn (secondary RPL, septum removal, iui)
33. Infertile FirstMom (IVF with donor eggs, birthmotherhood/adoption, general infertility)
34. Waiting for Baby (pcos, vasectomy reversal, ttc #1)
35. Doping For Baby (IVF, humor, gratitude)
36. Waiting for Little Feet (pregnancy, infertility, life)
37. The Eloping Stethoscope (newlyweds, DIY, life)
38. Wanted: Family of Three (ivf #1, MFI, TWW)
39. Modern Medicine Miracle (military life, donor sperm, ttc)
40. Glitter & Rainbows (infertility, break, life)
41. Detour (surgeries, pain, hope)
42. Baking & Babies (infertility, ttc, baking)
43. Searching for the Missing Piece (adoption, life, creativity)
44. Parenthood for Me (adoption infertility coping)
45. holly’s narrative dream (secondary infertility, writing, life)
46. ErnieGirl (thyroid, pregnant, birthmother)
47. The Crafted Cure (diy, lifestyle, newlyweds)
48. A Writer In A Wheelchair (disability, books, life)
49. Poetry Sans Onions (poetry, life, change/loss)
50. My Life is About the Journey (recurrent loss, TTC #1, jealousy)
51. Dog Mom Chasing the Stork  (TTC, clomid, relationships)
52. The Barreness (art, infertility, reflection)
53. Tales from the Waiting Room (unexplained infertility, ivf, ttc #1)
54. A Journey of Emotions (fertility, emotions, challenges)
55. My (In)fertile Confessions (twins, making baby food, life)
56. for all the things we hope for (endometriosis, long-term infertility, birth doula business)
57. MRKH Musings (wombless life, surrogacy)
58. The 2 Week Wait (infertility motherhood hope)
59. She’s Gone Crunchy (parenting after infertility, crunchy stuff, toddlers)
60. IUI to Roux-en-Y (weight loss, surgery, ttc again soon)
61. Return To Go (PCOS, RPL, unemployment)
62. Why Not Us? (infertility, life, ttc)
63. Mommy Summers (mom after pcos)
64. Hapa Hopes (IVF, endo, life)
65. Weathering Storms (transracial adoption, parenting, life)
66. Living Our Miracle (embryo adoption, premature ovarian failure, motherhood)
67. Upper Middle Mom (parenting after IVF, twins, starting over)
68. Tiny Bits of Hope (IVF #1, teaching)
69. Things Couldn’t Be Better (embryo adoption, humor, and other random happenings)
70. Conceptionally Challenged (IF, life, me)
71. Who Is This Fertile Myrtle (IVF #2, unexplained infertility)
72. My Life in a Nut Shell (pregnancy after loss, repeate miscarriage, coping)
73. Dwelling on Dreams (pregnancy, RPL, miscarriage)
74. Compromised Fertility (failed cycles/RPL, feelings, PCOS)
75. Our Journey Through This Lovely Life (ttc, loss, adventures)
76. A Little Blog about the Big Infertility (RPL, endometriosis, repeat IVF failure)
77. It’s Just a Box of Rain (open adoption, parenting, parenting after IF)
78. Waiting to Expand (infertility, loss, mothering)
79. The June list is now closed.  The July one will open up at the end of the month.

Q: What if I miss a day?

A: Catch up the next day by doubling your comments–12 comments instead of 6.

Q: What if I have two blogs? Can I sign up twice, listing both blogs?

A: Yes, but you also need to double your comments. If you have two blogs listed, you should be leaving 12 comments per day.

Q: What is an Iron Commenter?

A: Not for the faint-of-heart. People who wish to be an Iron Commenter and be entered on the Iron Commenter honour roll need to leave a comment on every blog on the participants list (exceptions are blogs that require you to have a special log-in, such as some LiveJournal accounts or other similar situations). You can spread out this commenting any way you wish over the whole week, but the final comment needs to be left by midnight on the 28th (EST). Reaching Iron Commenter status is done on an honour system. Please email me if you earn Iron Commenter status so I can add you to the wall of honour.

Q: Why do I have to add that bit of code to my sidebar?

