Earths Daughter

Women tend to live in more fear than men, especially in large cities. We tend to get a bunch of locks and use them all. We try not to take out the trash after dark if we live in large cities. We carry pepper spray, and try to be alert when we're outside and keep it handy. We don't just walk in our houses and leave the door unlocked if we live alone. We don't go to ATMs at night alone if we can help it. We're always ready to scream or run if necessary. If we hear footsteps behind us, we get nervous. We lock the windows on the first floor when we go to sleep, even if it's hot inside. We think about taking self-defense courses or learning how to use a gun. Some of us do, I have a gun, and I'm fairly good with it. A dog is not only man's best friend, it's woman's best friend too. A barking dog will wake you up if somebody tries to break in. Even a small dog can discourage people trying to break in, since the noise might draw the neighbor's attention. When we're in bed, a strange noise can scare us if it sounds like it's in or near our house.Women living in large cities alone live in fear, unless they're incredibly naive. Men have no idea. Women are more usually victims than men, and we know it. Most women who are raped know their rapists. If you are male and live in a big city and don't believe me, ask some women you know about the things I've said here. You'll be enlightened. It's sad, and it makes me angry, but I have to be practical, so I'll keep on being careful.

He didn't say he was committing suicide because of runescape. He said he had a lot of problems at school, home, etc. Apparently, he didn't do it before because he had a supportive friend who would be upset if he killed himself. It wasn't the game, it was the fact that his best friend betrayed him that made him feel like they were no longer friends. Some kids kill themselves out of teenage angst which pretty much everyone goes through. That's a waste. Some kids kill themselves because of abusive home lives, whether it's physical, sexual, or emotional. If the kid has undiagnosed medical depression, it's just made worse by a bad home life or bullying at school. It does take some determination to decide to hang yourself and go through with it. Apparently, the kid had something serious going on in his life. It's a much more sensational story to just say the kid killed himself over a game. Try to resist the urge to just sensationalize his death for gossip. Have a heart.

For fast loading pages here are some tips:No Flash.No Sound.Use text links for navigation instead of buttons.Use a plain color for the background, instead of a picture.If you use icons, limit it to just one, to add emphasis to text you put it next to.No special effects on the text, like shaking around or fading in.No special effect page transitions either.Skip Javascript entirely if you can help it. I keep it turned off in my browser, and I have a high speed cable connection. I just keep it off for security reasons.Use standard fonts, instead of embedding them in the page.Optimize your HTML, there are free tools online to do that.Use CSS instead of HTML tables. Limit the number of images on the front page, preferably just a site logo. Optimize all your images. There are free tools and software for that.Resist the temptation to put a bunch of advertising banners or other ads all over the pages.

I mostly use mine for playing cards on my desktop, arcade games online, and surfing. I consider it like having my own public library at home, and use it to study whatever interests me at the time a lot. I do a little graphics work on it too, and I have a ton of music on it that I listen to. And I'm fascinated by web development and website design topics, so I read up a lot on those. And reading newlsetters on whatever topics I'm signed up for currently.

I would have to say Ohio, because I live here, lol. And the scenery is beautiful. The standard of living is decent, so is the employment rate. Real Estate prices are a lot lower than California or New York for instance, so is the price on lots of things. We have an occasional tornado, drought or blizzard, but no hurricanes. On the whole, I only have a few things I don't like about Ohio. It's building up/developing very quickly, often at the expense of the environment. We need stronger laws to protect the environment, but then, what state doesn't? I hate winter, so I would have picked Hawaii as my favorite state. I only passed through the airport once as a kid, and didn't really get to see any of it. But how can you not like tropical paradise? It's probably the nicest state the government ever stole from the natives. And so recently, too. It became a state less than 50 years ago. Alaska is really beautiful from the pictures and movies I have seen of it. If it weren't for the winters, I would consider moving up there. I used to live in Indiana, and I have been to Kentucky, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania several times. I like all of them too. Give me the hills, valleys, rolling ground and forests of the Midwest, and I'm pretty happy as far as scenery goes.

