I was going to name this post something along the lines of “My top ten WordPress plugins” but I realized that I might not stay true to a number so I’m just going to list my favourite plugins. They are the ones that make my website tick and help me run things smoothly around here. I’m going to try and incorporate dupes for the most popular ones for other blogging platforms n_n.

Twitter Tools

Twitter Tools has to be my favourite Twitter-related plugin ever. I remember that I used it a long time ago, but with the lack of customization for the links it posted on my Twitter timeline, I switched back to Twitterfeed. Now it is better than ever! Some of the features are:

• Customization for posting link in your timeline (e.g.: “New at -blogname-” instead of “New post”)
• bit.ly integration including API
• Twitter timeline widget for your sidebar
• Tweeting from your own website
• Publishing of a compilation of your tweets

The best dupe for another platform: Twitterfeed, it posts a tweet whenever your website is updated. Also you ca turn it on and off whenever you want.

WP-Cufón

What this little awesome plugin does, is allow for you to implement custom types on your website. That’s how I can have my custom fonts and titles everywhere without having to make images for them. @font-face and the Google Font API are nice ways to do the same but they are not stable enough for me yet.

The only bad part about them all: they don’t work in IE ¬¬. Who keeps using IE anyways?

Dupes for other blogging platforms: @font-face and the Google font API.

Fast and secure contact form

I remember that before I used this little plugin, I would get a lot of spam mail. I still do, but it no longer comes from my contact form. This handy little contact form is super easy to install as well as secure because it includes a captcha field to stop spambots from flooding your email.

Dupes for other blogging platforms: Not really sure, but I guess turning on captcha on your comments would do the trick.

WP-Spam Free

This little guy is awesome! It gives you all sorts of info about who comments on your blog, from their ISP to their IP. It’s good for when you want to ban someone for leaving hateful comments. I totally recommend it if only to know where your readers come from.

Dupes for other blogging platforms: I really don’t know but it’s always good to moderate all your comments, IMO.

WP-Polls

For all those little polls that come to my mind every once in a while. I like it because it’s easy to set up a poll, track it, and the take it down. It gives you info on who votes (if they have ever commented, it will tell you who voted on what) and will give you info on where they are.

Dupes for other bloggin platforms: I’m pretty sure that blogger has it’s own poll widget.

Sexy Bookmarks

Generates beautiful social media icons at the end of your posts, they even have cool effects and everything. You can configure how you want to share your stuff (which services to use like bit.ly, twitter username, etc). They are super sleek and look good in all websites.

Dupes for other blogging platforms: Share this works on pretty much every website.

All-in-One Adsense and YPN

This is the genius plugin that managed my Google Ads, I just implemented them today and really wanted them somewhere non intrusive. I’m planning on selling advertising with the WP125 plugin (which manages ads that are 125 px x 125 px), but that might come later on.

Dupes for other blogging platforms: I’ve never used YPN, but Adsense is easy to install in every website.

WordPress Thread Comment

This plugin makes threaded comments a reality. However, and this is a big however, IT IS A PAIN to customize. Seriously, it foes what it wants and the CSS is a nightmare. I configured it once and when it did what I wanted I left it at that. I’m not even sure that it would look good with more than 2 threaded comments but it is in my colours, in my own comments function so I can’t complain. I’ve thought about removing it, but I haven’t because it was so hard to customize….

Dupes for other blogging platforms: None that I know of, but there must be some script out there that does the same thing.

There you ave it, my best 8 WordPress plugins. they are the main ones, I have a bunch installed but I don’t really use them. If you use WordPress, what are your favourite plugins? If you use another platform, which functions do you like the most about it?

Kisses,

Julie.

I’m thinking of starting a Facebook fan page for my website… I’m still unsure since I don’t know how many people will “Like” it and how it may help undesirable people to find this website.