A: The code is the latest icon (the icon changes colour every month so you know that you’re on the right list). This month, the icon is red, the next month it will be green, etc. The reason is two-fold: (1) it enables more people to find out about IComLeavWe and (2) it gives you easy access to the current list once the commenting week actually begins and better ensures that you’ll use it. Too many times, people sign up and forget to actually do IComLeavWe and this icon gives you a daily reminder (with the dates on it) every time you open your own blog. The icon is linked back to the current list. On the 28th, remove the icon from your blog. A new one will be created for the next month.

Q: It’s the 23rd and I just saw this for the first time on my friend’s blog! I want to join the list–why can’t I?

A: Because IComLeavWe happens every month, once the list is closed, it’s closed. If you’re finding out about this on the 23rd, you can’t join the current month. But leave yourself a note to check back in a week on the 1st and you can sign up for the next month.

Q: You said the list closes on the 21st. Well, it’s still the 21st where I am. Why aren’t you moving my information onto the list?

A: All dates and times are U.S. Eastern Standard Time (UTC/GMT -5 hours). The list closes around 11 p.m. EST on the 21st.

Q: What if no one comments on my blog and I have no comments to return?

A: Well, that really doesn’t happen for the most part, but in that case, simply choose another blog and add an additional comment. The goal is to hit 6 comments daily as a minimum. Going over that is fantastic and encouraged.

Q: Mel, my question wasn’t covered at all. What do I do?

A: Email me; I’m quite friendly. It helps to place “IComLeavWe” in the subject line. You could also check this post which contains the history of IComLeavWe and see if you can glean anything there.

Looking for the comment section? It has been closed on this post. Use the form in the directions to add yourself to the list.

Photo Credit: Magnus D via Flickr.

I promised you a post on how to set-up a self-hosted blog and here it is.  This post starts with the assumption that you’ve been using free software (Blogger, WordPress, or something similar) and blogging for a bit, and now you want to move to a self-hosted space.  If you’re starting a new space entirely and not transferring posts and comments from an old space, simply skip step 8 but do the rest of the steps.

Why Self-Host

Ignore the people who are speaking in rapturous tones about how you’re going to be able to host sound files and video, as if the mere thought of these media forms sends them into orgasm.  Ignore the people who tell you that self-hosted blogs look more “professional.”  In this space, we’re doing this for one reason and one reason alone: ownership.

I think of self-hosting as somewhere between an insurance policy for my blog and a promise that I won’t need to end up sleeping on some other platform’s sofa because I’ve been evicted from my blog space.  The difference between a self-hosted blog and a free blog is the same difference between an apartment you own and one that you squat in.  When you own an apartment, you can decorate your space any way you want. You have room to hold all of your things — physical items in the house and sound files on the blog. And more than that, you own it. It’s yours. No one can take it away from you (provided you continue to pay for hosting and don’t violate the TOS of your host).  When you squat in an apartment (we can’t even say you’re really renting because you have little to no recourse if your free blogging platform evicts you), you could end up living there blissfully for many years or you could end up coming home one day and finding the locks changed.  With no super to let you back in.

So that’s the biggest reason to self-host.

Oh, and hosting a sound file is cool too (imagine When Harry Met Sally-like orgasm right here).

Step One: Pick the URL and Name

Choose a blog name and blog url. You will be able to change the name in the future, but not the url. So choose something general that applies to many facets of life since you’ll hopefully have this blog for a long period of time.  By which I mean, don’t choose a url in the same way you chose a url for your free blog.  This one needs to grow with you and shouldn’t be tied to a single facet of your life.  Unless there will never be an end to that single facet of your life OR your blog is so established that changing the url now will be confusing.  I have to admit, I went with stirrup-queens.com because I fell into that latter category.

Step Two: Pick a Host

There are dozens of reliable hosting sites out there. A while back, Lifehacker compiled their 5 favourite web hosting services. BlueHost, DreamHost, and HostGator are all commonly-used web hosting sites. Ask bloggers who self-host which company they’re using. Other questions to ask friends: Is the company reliable or do the servers go down a lot? Is it user-friendly? Can you get helpful people on the phone when you have a question?  Like everything else out there (telephone companies, television service providers, doctors, etc), you will find some people who have the most amazing experience with their host and simultaneously people who have the worst experience with the very same host.  What I’m saying is go with one of the big hosting companies because they’re consistent and keep in mind that they’re still a company and personal experience with the company (vs. delivery of goods) will likely vary.