I think a lot of Non-Catholic ideas of Catholism go back to when the Protestant sects were just starting out. The Catholics freaked out and said they were all damned and witches, blasphemers, heretics, etc. That was to try to scare people away from listening to the Protestants, and maybe converting. When Henry VIII was alive, he started the Anglican faith because the Catholic Church wouldn't give him a divorce every time he asked. He persecuted people that wanted to stay Catholic, and wouldn't convert to his Anglican Church. He called them blasphemers, witches, etc. After he died, his oldest daughter took over the throne. She was a Catholic and started oppressing the heck out of the Anglicans who had converted to the Church her father made up. They were called the same names her father had called the Catholics. After she died, her younger sister inherited the throne, and she was Anglican. So they persecuted the Catholics again and called the Catholics the same names they had just been called. So there was a lot of anti-Catholic propaganda around from those days. The whole thing about Catholics supposedly worshipping Saints goes back to the Anglican efforts to stamp out Catholicism in England. There were actually very popular trashy novels that claimed to be written by ex-Priests, Monks, or Nuns. They supposedly told all the dirt inside the Catholic Church. The more shocking the stories were, the more were sold. So the authors made more money if they just made stuff up. They continued the worshipping Saints idea, and threw in orgies at Convents and Monasteries, and other fantasies for more sales. Publishing laws and laws in general were not as strict back then. Nowadays, there would be huge lawsuits over that kind of novel.I'm not a Catholic, and I don't like the Catholic Church, it has a long history of deceiving their followers, corruption, oppressing women, killing and torturing people in the name of their Church, etc. But why just quote the same old anti-Catholic propaganda from centuries ago that was made up to sell books? That stuff was just believed by the ignorant who didn't know anything about Catholicism. There is no need, just look at their actual documented history, like the Crusades, or the modern discriminaton they still practice towards women. If you need an excuse to dislike them.

I use Google to look up tech stuff, like an error message or to find program updates and stuff like that. Sometimes when I'm just curious about something, I use Google to find out some basic stuff about it. But if I want more in-depth knowledge, I tend to switch to other search engines like dogpile, clusty, a search engine specializing in my topic, or one of the invisible web search engines.If you want to find pictures of a professional wrestler, try searching Google Groups, or the Yahoo Directory, you might find a wrestling fan group with some pics.

It's easier on blogs. Just go to a blog about a topic similar to yours, and link to one of their posts or articles. Then post a well thought out comment on their blog under that post with your URL in your sig at the end of the comment. Sometimes bloggers will list sites that quote one of their articles on their own. Even if they don't, you still have an outgoing link to your site in your sig. If you want the link to stay there, and not get deleted as spam, though, it needs to be well thought out. There are also blog indexes/directories around that you can submit your URL to. Like submitting to a search engine, but much easier. As long as you have some content, and it's not adult or illegal, you should get listed.

Nice tip. It does seem to work. I did not have the patience to keep reading a whole book that way though. I am a fast reader and this method is too tedious, especially if I got involved in a mystery or other story. If I see something I like, I can just surf over to my library's website and put it on reserve, I guess. I'm just waiting for the day when you can read anything available at libraries online, lol. As it is, there's so many free Ebooks out there, I have more than enough fiction to read already.I've always had a hard time getting rid of books I have bought, even to give them to a friend, or sell them to a used bookstore. I have a tendency to collect books offline, and it's carried over to online. I have several hundred ebooks, at least, that I've picked up on the web for free. I haven't gotten around to reading them yet. And I try to stay away from Gutenberg or my hard drive would be full of Ebooks, lol.As it is, I think right now, I'm mostly interested in ebooks that teach HTML, CSS, and stuff like that. Preferably ones that take it in easy steps. I've sort of looked around for some, but haven't really tried an all-out search yet. It's really easy to find advanced programming books online, but not as easy to find more basic ones at the sites I go to. I would rather download than read it online, since I can open it up whenever I want, bookmark pages and not have to login somewhere.I just can't resist free books!

I had over 100 credits when I asked for hosting, so went down to basically nothing. I made some more to keep the account live. Now I just come in and chat wherever and whenever I feel like it, whether or not it happens to be in an area for points. I don't have a real life, so I can come in whenever I want and just stay all day or night. I read a whole lot more posts than I respond to however. I'm busy studying the CMS I'm using for my account, so I just come in here or do something else to take a break from studying.

The easiest thing to do would be to just restart in safe mode, and do a scandisk on your HDD, instructing it to fix any errors it finds.

You could just have a couple of extra tabs open in your browser. One to the front page for credits, just refresh the page to check. And one open to the search box. It's simple using the Firefox browser if you want to do that.

Yes, you have to pay taxes on adsense earnings or casino/lottery winnings, or any other extra income. I mentioned this in my post here: http://forums.xisto.com/topic/33780-are-adsense-earnings-legal-can-someone-help-in-this/

You have to keep track of what Google sends you, and then file your income taxes like everybody else at tax time. You would just have to use a tax form for a self-employed person. Then you would have to pay taxes on all of it at once, unless you don't make enough to have to be charged for and it's your only source of income. You would still have to file a tax form though. If you do start earning some significant money from adsense, go to a tax preparing place and have your taxes done so it's all legal. If you have another job, just include your adsense earnings on that tax form as extra/additional income. Just ask a tax expert for how to keep everything all legal.

