Category: Site Updates and News

I’ve been having quite a bit of trouble getting my various TudorHistory blogs to publish since Sunday. I’ve been reading through the Blogger help groups and it appears that a lot of other folks are having the same issues. I tried one strange thing with the TudorCast blog which actually worked, although it then did NOT work when I tried to put up a post explaining why the podcast was two days late.

Now I’m going to try the same trick with this blog, so let’s see if this works… It’s obvious that there is still a big underlying problem at Blogger, so posting might still be a bit spotty until it is fixed.

Sorry I’m just now getting around to fixing the submission forms for the penpal listings, new links and the Q&A blog. The address that it uses to do the form post action changed for some reason so it broke all my forms!

My apologies to anyone who came looking for the website over the past 18 or so hours. I goofed on my domain renewal (I thought it was renewed through 2008, but obviously not!), but all should be sorted out now. And it’s renewed through 2010, so if this little episode is repeated, at least it won’t be for another three years.

The funny (and sad) thing is that I was first clued on to the fact that something was wrong when I checked my email this morning and I only had 5 spam emails in my tudorhistory folder (I usually get between 30 and 50 overnight).

Episode #13 of Tudor Cast is now up!

The May 2007 episode of TudorCast is up! This marks one year of the podcast. I can’t believe it was actually over a year ago that I thought about doing this, and I really can’t believe that I actually have put together a year of podcasts. Thanks to everyone who has given me feedback over the past year!

I’ve finally gone through and checked all the links in the “Links to Other Sites of Interest” and deleted some dead ones and updated some that have moved since my last run-through (about a year ago!). I still have a bunch in my bookmarks that I need to add, and I’ll get aroud to that eventually.

Also, probably most important to students, I’ve added a “Last Update” date at the bottom of most pages, so now you don’t have to email me for that information if you need it for a bibliography. Now I just need to remember to add it to all the glossary and chronology pages I’m re-writing!

I’ve changed the template for the blog a little so that the timestamp that links to the post and the comments link now appear right under the title of the post and there is a separater between all the posts. Hopefully this will help people get their comments on the right post. I had a couple more end up in the wrong place, and I’d like to try to keep the responses with the correct post.

Some friends of mine have been posting these maps to their blogs, so I thought I would join in!

Create your own visitor map!

I’ve finally finished the January podcast, now that we’re two days into February. It’s available for download over at the podcast blog. There are also links for setting up iTunes, Yahoo Podcasts and PodPlanet to grab episodes.

Hello all! I hope everyone is having a good 2007 so far!

I meant to put something up on the news blog about the new design for the front page of TudorHistory.org, but bad weather, a satellite internet connection at home and getting caught up at work have all conspired against it.

So, yes, I’ve changed the front page again. I think the “window” design has only been up for two years (at the most), but I wanted something with smaller graphics and more text that *should* help people find what they are looking for a bit easier. At least, that’s the plan. Plus, this design matches the rest of the site a bit better. I might be tweaking the designs of the blogs a bit too, when I get a chance. Apologies to those who liked the old design better. At some point I’m going to put together a little gallery of all the old designs, since I have the files for most of the revisions from the old tudor.simplenet.com all the way through today.

Also, I’m going to start turning on comments for posts here at the news blog. I really didn’t have any reason to not have comments before, I just didn’t think about it. So from now on all my blogs will have comments turned on by default. I will have comment moderation turned on though, mostly to keep comment spam out.

The final podcast for 2006 is now up!

The November 2006 episode of the podcast is now up!

BTW, sorry things have been kind of quiet on this blog lately… I haven’t found a whole lot of articles that caught my attention and I’ve been pretty busy (after recovering from that stupid head cold).

Hello dear readers…

Although this might not be too helpful to people who actually read this site, I just wanted to post something about any spam that appears to be coming from tudorhistory.org. One of the techniques of spammers is to “spoof” a domain name, or in other words, make it appear that an email is coming from a domain that it actually is not. The only legitimate email from my website is from lara@tudorhistory.org or tudorhistory@tudorhistory.org. And I can guarantee you that you won’t get an email from me unless I’m responding to something that you sent me in the first place (either a direct email or a submission to the pen pals page or something to the question & answer blog).

Thanks!

The October podcast is now up!

I just wanted to mention here that I’ve clarified the $5 entry fee on the story contest. The money is to cover Wendy’s expenses (the prize, mailing it to the winner from Australia, etc.) and any left over money will be donated to UNICEF. Also, Wendy’s Yahoo address appears to be bouncing, so we’ve switched it to her other email address if you need to get in contact with her.

Just in case any of you have been reading my personal blog, I just wanted to warn you that it has moved to a new address at blog.larae.net Basically I’ve replaced the index of my personal website with the blog. I’ve added a link to my Flickr photosets over on the right sidebar, in case anyone is interested in looking through those.

The August and September podcast is now up!

The July 2006 episode of TudorCast is now up!

Hopefully nobody who reads this site or blog will be getting any of these, but I just wanted to let everyone know that a spammer is spoofing my domain name with made-up names before the @tudorhistory.org part. The only email addresses that I send from are tudorhistory@tudorhistory.org or lara@tudorhistory.org. Anything else is not legit.

Now to go continue deleting the hundreds of spam blocker replies that are currently flooding my email…

Update: It looks like it has tapered off, for now. Whew… 100+ emails a minute is just a little more than I’m used to. 🙂