When you purchase your hosting package, you will also be purchasing the url.  If you already purchased the url via another place, you will need to let the host know that.  You can transfer the url, but it takes time and usually a bit of money.  You have three options: (1) transfer the url — your new host will be able to walk you through those steps, (2) continue to use the url and pay two different places — your domain will be a yearly charge from one place and your hosting will be a yearly charge from another place, or (3) get a new domain with your new host and redirect your old domain to point to the new domain.  Once that old domain expires, you will either need to pay to renew it or hopefully have all of the traffic moved to your new domain anyway.

If you are getting your domain from your new host, you will also want to opt for domain privacy.  It is an additional charge, but it is worth it.  If you don’t opt for it, the address and telephone number you use to purchase the hosting will become part of the WHOIS database, searchable by anyone on the Internet.  If you opt for domain privacy, your host will provide their address as the publicly listed address with your address privately listed on the account.

Step Three: Get to Know Your cPanel

Welcome to ownership.  You now have two spaces on the Internet that you need to maintain (actually, three if you count your old blog).  One of them will be your blog dashboard, which is the software you are familiar with if you have ever blogged.  The other space is your control panel or cPanel on your host’s site.  So, let’s say you chose BlueHost as your host (I’m going to use them as the example, but if you went with another host, substitute their name every time I write BlueHost and tweak the instructions accordingly).  Go to the BlueHost site now and look at the top right corner of their site.  You will see a login box called “Control Panel Login.”  Um… and then what are you waiting for?  Log in.

Step Four: Install WordPress

I know it’s confusing, but there is also a paid version of WordPress in addition to the free version of WordPress.  You are going for the “installed version” which is the paid version.  Scroll down to the Site Builder section of your cPanel and you will see a 1-click installation of WordPress option.  You will now be utilizing a program called SimpleScripts, and it will walk you through the process of installing WordPress.  By the way, I’m telling you to install WordPress not because it’s the only option out there but because it’s the easiest option out there.  I’m assuming that if you have the ability to build a site from scratch with other software, you wouldn’t be reading a post called “How to Set-Up a Self-Hosted Blog.”

So click “install.”  You will then be asked where you want to install WordPress.  You will want to install it under the main domain if your site is strictly a blog (http://yoururl.com).  The only reason you’d want to install it to a subfolder is if you are a business and you want your blog to be a small part of your site, but the rest of the site will be your business.

Answer the preferences questions and hit “complete.”  It will now install the software and give you a link to the new login information for your site.  Write all of this down (though they’ll also email a copy to you).  And now go to your site by clicking on the link, put in the login information, and voila, you have your own completely empty self-hosted site.

Step Five: Pick a Theme

You are now in the dashboard of your site.

By http://wordpress.org [GPL], via Wikimedia Commons

This is different from your cPanel (where you just were on the BlueHost site).  This is where you are going to login everyday and write your blog posts.  You will only be visiting your cPanel from time to time.  You will be visiting your dashboard daily.  So bookmark it.

The theme is the template of your site.  There are hundreds of thousands of themes out there — some paid, some free.  For the sake of ease, I’m going to recommend that you start with one that has already been approved by WordPress and listed in their theme directory rather than go out to a website (just Google “WordPress themes” and you’ll find them) and find one to install.

In your dashboard, go to the left sidebar menu and choose:

• Appearance, and then
• Themes, and then choose the tab marked
• Install Themes (as opposed to Manage Themes)

After you peruse the options (use the check boxes to search for one you might like), choose a theme and hit install.  This is the template for your blog.

Step Six: Fill Out Information in Settings

You have your theme; now you need to set your blog options.

Go to Settings on your left dashboard menu.  We’re going to open each option and fill out some information.  Make sure you click “save changes” at the bottom of each screen.