Now you've got your Xisto free hosting account, what do you do with it? This is not a tutorial on how to use everything available on Xisto free hosting accounts. This is just a brief overview to give you an idea on where to start. I am not an extremely technical person myself, I know a little bit of HTML and CSS, and that's about it. So this is written for a non-technical beginner who knows little or nothing about building websites. **************************************************************************************** I have not used any of the features I mention below, except Drupal, one of the CMS's from #9 below. This is just from studying on these things online. Hopefully, some of the people that have used specific features will add their experiences with them. **************************************************************************************** 1) If you want a chat site, there are a couple of pre-installed chat scripts you can use: PhpMyChat Room and Java/CGI Chat Room. Of course, finding enough people to come and use your chat room is not going to be easy. For most other sites you can check out the options available in Fantastico. 2) It has a couple of forums available if you want a forum: phpBB2 and SMF. You can find them listed under "Discussion Boards". 3) If you want to do a photo or image gallery, it has a few of those: 4Images Gallery, Coppermine Photo Gallery and Gallery. 4) If you want to do a wiki, it has a couple of those: TikiWiki and PhpWiki. A wiki is a site where somebody makes a post on a topic and visitors can change it. Or a visitor can make up a new topic. The site is built by whoever happens to drop by and feels like adding something. You can require visitors to register to post on the wiki first. It's basically a way of building a knowledge base on one or more topics. The biggest wiki is Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page. 5) Under "Other" scripts, there are scripts for a Classified Ads site, a Realty site, and an auction site, if you want to one of those. 6) If you want to do a blog, there are several of those: b2evolution, Nucleus, pMachine Free, WordPress. A blog is an online journal. You post whatever you want to say, and other people can comment on it. You can store your older posts in an archive area, and also post links to interesting or useful sites on a side menu. Some people post their own poetry or life experiences, some use it as a diary viewable by the public. A lot of blogs choose one or more topics to write about, such as news, sports, a fan site, computer programming or web design. Making a blog is a way to have a simple website where you chat at anyone that reads it, and share your favorite website links, poetry, discussions on your favorite band, or whatever. 7) There are a couple of site builder programs you can use with Fantastico, too: Soholaunch Pro Edition and Templates Express. With Templates express, you choose a template, modify it if desired with CSS (not too technical for a reasonably smart person to learn), and build a website with it. With Soholaunch Pro, you can build a website by just dragging and dropping things around until you like the result. Soholaunch Pro sounds like the easiest and fastest way for a non-technical beginner to get a website up and running. 8) You can also use Frontpage to build a website if you have it. It's a program to make websites that you will have to pay for. Xisto is compatible with Frontpage extensions. 9) Then there are the Content Management Systems (CMS's). Fantastico has a lot of those. Basically, a CMS is a script that runs a website, keeping content organized, and making it easy for authorized users to add new content to the website. The CMS takes care of the more technical stuff in the background, leaving users free to just add content. CMS's were invented by technical people for non-technical people to be able to add things easily to their websites. Fantastico will install a CMS for you, so you don't have to be a techie to do the install. However, once the CMS is installed, it has to be configured and a website set up with it. So you have to be willing to learn how to use the CMS itself. That is normally done by technical people for you if you pay for a custom website to be made and maintained for you. How much technical skill is required for the CMS depends on which script you use. It looks like Joomla is probably the easiest to use, and Drupal is probably the hardest to use of the ones I have researched. It's best if you know some HTML, CSS and maybe some PHP programming, or are willing to learn it. I have done a post on choosing a CMS elsewhere on the forum, you may find it useful: http://forums.xisto.com/index.php?sho33573&hl=drupal If you are willing to use one of the default themes provided by the CMS, or can find a nice one that's compatible for that CMS, it will be a lot easier to do a website with it. Your website will look like everyone else's that is using that CMS and theme, however. I would advise that you should only choose a CMS as a non-technical beginner if you plan on having a site with a large amount of content on it that will be hard to keep track of without a program to do it. Like a big professional website has. They use CMS's. You must also be willing to learn to be more technical, and spend some time studying and experimenting with the CMS before you can build a site with it. It's not a fast and easy way to get a website built. It is a great way to build a website that you expect to expand into a very large professional looking one that you will learn to maintain by yourself, however. ***************************************************************************************** So the easiest and fastest way to build a basic website with the tools provided by Xisto seems to be Soholaunch Pro Edition (in #7 above), since you can just drag and drop things on the page. If you want an easier way to do it yourself, you might try downloading a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor program for websites online. You might be able to find one easier to use than Soholaunch Pro. You can just drag and drop things around in the program until you like the result. It turns everything into HTML for you. Then save the page and upload it to your hosting account with FTP. You might be able to find one that will let you be more creative than Soholaunch Pro, but it is a retail program, so probably has more features in it than a free one. Also, some WYSIWYG editors don't write very good HTML code, so your site may not work properly in some browsers. Soholaunch Pro claims that it makes proper HTML. Another way to get a website done easily would be to go sign up for a free hosting account with another free web host that has a very simple website builder and use it to do your site. Then just copy your webpages made with that and upload them into your Xisto account. There may be some code inserted by the host to display a banner or ad on the page, so you will have to remove that, although it's not hard to do. I'm sure there are a lot of people on the forum that could help you remove an ad if you need help, including myself. You don't have to understand very much HTML to do that. One drawback to this method is the HTML that's automatically generated by a website builder may not be proper HTML, and have trouble displaying in some browsers. Just experiment with it and see how it turns out. The drawback to using quick and easy sitebuilders on most free hosts is that they don't offer you a lot of options to make your website exactly the way you want it. If you just want to build a very simple site quickly, they are the fastest easiest way. ***************************************************************************************** The obvious question would be, why not just use a free host that has one of these fast and easy sitebuilders for your website instead of Xisto? The problem with actually having your site on one of the big, well-known free hosts like Angelfire or Geocities is they put ads on your website. Very annoying ads that drive off visitors. Their FTP is often extremely slow or unavailable unless you use it at 2-4 Am. The sitebuilder may be slow because of all the traffic they have to their servers. Your site will load slowly because of all that traffic, too. They usually don't give you as much storage space or bandwidth as Xisto either. People may try to see your site if it's very popular, and get a message saying you've used up your bandwidth for now, try back later, maybe next week or next month. Their servers tend to have quite a bit of downtime. Meaning they're not working part of the time, and nobody can get to your site. And whole websites have been known to just disappear off their servers, so you have to upload a backup copy or start all over. One of the biggest reasons not to use them:Support sucks. Remember, you usually get what you pay for. And at Xisto, you do have to pay for your hosting with your time on the forums, so you get more quality hosting for it. They are interested in building a good community and keeping a good reputation as a good host, so they will take more trouble for you. Geocities and others are so big and famous, they don't have to worry about it. They have so many people wanting new free accounts every day, they couldn't care less about any single person or website. They don't even need to worry about getting a bad reputation, they still have a huge amount of people that will use them, they're so well-known.

