I’m very happy to report that my online job ventures are paying off. I’m working for two companies, currently: Demand Studios and eHow. I really enjoy writing “how to” articles, as you can see from my other blog, The Older Geek; I also like writing fact sheets. It’s a time-consuming job, however. Both jobs require onerous references, preferably from educational or government websites. Many times, I know how to do something or fix something, but I have to hunt the web for additional, related references. It can be very time consuming. But I enjoy it, and I am able to stay at home.
Working for eHow so far has no immediate financial benefits. You must first build “clout,” and write some good, solid articles. Once an article starts to get a lot of traffic, you can earn the money. I’ve read a few testimonies of people earning over $1,000 on one article.
So I’ve had less time for blogging. Which is OK. Blogging started out for me as an outlet and a journal (travel) but over the years my blogging has developed, and I’ve loved every minute of it. But I do realize that it may not continue forever.
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I *finally* have the theme just the way I like it, and have been starting to write posts. It’s my latest leap into building more blogs. With The Older Geek, I hope to have more tutorials for topics such as blogging and database management, computer how-tos, and more. These kinds of articles take a long time to write: often, I have to make photos, screenshots, and videos to accent the text tutorials. So the new blog is growing, but slowly. I invite you to come over and take a look! I have a few posts up about how to begin a blog, which I hope will be very helpful to new and experienced bloggers. 
So I spent quite a few hours looking over my options. I checked out Drupal, Joomla, and b2evolution platforms for possible choices… but Drupal was difficult to manage and had very limited choices. Joomla looked too complex, and b2evolution was too plain. So I reverted back to Wordpress. When it comes to blogging, I really need a variety of nice themes. I’m willing to slog through technicalities and database manipulating, but when it comes to nice themes, I draw the line. By FAR, Wordpress has the best themes around. And there are plenty of exceptional-quality themes, too. Here’s one: Template Lite 
Haloscan Closing Its Doors
Feb 6
Posted by Mrs. Mecomber in Blogger, blogs, conversion programs | No Comments
Ouch.
Haloscan, that blog commenting software that has been around for years, is closing the service. This is from their website.
Haloscan was very popular with Blogger, since Blogger’s commenting functions are woefully inadequate (even after a few small tweaks by Google). I tried Haloscan a few years ago, and wasn’t too impressed. Of course, the Blogger commenting functions are terrible. But rather than continue to work with Blogger, I just went to Wordpress and my own self-hosted blogs. It’s been a great experience, with Wordpress.
Regarding Haloscan, some bloggers are afraid they may lose all their comments across hundreds of posts. I *think* Haloscan is offering a free comment migration back to your original blog host, through various third-party vendors. Not sure, though, because it seems some things are still up in the air. Read the FAQs here.
Haloscan is closing February 20.
Tags: Blogger, blogs, comments, Haloscan