• General: Give your blog name under “site title.”  Give the url under “WordPress Address” and “Site Address” (http://yoururl.com).  Enter an email address where you want to receive information such as sent comments.  Don’t click that membership box.  New users should be set to subscriber because you can always override that for individuals and make them more later.  Set your timezone and your date format, time format, and starting day of the week.
• Writing: Set the size of your post box (this is what you see as you write a post.  Feel free to make it big).  The rest of this page is sort of up to you.  You can choose whether you want to be able to post remotely — like from your email.  You can also list your blog with Ping-o-Matic and then under “update services” put the following url (http://rpc.pingomatic.com/).
• Reading: You want your front page to display your current posts (unless you want a static page to always be your landing page — not really recommended unless there’s a good reason).  Tell how many posts you want on the front page of your blog at a given time (and keep the number small because it will affect load time) or in your feed.  This is where you set whether you want to publish the full text in your blog feed or the summary (this only affects how your blog appears in a Reader).
• Discussion: These settings can all be changed on individual posts, so this space just sets the default position.  Opt for comments on all new posts, say what you want commenters to leave informationwise in order to leave a comment, say when you want comments emailed to you.  A piece of advice: the spam filter is great on installed WordPress and most people don’t really need comments moderated.  Make it as easy as possible for people to leave a comment on your site.  You can also list your preferences for moving a comment automatically to moderation or spam.  Feel free to play with the avatar settings.
• Media: Set your media size limits (pictures and videos) or just go with the default settings.
• Privacy: Set your privacy option depending on whether you want to show up in search engines.
• Permalinks: Set your permalink preference.  My advice: choose one with a name because it will help people quickly identify the post vs. ones with just numbers that don’t give any information to the person looking at the url.  If you are concerned about redirection (see below), you will need to use the custom permalink option in order utilize some of the redirection tricks.  Read on before you decide on this one.

Go to the Users menu in the left dashboard sidebar and also create a new login for yourself while erasing the “admin” one if you haven’t already done that.  Leaving the admin one up can become a security risk.

Step Seven: Plugins

Two terms you’re going to have to know to use WordPress are widgets and plugins.

Plugins allow you to do everything you could do on your free blog and then some.  The thing is, your blog comes with only one or two plugins, so you will need to load the rest.  This is a pain-in-the-ass if you wish all of it was delivered to you like a free blog, but it ultimately more rewarding and makes your blog exactly as you like it.

Your site should have come with Akismet installed.  If not, make sure you choose that as one of your plugins.  It’s a spam filter, and it’s amazing.  Other plugins you may want are audio player (so you can host a sound file), flash video player (so you can host video), and something that maintains Blogger or WordPress or Tumbler permalinks (you’ll need this if you’re importing your blog from another place.  Here’s an example plugin).  If you go to the plugins menu on your left dashboard sidebar, you will see an option for “add new.”  That is where you search for new plugins, and you can find them to do pretty much anything.  From putting those “share on social media sites” buttons at the bottom of a post to polls that you can embed in your sidebar.

Widgets are little boxes that you can move around under “Appearance” to place things on your actual blog sidebar.  So add a link list or a way for people to subscribe to your RSS feed or whatever else you want.  The point: make your space a comfortable little home for your content.  And don’t feel like it needs to be perfect from day one.  Get the bare bones up, and you’ll add to it over time.

You may also want to tweak your template a bit — remove an item or change the spacing.  You do all of this from the Appearance menu as well.  Just go into the editor option and you’ll see a lot of code.  Er… on second thought, it may be better not to fiddle with this section unless you know what you’re doing.

Please note that every theme is different, and your dashboard may look a bit different (or have different names) too.

Step Eight: Import Your Content

The larger the blog, the harder it is to move.  Those are just the facts, ma’am.  Moving a small blog with a few posts and comments is like moving a mouse.  Pick it up and place it someplace else.  Moving a large blog with hundreds of posts and thousands of comments is like moving an elephant.  It can be done, but it isn’t going to be simple and you may want to invest in having someone else move your site, especially if you’re easily frustrated when you hit roadblocks.  There are plenty of bloggers who moonlight doing Web design, and they can help you move over your blog and get it set up for a fee. Again, ask people who self-host for recommendations if they used someone to help them set up their site or it looks like WordPress offers their own version.

But wait, you want to do it yourself.  Roll up your sleeves and let’s get started.

Option One

Go to your new WordPress site.  Choose Tools, then Import.  You will see an option for Blogger or WordPress (or other sites such as Tumbler, LiveJournal, or Typepad).  Install the importer and authorize it to pull the content from your Blogger or old WordPress account.  Click the “magic button” and you should see your posts and comments begin moving to your new site.  You may need to hit “continue” a few times if the text on the button changes to say “continue.”  You may also see it say something such as “set authors.”  This means everything has been moved over.