From the reading I have done on the various CMS's offered at Xisto, Mambo is not the easiest one to use. If you feel you must use a CMS. I suggest you switch to Joomla. There is some info on choosing a CMS from Trap 17 in my thread here: http://forums.xisto.com/index.php?sho33573&hl=drupal I mentioned Joomla as the easiest in my second post. The obvious question though, is do you really need a CMS? It is a lot easier for a beginner to just get a free webpage maker which allows you to drag and drop what you want where you want it. They're called WYSIWYG editors (What You See Is What You Get). They're the easiest way for a non-technical beginner to make a website.

I had no idea most of the container ports on the Eastern seaboard were already owned by foreign companies. But just because it was allowed in the past, does not mean we have to keep doing it that way. That's why airport security practices have been improved and Homeland Security was founded after 9/11. Times have changed, we have to be more security conscious now than in the past. Even if his country is friends with us now, does not mean it may not change in the future. Weren't we kind of friendly with Russia before the October Revolution turned it communist? And Germany before the Nazis took over? And Castro when the CIA helped him fight Batista? Things change, governments change, friends change. We need to change our laws to keep up with changes in some areas, like foreign ownership of any essential US industries, ports, and such. I don't personally approve of some parts of the Patriot Act, as it takes away some of our Constitutional freedoms. But foreign ownership of US ports is definitely something that needs to be taken seriously. There are only a few countries I would consider good enough friends to trust them with owning our ports. Great Britain, Canada, and Australia, for instance, but that's all I can think of offhand. Definitely no company from a politically unstable region like the Middle East, South America or Africa. And they should definitely check more than 10% of cargo containers coming into the US. Maybe they could have done better in the war against drugs if they did. Incidentally, are we still fighting a war on drugs, or did we just give up and decide to fight a war on cigarettes instead, because it's easier to win?

Coal is a form of carbon. So the old Superman trick with the lump od coal would work, if you were Superman, lol.You are right about diamonds being promoted as a sign of love. And about love not being about diamonds. My Fiance and I knew each other and were friends for about four years before we got romantic. Then we had over 16 wonderful years together, but never got "officially" married. We always felt that the paper was irrelevant to the way we felt about each other. People need a license to fish legally, you don't need one to have a loving relationship. Nor does having a license make it more of a commitment, or more permanent, love does that. We were together longer than so many people that actually got a marriage license and made it "official". We kept saying we would get around to it someday, but we just never considered it a priority. If he hadn't died last November, we would still be together, and would have stayed together the rest of our lives. Although, I guess we did, since it was the rest of his life.As for what kind of ring he would have gotten me, it would not have been a diamond. My birthday is in March. There are two birthstones for March, the old one and the modern one. The old one is bloodstone, which I like very much. I have a couple of bloodstones. The new one is aquamarine, which I always thought looked like a piece of coke bottle glass that had been cut and polished. I never cared for aquamarines, so I don't have any, and don't want any. My dislike for aquamarines kind of spilled over to diamonds. They're clear, like glass. They have a rainbow effect under light, but so does cubic zirconia and some rhinestones, lol. I have a couple of cubic zirconia rings, but I never wear them. I prefer my sterling and bloodstone ring much more. He asked me what kind of ring I wanted, and I said a custom made band from a silversmith. And if it had a stone, something with some color to it. Like jade, maybe. I'm one of the few women I've ever known of that doesn't like diamonds. Maybe it's my miserly instincts, lol. Although some of it does have to do with all the hype about diamonds. They're too expensive for the way they look. I do know I have always considered flowers romantic, though. Not the fancy florist roses usually, but something with some fragrance to them. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, I don't know. Just go with your heart, not the advertising when it comes to love, and you'll be better off.