I think that I should further explain the part about the undesirable people…

As many of you may know, I was raised as a Jehova’s Witness (JW). The JWs are a VERY closed community where (to my experience) everyone is in every body’s business and what not. I’m not a practitioner nor am I baptized by this religion so technically I am not one of them, however, my parents are very involved and it may cause them problems if the wrong people caught wind of this website.

Once I took pictures at a gathering, so I put them up in PhotoBucket (not even Facebook) for everyone to download them and they told my father that I should remove them as they were “causing people to manipulate them and make them into homosexual images”.

I really don’t care what they say about me, after all I rarely publish stuff about the JWs (I only answered publicly a question from my friend and I post the outfits I wear to their meetings sometimes) and my parents know about my blog. It just bothers me that my blog might bring problems to them, seeing that they are really attached to the religion and I’d hate for me to be the cause of that.

But on the other hand… Do I really want that “fear” to dictate what I do with my digital identity? I mean, it’s enough that I already do most (read everything but Facebook) of my online stuff with a pseudonym, now I can’t even market myself because of what a bunch of irrelevant people might say?

It would really hurt me if my parents got some bad things said because of me (we have enough with my sister’s shenanigans which shall not be discussed here), but I really need to start putting myself out there. To be honest, I’m more than ready to get out of the “acceptable” bubble and explore more things. With college ending this December, I think that it’s best if I start doing it myself before I’m thrust with no warning into the real world.

What do you think? I know that I’m going to end up doing what I think it’s best, but it means a lot to me to read your opinion.

ETA: Speaking of putting myself out there, you can now see some of my web design /development work over at Hire Me! I do everything from coding, graphics, adding cool fonts to websites and choosing cool WordPress plugins.

ETA2: I have my own Facebook Fan Page, go like it!! You can also see my portfolio and see me post occasional trilingual gibberish :D.

Kisses,

Julie.

Super quick outfit post (not many pictures) because I need to leave like right this instant with my dad.

I’m wearing:

• Star System “New York” red shirt
• Pull and Bear skinny jeans
• Pull and Bear grey long cardigan
• Capa de Ozono grey gladiator sandals

Maximus is wearing:

• Green scarf/collar
• Red and black leash

My dad took this picture as I was returning from walking Maximus XDD. It’s hilarious.

Gotta run!

Kisses,

Julie.

P.S.: I totally need to improve my posture.

Oh yes I am!

It’s not something that many people particularly know about me (after all it’s not like a conversation topic or anything) but I take obsessive care of my teeth.

It all started when I was little, like 8 maybe, and my teeth were coming out all crooked. I was just starting to lose my baby teeth and growing my real teeth when my mum (an ex orthodontist student) noticed that my two front teeth were crooked, one was pushed all the way to the front and the other was pushed all the way to the back. Her verdict: I had to get braces. So, she took me and my sister (who actually had a twin tooth, yes a twin tooth! I don’t know the name in English but it was two teeth merged into one, super gross) to an orthodontist and we started our treatment.

Yup, I wore those!

The first thing they showed us was to use the different brushes that were needed to clean both our teeth and the braces/other stuff, my mum was very strict about keeping things super clean so I grew up being paranoid about my teeth and how much I brushed them. At first I used a thing called a bite block, which raised my upper teeth so that they wouldn’t get stuck with my bottom teeth and continue to get crooked. That lasted about 6 months, until my teeth were ready for braces. I had two, TWO braces on my front teeth and that was it.

My baby teeth were taking a lot of time to get out, so the orthodontist passed me on to a dentist to take out most of my baby teeth to accelerate the process. I think that I got at least 8 teeth taken out. My normal teeth started growing and another problem came: they were too big for my tiny mouth (seriously, I got huge teeth) so they had to perform surgery on me to prevent unnecessary teeth growing. Yup, I had surgery, they removed more baby teeth, opened my gum and removed the bone that would be my real teeth. I was so used to the sound of the dental stuff that I fell asleep during my surgeries, you can guess that my dentist loved me (plus she always let me spray water at her assistant which was super fun). I used to clean my stitches religiously, they were so clean when I took them out that my dentist claimed that they looked brand new.