Option Two

If for some reason that doesn’t work (and it might not if your blog is too big), here is another way to bring in your content.  Go to your old site and go into the dashboard.  In WordPress, go back to your the left sidebar and choose Tools, then Export.  Download it and save it to your computer.  In Blogger, go to Settings, then Other, and then you’ll see Blog Tools at the top of the page.  Click Export Blog and save it to your computer.

Then, go into your new site and go to the dashboard again.  Under Tools, you will also find Import.  Upload the file and you should see your posts and comments in the new space (remember to choose download & import file attachments).

Redirection

Now you need to go back to your old space and redirect your old blog posts to point to your new blog posts.  This is actually fairly complicated.  WordPress has a paid service that will direct it for you (it costs $12 per year and may be worth your time and stress to do so) or you can try to do it yourself with their instructions.  I found instructions online for how to do this from Blogger.  Here is another online tutorial that Lifehacker recommended.

Or let the old site go — you only need to redirect if people have a lot of links to your blog on their blog, or if you get a lot of traffic from search engines.

Step Nine: Enjoy Your New Site

Be prepared if you do it yourself that it will take time. It took me weeks to move over all of my content and comments, design the site, and I had people helping me. It’s best to move your blog without a mental timeline in place, and to take a step back and deep breathe when you realize how much there is to learn.

Like owning a house, you will always find little things you want to fix and clean-up. But also, like owning a house, once you’re settled, you’re going to look up and smile at how far you’ve come. When we first moved into our house, I had no idea that there was a proper way to paint a wall, or how to fix chipped enamel on a tub. I had to learn and did so by asking a lot of questions. And the same goes for self-hosting a blog. No, I didn’t know HTML or how to read a line of code and figure out what to tweak. I just jumped in and got my hands dirty (and cried a lot in the beginning).  People — like me — are usually happy to answer questions that come up along the way.  I find that Twitter is often a lifesaver in getting a quick answer when you don’t understand something with self-hosting.

But more than the control I feel in what I can do with the blog, I also feel more settled about my space on the Web.  I know where my blog is going to be parked.

Last piece of advice: back-up your blog.  Do it often.  Do a poor man’s blog backup and export a copy of your blog to save on your hard drive every few days.  And now go fly — you are totally ready to do this.

Ask questions (or add additional advice) in the comment section below.  For the sake of ease, I’m going to answer questions in the comment section instead of emailing the answer to you so everyone can see it.  So return to see the answer later on.

Like external validation, the idea of where my story ends and someone else’s story begins is something I return to over and over and over again.  What you are essentially reading is the argument I have in my head on an on-going basis, and I go back and forth about it as a consumer, as a possible subject, and as a producer — three different roles.  We all play at least two of these, and artists in any medium — from painters to bloggers — play the third one.  But these thoughts are not meant to invoke guilt.  On the contrary, I want a conversation.  I want us all thinking and talking about these very blurry lines because it’s a different world now that it’s an online world.

As a consumer, I obviously love it when people write about other people.  If they didn’t do it, I wouldn’t have my entertainment, I wouldn’t have my knowledge, I wouldn’t have all the things I get out of reading blogs and books.  I’m glad when friends post pictures of their kids on Facebook so I can see their kids age and keep up with their life.  When people write about things that are personal, it makes me feel less alone knowing that we all are struggling with this big, messy, wonderful thing called life.  So, yes, I absolutely agree that I’ve benefited tremendously from other people writing about their children or their spouse or themselves.

As a possible subject — someone who is very skittish when people write about her (while I don’t mind people writing about my words or ideas, I am very uncomfortable when people write about me) — I keep in mind how I would feel if someone wrote a blog about me, and I try to behave accordingly so the twins will do unto me in the future (oh please please please don’t start a blog about me, children).  I think this fact colours my thinking a lot.  If I was an extroverted person, it probably wouldn’t bother me to have people writing about me.  In fact, I might eat it up with a spoon.  But I’m not an extroverted person.  I’m most definitely an introverted person, and I always think about whether the people I’m writing about are introverted or extroverted people.  Whether they’ll enjoy reading something about themselves, or whether even an effusive, kindhearted post will make them squirm uncomfortably.