There are a lot of good Open Source CMS's out there. As to which one to choose, it really is a matter of what level of experimenting you're comfortable with. Some have better support forums than others, from what I've read. I don't know what the others are like, but the Drupal Support forum seems to be pretty fast at responding to posts. I haven't made one yet, I've just been browsing through existing ones. Before setting up a site, you should work on your Information Architecture. Which means at the most basic level, what do you want to put on the site, and what will it be used for? For example, will it be a blog, with a calender and archives? An art site with galleries, membership login and user submitted pictures? A forum site with a home page with some news on it, and a few RSS (live news) feeds from other sites? From what I have read, if your site is going to be fairly simple in layout and types of content, Joomla is the easiest for a non-technical beginner to use. It is a spinoff from Mambo, and apparently, there was a lot of politics behind the Joomla group splitting off from the Mambo group. Mambo is getting sued, and the main author turned it over to a foundation he made. Some of the people working on developing Mambo didn't like that, and basically had different ideas of the direction they wanted to develop it in. So they set up a separate development group, and call their version Joomla. Apparently most if not all of the themes, modules and addons for Mambo still work for Joomla. But Joomla has tended towards a more beginner-friendly CMS, so it would probably be better for a non-technical beginner. My site is going to be a portal with original articles written by me, possibly users in the future, and some copied public syndication articles. It will also eventually have RSS news feeds set up on it. It will have an archive of past articles on it, and sections with tips on it. But the main thing I wanted it to have is a directory of links, sort of like Yahoo's directory. Mine will be much smaller and specialized in just a few areas. I may offer downloads of eBooks at some point. I will probably have those hosted at a file storage site and just link to it, because of bandwidth usage. There's more stuff that will be on the site, as well, but I don't feel like pasting my IA analysis here, lol. It's long! Since my site will have a lot of features, and a lot of content, I need some way to really categorize content well and keep it organized. And a really good navigation system to work with the categories. That's why I chose Drupal, it has an extremely flexible method for organizing content. It's very powerful that way. It is also capable of powering a very large complicated site, as well. Which my site will be eventually, as it grows. Currently, I haven't really messed with Drupal beyond setting up a first account and changing the site time to my time zone (EST). I got to looking through the admin area a bit, and realized the reviews I had read about it having a steep learning curve weren't exaggerating! It's not beginner friendly, especially for people that are not very technical like me. Fortunately, I have a high learning curve, so I am willing to tackle it. It seems extremely complicated so far. I need to do a lot of tutorial and documentation reading on Drupal before I even think of trying to set up a site. I did a bit of searching for Drupal themes, and have at least one I like, and some more to check out later before I decide which one to use. From what I have read so far about it, even some programmers have trouble learning how to use Drupal. Not because it's that complicated, but because it has its own way of using terms and doing things. It's sort of its own unique environment. Until you get used to how it's organized and works, it's pretty confusing. The reason seems to be that the developers wanted to make an extremely good flexible CMS that could do just about anything. And as with any software, the more it can do, the more complicated it is to learn how to use. (Look at Photoshop, for example, that program kind of intimidates me, lol.) Unfortunately, I need some of Drupal's flexibility, so I have to just plow through and do a lot of reading and learning. There is not really any documentation of getting started with the basics, like a step-by-step guide of how to set up particular types of websites with it yet. Just one on how to set up a basic company brochure type of site, which is not what I need at all. Part of the trouble with it is that there may be several different ways to do the same thing with it. People are still trying different methods and trying to see which is the most efficient way to do particular things. So there is a certain reluctance to put stuff in the official handbook before they are sure it's the best way to do something. People have contributed various modules, and which ones you choose to install depends on what you need to do with your site personally. So there is no "one right way" to do stuff for everyone. There's a lot of different ways that will work. I've read enough on it by now that I know I need to work on learning all its terminology before I can go much further. Drupal's terminology is different from what people would consider "normal", let alone intuitive (not at all intuitive). There's a lot of specialized terms relating to specialized tasks you can perform in Drupal. Photoshop is a pretty good analogy for Drupal. For somebody that's not familiar with graphics programs, it's very hard to learn Photoshop. Even if you have used other graphics programs, it's still hard to learn how to use Photoshop. And even after you are comfortable using it, there's always more to learn about it. It can just do so much. But the things you can create with it after you've learned how to use it are great. So if you're willing and motivated enough to learn how to use it, it's worth it. Definitely time well spent for what you will get out of it in the future. And you will be able to learn how to do new things in the future as you go along that you never dreamed you would be able to do as a beginner. Drupal is like that. An extremely flexible tool that can do all sorts of things. Most of the users themselves are not sure what all it is capable of yet. About the time they get that figured out, the developers will probably add more to it, lol. So there will always be more to learn about it. But in the end, it will be