website info

This website was started in January 2008, as part of a class project, but also something I had been wanting to do for a long time. It is part journal, part scrapbook, and part sharing (links and reviews) site.

This site was named by my wonderful husband (then fiance) after much brainstorming time. I really love the name Aforementioned Thoughts, even if it is kinda long to type!

Aforementioned Thoughts is hosted by Go Daddy. I have to admit I was a little leery of using a company that brings to mind half naked girls running around in their ads, but really they have great service. I’ve gotten several courtesy calls from them seeing how my service is and the time that I called in needing help their customer service was so helpful and patient in guiding me to what I needed. Plus, their costs are pretty reasonable compared to others that I’ve researched.

One of the other great things about Go Daddy is that their hosting center has one click installation for Wordpress, which is the blogging platform used on this site. Again, I have no complaints with Wordpress. It’s a really professional looking software that is easy to use and absolutely free. I love the free part! Also, there are so many great looking free wordpress themes out there so you don’t have to spend hours to make your website look wonderful.

Another part that I love about Wordpress are the plugins that you can get for free. Developers have made plugins so almost anything you want your blog to do - you can do it. Right now Aforementioned Thoughts is rocking the following plugins:
Blogroll page - This allows me to put my blogroll on a separate page rather than filling up my sidebar.
Comment Email Responder - I hate leaving open ended comments on other blogs when you never know if you get a response. If I respond to your comment on here and you get an email to let you know, this is why.
DoFollow - This disables nofollow in comments.
Feedburner Feedsmith - This redirects my feeds to Feedburner, which gives readers a really nice interface to subscribe to my feeds. Also allows me to see how many subscribers my blog has.
Progress Bars - Allows me to put progress of my current projects in my sidebar. Unfortunately most of my projects are gifts and I can’t talk about them on here. (And yes, I STILL only have half of Sam’s 2 year old blanket done. I’m getting there )
Spam Karma 2 - About a year ago my blog somehow got slammed with spam. I saw this spam buster plug in (I think at Random and Odd, but I’m not positive) around that same time. It does work really great at catching those nasty comments.
Tiger Style Administration - In Firefox, this makes the administration pages so pretty.
Wordpress XML Support - Allows for export of blog, if necessary.

One of the absolute best things about having a blog is meeting new people and getting comments! I try to respond to almost all of my comments, but it doesn’t always happen automatically. And if I don’t get to respond, that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate or it read it because I do, I read and appreciate all of them.

Stats aren’t the most important thing to me, but I do always think it’s fun to see where people found my blog and what area of the world they live in. I use the wonderful free (noticing a trend?) website StatCounter.com.

This website is constantly changing and evolving as I try out new things to see what works for me. I hope you feel at home here and come back often!