The twins know that you all know about them.  They know numbers — how many people read about them — and they know subject matter — what I post about them.  As long as I stay on one side of the subject matter line, and I afford them their privacy by not bringing them along to events, they are okay with things so far.  But I always worry that we’ll end up with an A.A. Milne/Christopher Robin situation that Marjorie Ingall wrote about in her Tablet magazine article when she explained why she’s not writing about her children anymore.

Milne said in an interview,

In pessimistic moments, when I was trudging London in search of an employer wanting to make use of such talents as I could offer, it seemed to me, almost, that my father had got to where he was by climbing upon my infant shoulders, that he had filched from me my good name and had left me with nothing but the empty fame of being his son.

This sort of sums up my fears: good writing is always enjoyable for the consumer, but it isn’t always enjoyable for the subject.  And which way will it go: is the subject thrilled to be immortalized, to know that their life influenced the lives (or at least the thoughts) of others?  Or does the subject feel as if every word took something away from him?  That each word we place online or in a book scoops away a fragment of their being and individuality, until all that is left is a paper version of themselves, two-dimensional, like Jackie Draper turning into Jackie Paper.  And yes, Jackie Paper was created because Jackie Draper couldn’t go on the adventures; he was too depressed.  But still, we all know that Jackie Paper wasn’t real, wasn’t even close to being as three-dimensional and unique as Jackie Draper.  Is that what we’re doing when we write about another person: taking their Jackie Draperness and making a facsimile of their self to present to others?

And at what point does the need to transmit information, to giving away valuable advice, come before the feelings of the subject?  There are going to be times when the person doesn’t want us to write about them, but it becomes more important to get the story out there than it does to take the subject’s preferences into consideration.  But then aren’t there also other times when their feelings get to trump the dissemination of their story?  Even if we have a burning need to tell it?

Which I guess takes us to my role as a producer.  I think there is a fallacy here that few of us remember until someone points it out: there is a big difference between writing and publishing.  Sometimes they become wrapped together when we choose to publish something we write, but writing can also be kept as a separate entity from publishing.  I completely understand that need to write and can stand behind it without hesitation.  It’s the publishing part that gives me pause.  Do we need to publish?  Some would answer yes, especially if they get more out of the conversation than they do writing the piece.  And some, if honest, would have to answer no.  I don’t know where I fall on that continuum.  I used to believe I needed to publish.  Now, at a different age, I’m not sure.

I think there are things I need to publish and things I don’t, and the struggle for me is knowing which things I’m publishing gratuitously and which ones I’m publishing out of necessity.  There are things I need to write that can also remain as a draft; everything I need to know about myself or the situation extracted from the act of writing before I ever reach the act of hitting publish; and that is true for blog posts just as much as it’s true for books.

I don’t think it’s unethical to write about other people, nor do I think it’s immoral.  But I do think it’s disingenuous to think that what we write doesn’t matter to our subject as long as we’re getting something out of it.  To think that it won’t affect them, that they’ll be fine with it, that no harm no foul if everyone else is doing it too.  That is too weak an argument to support such a heavy truth.  It doesn’t matter how anyone else is treating their subject.  It only matters how you are treating your subject; whether that subject is your partner or your siblings or your children or your parents or the annoying neighbour down the street who comes to your bunco game.  Sometimes we know our subjects well.  And sometimes we don’t really know how our subjects will feel because our subjects themselves don’t know how they feel about the story floating into the universe.

Within a single story, I can point out the facts that belong to the twins and I can point out the facts that belong to me, and what I struggle with are the facts that are entwined around each other and cannot be picked apart or owned by a single person.  The twins are such an enormous part of my life that it’s impossible to speak about myself without mentioning them.  It would be unrealistic to never write about them.  Which means that it’s a balancing act of taking what is rightfully my story but then being mindful that when I take from what is our story, I am taking something.  And that act of removal might either add to their being or detract.  And I just don’t know which one.

On two side notes: One, I am so grateful for the comments you’ve made every time I write on this topic: it helps me make sense of my own thoughts (hmmm… a point in favour of hitting publish; of writing not being enough).  And two, I am finishing up the tutorial for moving to a self-hosted blog and I’ll have that up tomorrow.  It is kind of long, but that’s just because I literally walked you through step-by-step.  So feel free to skim.