worth it to some people to take the time to learn how to use it. It can do things no other CMS can do. I intend to get more and more into developing my website over time until it is one of the main ones for its type. I can't afford to pay an expert to do this stuff for me, and that would not allow me to use my own creativity, either. So if I want a really great website, I need to learn an extremely effective, flexible system like Drupal myself. In short, I would not recommend Drupal unless you are a technical-minded person, or willing to learn to do stuff like one. And if you are not planning a very complex site, you really don't need it. So don't use it at all for a simpler site unless you're willing to spend a good bit of time learning its unique environment. I need to learn more of its terminology before I can even understand more about it. Then I need to learn what each part of it is for, and what they can do before I can learn how to use them. Then I'll be ready for overview level tutorials. Then I can decide what modules I will need to install, and read up on how to use them. Then I can start working on the site itself. Until then, my account will be more of an experimental area than a site that's going up fast, lol. Once I get more comfortable with it, I may even write some beginner level tutorials, which are kind of lacking. They don't even have a beginner overview telling you which stuff to learn in which order to use it yet. Once I learn something, I don't forget what it was like to be a beginner. So I can explain things from a beginner's level well. By the time I get to that point, maybe someone will have done those kind of tutorials by then, and I won't feel it necessary to do any, who knows? I think it would be pretty useful for people trying to decide what CMS to use if people using different ones on Xisto would post their comments on learning how to use them. The latest on this: I have been doing a lot of studying on Drupal, haven't really tinkered with it much on my site yet. I found out the version currently available in Xisto's Fantastico (ver 4.6.3) is a couple of stable releases behind the current one. The 4.6.3 version has some security problems that have been taken care of in the later releases. So I decided to try to upgrade it to 4.6.5 myself. I was pretty nervous about it, as I've never done anything like that before. It didn't help that all the stuff on upgrading said backup your site and database first. I didn't have anything on the site yet, so I probably didn't really need to do a backup, but I figured I needed to learn how anyway. Backing up the files was simple, just copying all the files in my Drupal installation folder by FTP to my desktop. The part I was really nervous about was backing up the database. I have never done anything with databases before, always considered it too technical for me. Fortunately, I found great instructions on how to do it. Short, simple, and with pictures, anybody could do it with this help: Backing up your DB with PHPMyAdmin So I had no trouble backing it up with the help above. Then I was ready to upgrade the first step from 4.6.3 to 4.6.4. Fortunately, there were no database changes in the code for it. So I found instructions for an easy way to do it here: Upgrading Drupal from 4.6.3 to 4.6.4 That blog belongs to a guy who contributes to the Drupal project a lot. He's right, it was easy! I read on one of his Drupal forum posts elsewhere that he used this same method to upgrade from 4.6.4 to 4.6.5 as well. So I used this method to upgrade both times. The site is still there, and seems to be working as far as I can tell, so it was far easier than I ever thought it could be! I downloaded a couple of extra templates for Drupal, one from the Drupal theme site called Slurpee. I like the layout, but the colors are a bit gaudy, I may experiment with changing it someday. The other theme I found on a German Drupal site, it's a modification of the standard Drupal Bluemarine theme. It's called Bluemarine/KDE, and it's the one I have on the site by default now. I like it more than any theme for Drupal I've seen so far. Installing a new Drupal theme is easy, just unzip the theme folder and FTP it to the 'themes' folder in your Drupal installation. There is something you should know about Drupal themes if you're going to use Drupal. Drupal has two theme engines, Xtemplate, and PHPtemplate. Xtemplate is the one already installed, PHPtemplate will be in the next stable release, predicted for around the end of this year sometime. Some people are already using PHPtemplate to make themes with and submitting them for public use. You should check to see if the theme is Xtemplate or PHPtemplate. If it's PHPtemplate, you will have to download and install that theme engine for the theme to work on your site. I read that the next version they are working on now has over 200 bugs, and over a dozen of those are critical, so I wouldn't recommend using it for anything but a test site if you want to help test it. Upgrade to 4.6.5 and leave it at that for now. I have been doing some more research and work on content and IA for my site, so I haven't really gotten around to working with Drupal itself much yet. Currently, I still need to make a copyright notice and disclaimer for the site. After I get those figured out, I'll be ready to start installing modules and trying to actually put the site together. I figure I will start with the easier stuff first, then add things like surveys, voting, and RSS feeds later. After doing a lot of reading about Drupal, I keep seeing people with problems doing stuff asking questions about how to do this or that, and the main reply is it will be easier with the next release. Apparently, they're going to considerably improve Drupal's user-friendliness in the next release. You may not have to be a PHP programmer to set up a site the way you want to. So as much as I'm impressed by the versatility of Drupal, I think I'm going to wait for the next stable release. The new beta version has a ton of bugs in it yet, so I'm not even going to try it until it's out of beta. I'm thinking of trying another CMS in the meantime. Probably Joomla, since it's supposed to be one of the most beginner-friendly. That way I can get a site up and learn how to use the next Drupal stable version and switch over later. Notice from BuffaloHELP: Merged 3 posts. Please use EDIT instead of double or triple posting.

