Suzy Q Homemaker

Now that I have your attention, I would like to take this moment to say that the new hard drive for the laptop is on its way and I should be back to my irregularly scheduled blogging.  Obviously, I haven’t been posting every day like I usually do.  I feel like my absence really hasn’t been noticed, so whatev.  You heard me.  I said, “whatev.”

Really, though.  Have you missed me?

I finally figured out how to exclude my BlogHer Ads widget from my product review & sponsored giveaway posts!  Initially, my workaround was to eliminate the sidebars from those posts and archive pages, but this made my blog ugly and less functional.  After all, how were sweepers supposed to find more giveaways to enter?  I want them to be able to find the rest of my giveaways, but I also didn’t want to break the BlogHer Ads network rules.

Here’s what I did:

1. Install and activate the Widget Logic Plugin

2. Make a note of the category number for your review posts.  In my case, I have two different categories: “product reviews” and “giveaways”.

3. Go to your widgets panel and open the editor for your BlogHer Ads.  In the Widget Logic text field, add the wordpress conditional tag:

!in_category()

Include your category number inside the parentheses.  Be sure not to leave off the exclamation point, as it’s the one that means “NOT”.  If you have more than one category to exclude from this widget, make sure to add the “array” tag.  For example, my categories were numbers 117 and 22, so my tag was:

!in_category(array(117,22))

4. Hit save and then go check to see if it works!

Note: I am far from being a wordpress expert, so if you have any questions, I’ll do my best to answer them.  This is the fix that worked for me, and I can’t guarantee it will work for you!

I’m planning to do a major overhaul on Suzy Q Homemaker over the next week or so.  I’ll update you all with my progress, but here are some things I am planning to do:

• Import my scrapbooking blog
• Retweak the shopping blog feed
• Rearrange stuff!

So, I’m going to be moving things around which might make things look funny every now and then.  My goal is to make Suzy Q Homemaker a little easier to navigate, while still being able to have it all on one site!

This will also make it easier for me to publish.  By the time I’m done with this overhaul, you’ll be able to subscribe to different categories if you want, but the ones I’m going to burn in feedburner are the main blog, the shopping blog, and the craft blog.

I think.

I honestly have been back and forth about this for a couple weeks and I’ve probably been driving my sister crazy cause she’s the one who’s been helping me with this mess.  It just doesn’t make much sense for me to have like four wordpress installations when I can just customize my one to show what I want on my main page, right?  That’s what I was getting away from blogger for anyway.  Silly me.

You can always subscribe to whatever category you want by clicking on the little feed button in the address bar.  Example: want to only get my giveaway posts in your reader? Navigate to the giveaway category and subscribe to that category. It’s pretty simple.

My point is that if you notice anything funky going on, just remember that I can never make up my mind and I get the rearranging bug from my mom.  She can’t ever keep things the same in her own house and I can’t ever keep things the same on here.  Sorry for any inconveniences!

I am always open to suggestions, too.  Would you rather me burn everything into one feed?  How can I make things easier for you, the reader?

Aright, you guys.  I thought I’d try a little “getting to know me” feature here on Suzy Q Homemaker.  So, is there anything that you’ve been dying to ask me?  Want to know more about how I do that voodoo that I do?  Maybe you just want to know where I got my red hair or why my front tooth has that chip in it?

Or, you can ask me a philosophy question related to Lonergan or Shroedinger’s Cat!  What about my opinions on 20th century composition techniques or why I can’t stand Schoenberg?

Just ask, and I will deliver.

Fill out my handy-dandy contact form, tick the “Sunday Stumper” box and I’ll feature your questions on Sundays.

As I’ve been bed-ridden and had nothing much else to do this week, I’ve made a few changes around here.  If you’ll take a look up there in the navigation bar, I’ve added a “Shop” link.  Click on that and you’ll be taken to a little corner of my blog where I’ll be posting some most delicious eye-candy.  Basically, anything that I would buy for myself or my kids, I’ll be posting there.  I made a promise to myself not to over-post in that area so’s I won’t clog up yer readers.  Of course, if you want me to post more, I will.  Just tell me!

Look over on my sidebar and you’ll see an odd looking thermometer.  That there is my Make-A-Wish donation goal and if you feel so inclined, click to make a donation!  If you’d like to hear more about my partnership with Make-A-Wish through Creative Memories, let me know and I’ll shoot you an email.  You can also take a look at the Wishes and Dreams scrapbooking products that support the Make-A-Wish Foundation, too.

I’m pretty sure that’s all.  As always, if you have any questions about me or my site, I have a handy contact form in my navigation bar that you can fill out.

Happy Thursday everyone!