I know, I know, but…

Okay, time to stop hiding. This is a Web Log. Or a ‘blog to those of you who are savvy out there. It’s a CMS that is written so I can make journal entries on it and you can read it. Good for me.

As part of all that, you might have noticed a LOT of changes recently. If you haven’t seen them all, I’ll run down the major ones now.

• Domain Name: Please note this, it is now http://i-know-i-know-but.net all lower case. There are two “i”s and two “know”s and a “but” with four hyphens and a (dot)net on the end. Should be easy to remember, right? I’d lay money that someone messes it up in about two weeks.
• Vote Widget: I found a plugin that will allow you to vote for your favorite stories/posts. If you are reading through here, you find something you like, and you wanna say “attagirl” without actually commenting, then please hit the “vote now” link. It will ratchet the vote count up one notch and I’ll feel good when I see those numbers go up. Which brings us to the next point:
• Footer: If you scroll down to the very bottom of the page you may note all the new neato stuff. Most of it isn’t new, I just decided to start using all those widgets that WordPress comes with. There stuff for “most read” and “most voted on” (which is why the vote widget becomes important) and if you comment you will even get your name up in this area. Cool, huh?
• No Follow: Unless you are reading this blog on an opticon, you probably saw the “NoFollow Free” banner at the top. That is to show that I have installed a plugin to remove all the “nofollow” attributes from the links on this site. This means that when a search engine like Google searches this blog, they will find all the links to YOUR site and follow it to you guys, making this Internet thing work. WordPress had defaulted in saying “nofollow” to all links, isolating me here and making it so that when you comment you get nothing out of it. Not very nice of them.
• Google Friend Connect: There’s a new way to connect with this blog, and that’s through Google Friend. Mostly it’s a way to get people to sign up and be a community on one little blog, but I’ve seen it installed on a couple other sites and I’m going to try it now. Yes, I know my picture is on there twice. It’s a glitch.
• Random Pictures: I got tired of having no content to share with you (cue the irony here), so I decided to spam your browser with pictures. I went through my hard drive and I pulled a whole bunch of them (about 1% total) and put them up here to share with you. No you won’t get the raunchy ones unless you gimme money.
• Lightbox: Speaking of pictures, I included a widget that will allow you to get the full sized pictures without leaving the page you are on. It’s called a “lightbox” and it presents the photos in a nicer way for you to see them. I figured that I can be aesthetically pleasing as well. You’re welcome.
• Reduced Posts: I debated this one long and hard, but I finally decided to reduce the number of posts on each page. I used to have a list of 10 posts per page, but I pulled it down to 6. As I understand it, shorter pages are more pleasing and I will retain my readership longer. I think I have to have a readership first.
• Twitter: I know that saying I’m going to use Twitter to keep you all informed is like saying that I’m going to be walking through the air while I move, but I intend to do so (to both). As such, I’m road-testing more and more Twitter widgets to see which one of them is the sexiest on the Web. My perfect one is listed below so that’s what I’m looking for. So far no one has got “it”. I’ll keep you informed.
• Pictures and decals: As a transsexual I never had the opportunity to do the whole girly grow up thing with the stamp albums and sticker buddies and friendship bracelets. I had a stamp album, but that was for Inverted Jennys and One Cent Franklin stamps, not little rubber dinosaur stamps. So you get to suffer through my middle-aged angst and second kid-hood while I find little decals and cutsie pictures that will make you want to vomit. I promise, no trolls, no matter how cute they are.
• Money: Ah, the Root of all Evil. I won’t make promises I can’t keep, but I can promise that you won’t EVER see those little “Google AdSense” advertisements, nor all the link ads, nor huge banners of ads and so on. You know, the annoying things that everyone hates and no one clicks through on, and that everyone uses “Ad-Block” to skip. Yeah, those. I won’t promise that I will not ever talk about products here. Some are good, some are needed and sometimes I love a certain thing. If I get money for that, cool. But I won’t sell out. The banner at the bottom for an “Ad Free Blog” means just that, ad-free. Every now and then I will ask you for money or to donate for one reason or another, and I think it’s only fair if you contribute. I promise I won’t beg a lot.
• Blogroll Links: Okay, what makes Blogs rock? The content? Possibly, but more than that are the opportunities you, the reader, have to see websites you may never come across before and possibly never again. So instead of trying to keep you on my site, I’m going to be giving you lots of links. I will make them as relevant as I can, and ones that I think are really NEEDED by you or the Transgendered community at large, I’ll add to my Blogroll. But you need to also look in the footer, because down there is going to be random links pulled from that same blogroll for you to look at. To make it fair, it’s a random grab bag, but everyone will have their turn.
• Icons: You have probably ALSO noticed the icons I have on the front page, just to the left of the “Welcome to My Story Site” banner. Well, those are the icons you can use to keep in touch with me/help me out. Each of them is a symbol, and the symbols are pretty self explanatory. I’ll let you figure them out.
• Social Network Sites: I hate to disappoint everyone, but I’m not on social networks. I’m on Twitter, but that’s it. Not on Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace or anything of the sort. My alter ego is on a bunch of them, most notably Livejournal and Dreamwidth, but I don’t have the time to have a MySpace page. Sorry. I’m on the chat rooms of several TS story sites, but that’s all. I can’t put a badge up to my profile if I don’t have one. However, the “Share This” button has links to ALL those and more, so you can share the wealth!

Interesting, I can’t think of anymore things to mention in this new website. Hmmm, I know as soon as I post this I’ll think about fifteen more things that should be here, but those can wait for another time.

Love you all and don’t forget to tip your Waitress. She works hard and if she did a good job, give her a little extra to say so. And it’s even more important that you tip the Pizzaboy!

Mini-Biography:  Joy is a transvestite who has been using her stories as a form of therapy. At this point she has no desire to undergo the full transition, but that might change some day. Read more about her story at My Story on this site.