I used Fantastico to install Drupal on my account, and got the same error message, so I just installed it in a sub-directory instead. I hadn't even checked my main page to see what came up until I read this. It shows the Xisto hosting page saying my account is set up at this point. I'll have to do a redirect like jlhaslip mentioned above at some point. Thanks jlhaslip for pointing out how to do that! Currently, I haven't really messed with Drupal beyond setting up a first account and changing the site time to my time zone (EST). I got to looking through it a bit, and realized the reviews I had read about it having a steep learning curve weren't exaggerating! I need to do a lot of tutorial and documentation reading on Drupal before I even think of trying to set up a site. I decided to take a break from doing that to come in here and wander around a bit, just to relax. I do like this forum.

1) Application form for free hosting account didn't work, it just sent me to post a new topic. So I posted I wanted an account, and had no form, so it was denied. Ended up trying the next morning, same thing happened, no form, so I did what somebody else did, and just copied the info from another post, and filled it in. Application approved. 2) I had over 100 credits, and asked for a 10 credit account, so I wouldn't use extra resources until my site was ready to open for business, as it were. Skipped coming into forum for one day (doing backups, pc maintenance, housework, errands, etc.) and my credits were down to 0.36 days credit. I didn't realize I would lose all my credits I had built up at the time I got my account. Be careful not to run out immediately, lol. 3) I want to do a portal site. I looked over Fantastico, to see what portal software was available, and noticed the installation on some of them takes more than 10 Megs. Fortunately, the one I decided on didn't take that much. 4) I went to these two sites to do a little research on portal scripts available here. Open Source CMS - CMS Ratings CMS Matrix.org I was going to go with Xoops, but after visiting these two sites, I decided not to. At the matrix, after you check some boxes and get a chart, you can weed out one or more, and uncheck those boxes, and hit the button again to get a smaller chart. I kept doing that until I was down to three choices, Drupal, Joomla, and Mambo. After comparing features of them, at the matrix, I narrowed it down to Joomla and Drupal. After reading 128 comments about Drupal, and 51 comments about Joomla at CMS Ratings, I decided to go with Drupal, I think it will work best for what I need. 5) Comments about setting up portals in Joomla and Drupal turned out to be irrelevant. Fantastico made setting up Drupal a matter of filling in a few boxes and hitting the button! I couldn't believe how easy it was. 6) Spent yesterday hunting down all the info I have accululated on doing a website off of the other pc, backing it all up, and burning it to CD so I will have it on this pc. Spent last night loading and unpacking a lot of backup stuff on this pc from the other one. I have let it get into such a mess, one big bunch of files and programs and stuff all over the place. Tried to organize the backup stuff in general. Still have to organize the stuff specifically for doing my website. Imported all of my bookmarks from the other pc to this one, no idea how many, maybe 4,000 or so total. Have to organize both sets into one list now. Lesson learned: don't let your website research stuff get disorganized. It's going to be a big chore sorting all of that out, I have several years worth of it. 7) When I installed Drupal, I was offered four default website templates. I took the one that I liked best. I'll worry about actual colors and design looks later. I definitely want to change from the default template later. First step: working more on the IA for my website. I need to set up blocks on Drupal, which just means blocking in areas for different types of content on the pages. Next step: figuring out categories to organize my portal links into. That won't be easy, since I intend to have a large group of links in a lot of categories. Yeah, I'm being ambitious, but I want to have a few hundred links on the portal before it's ready to 'open'. And I also need to write a few articles for the site before it's ready. I plan to ask for site reviews once I get a bit more of it done here on Xisto. As usual, I spent all night here browsing the forums, I got to get to bed. I'll do more work after I get up.