2 years after I started my treatment, I finally got my upper teeth in braces (YAY!). It was painful, when they were tightened, pulled and pushed. My teeth were super sensitive but I never missed an appointment, always went to get them tightened no matter how painful it was. I started to see that my teeth were finally straight, no more crooked smiles, no more hiding them when I laughed. Now my bottom teeth were missing so in went the braces. It was all worth it when my wisdom teeth started to come out and they came out straight and didn’t move my other teeth :D.

After 5 years of treatment, I got my braces taken out. My teeth were super straight, there was no doubt about that. It felt weird having flat teeth and I didn’t get used to it right away. Because of the glue and the braces itself (they were metal), my teeth weren’t as white as I expected them to be so I started obsessing even more.

I’m known for taking as long as 15 minutes just brushing my teeth (with super special toothpaste), I floss 3 times a day (actually I brush, floss then brush again). I don’t use mouthwash because I need a non alcohol one and my dad hogs it. I go to the dentist regularly to get my checkups. Last year I had a horrible encounter with a filling that had fallen out and I suffered like you have no idea. I was this close to getting a root canal done.

The only thing that I know that I won’t get done teeth wise, is whitening. I’m a coffee addict and you have to refrain from coffee, tea or any coloured food after you get it done (my sister can’t drink coffee or anything like that and she got her teeth whitened, they look awesome).

My teeth aren’t perfect but they are healthy and that’s what matters the most to me. I totally forgot the point of this post…

Have you ever worn braces?

Kisses,

Julie.

I’ve decided that I’m going to stop ranting in this blog. Nothing good comes off of it and I’m tired of getting into a void of negativity whenever something bad happens.

Since I still need an outlet to vent and whatnot, I decided to do so on my Tumblr (which houses my favourite looks from LOOKBOOK.nu as well, just in case you’re interested). I’m not going to say that I’m looking for a direction with this blog (let’s be honest, it’s never had a direction) but I’m going to let the negativity out of it.

I recently changed Firefox for Google Chrome… Firefox and I were fighting again and Safari was being all special when playing True Blood so I went with Chrome and it has treated me well, plus I like all the plugins it has and it doesn’t crash on me every five seconds. I also like that he lets me know when I got new mail. BTW, how cool is that you can receive all your email on GMail? I love it!

I’m also changing my Molsekine for an old Mean planner I had laying around, after reading these two Filofax posts, I fell in love with planners again and decided to take out my old one (it also helps that Filofax doesn’t ship to Mexico, that I’m penniless and that I really don’t want anymore shipping drama), so I’m going to buy re-fills and geek it all out by filling it with everything. I’ve only included my cards and business cards plus planned my month of August and pasted a post-it for my to-do list (I’m out of to-do list paper u_u). When it’s finished I’ll post it :D.

I really loved this poster that Gala blogged on the Cherry on Top this week that I just had to re-post it:

By Ben Crick

You should really check out the accompanying article and the other posters, they are extremely cool looking and so true.

I think that this is a good reminder for EVERYONE, not only those in creative industries. I think that no matter what your work is… you cannot undersell it or give it away for free. If you really love what you do, you can’t just give it away…

Have an awesome week everybody!

Kisses,

Julie.

I’m fed up with all the rain ¬¬. It’s summer, it shouldn’t be raining, I demand my unbearable summer heat back right this instant!

Ok, enough of my tantrums u_u. I’m getting ready for flooded roads, rain induced traffic and my school flooding so my mum bought me some rain boot (wellies) today.

They are so cool!

Steve Madden rain boots

They were $899 MXN which is about $70 USD. I really like them, they’re nice to look at, comfortable and match most of my wardrobe :D. Now I don’t have to worry if the school gets flooded (I can leave them in the car and go get them as soon as it starts raining or something :P).

Here is a random picture of a salad and one of Maximus

Grapes, lettuce, pear, kiwi, tomatoes and some random dressing

Maximus on my bed

Happy Weekend everyone!

Kisses,

Julie.