I think everything man has done to the planet: greenhouse gases, other pollution, nuclear tests, strip mining, deforestation, etc. has been adding up bit by bit. The cumulative effect of all of this is doing a lot of damage to the planet. The ocean temperatures are a bit higher in hurricane zones, which doesn't mean there will be more hurricanes than before, but the ones we do have will be more severe on the average. Around Europe, there are more pollutants flowing into the ocean, which jellyfish happen to like. So now there is a population explosion of jellyfish around European beaches. People are getting injured by these things. And they are impacting the area tourist money coming in. The rivers, lakes and oceans have been overfished for years, and commercial fishing doesn't seem to be slowing down. In fact, they're now dragging heavy nets over the ocean floor to try to get every last fish out of the ocean that they can. And those nets are damaging the coral on the bottom that sea life uses as a home. A lot of things are being caught and dying in the nets that the fishermen don't even have a market for or want.Thinking positive is not enough. If you want things to get better, you have to try to do something about it. Don't litter, recycle, buy recycled products, turn down the thermostat a little in winter, and up a little in summer, stuff like that. And sign petitions, you can even find them online, to protect the environment. Anything you can do adds up, so every little bit helps.

I never use a name/nick at the end of my posts. I see no point in putting a name at the end of a post, since it's at the left side of the post. It didn't even occur to me that you would get a tiny bit of credit for a word or two in a name at the end. I have seen a mod or admin mention it to some people, though, and kind of wondered why, unless it was personal information. Now I know, lol.I just use the signature, with a humorous quote in it. I try to put a smile on people's faces or make them think with most of my signature quotes. I think they're there to have fun with. I get tired of them and change them after a while usually, though. It sort of keeps it fresh, as it were. I like St. Michael's rotating sigs. I can't help but wonder how many he has in it, and how long it will be before I see them all, lol. That's assuming he doesn't just keep adding new ones into it, of course.

The things I like in a RPG are: Interesting storyline.Different types of characters: good guys, bad guys, male, female, different races, different character classes.Not too predictable, the more original, the better.The ability to go off and do your own thing, or just explore the world. Hide some stuff to reward exploring. If you go back to the same place after accomplishing something, or something big happens in the game, the NPC's should not say the same thing you heard before. Even the most basic NPC's should have a little personality. They should not all say exactly the same greeting by default, for instance. A litle gossip from NPC's gives the game more flavor.There should be a few NPC's that have a bit more personality, to give the game more flavor.A lot of the game should not be taken up with sending you back and forth over the same territory. Too much familiar travel gets old really fast.Appropriate sound effects, not just constant music, silence or generic effects, add a lot of atmosphere. Rustling sounds when somebody walks through leaves, some puffing when running, dripping water in a cave, or squeaking bats, stuff like that. If it's raining, it should sound like it. There should definitely be weather that changes from time to time outdoors. If you start out in the spring and months pass in game time, there should be some snow eventually.If you steal from NPC's, there should be some consequences, like being thrown into jail for a while, lol.Besides the main storyline, there should be a lot of side quests that can be done or not, depending on the player's mood. These should be worth some extra experience or money, items, but don't have to be too rewarding. You should not be able to do the same quests over and over. have them not offered when they've been done by that character already.Side quests should not stop at low levels, have them for intermediate and high level characters, too.Characters should be able to improve throughout the game from experience. The best equipment should not be for sale, it should have to be earned.If there is some way of the character's actions affecting the world, it should be shown. So the character becomes a part of the world. Like if you save an NPC's life as part of a quest or the plot, the NPC could refer to you as their "brave friend" after that.The more flexible a character creation system is the better. Being offered the option of 4-8 pre-determined characters is not enough. A system that allows players to create some version of pretty much any type of character they can think of is better.

Maybe she just can't handle rejection very well. You could try asking some other girl out as soon as possible, then the next time she calls, you can tell her you have to go get ready for a date. Maybe she just wants to stay friends, at least until she gets another boyfriend. Talk to some other guys about her, and see if any of them like her, then tell her. Say you think she should try going out with him, he likes her. And if she wants to stick around like just a friend, treat her like one - a male friend. Comment on other girls looking good, stuff like that. Just like you would do with a male friend. Talk about guy things like sports, and stuff like that. Comment that the perfect woman for you is one that.....is somehow very different from her, lol.If you don't learn how to discourage girls that you break up with, they're never going to leave you alone. You could end up being stalked, lol.It could be that she wants a boyfriend but is shy about asking boys out, or letting them know she is interested in them. Some girls consider it a status thing to have a boyfriend, so want to always have one, if possible. She could just be trying to hang onto you until somebody else comes along. Try to help her get fixed up with somebody else, if you can. Then maybe she will leave you alone, and not get mean about the breakup.