Sunday Post #94

Posted October 5, 2014 by Lola in Sunday Post / 22 Comments

sunday post

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimba @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer.
It’s a chance to share News. A post to recap the past week, showcase books and things we have received and share news about what is coming up for the week on our blog.

What happened this week?
This week wasn’t off to a bad start, like I mentioned last week in my Sunday Post I had trouble with my websites as they where hitting the maximum limit for cpu and physical memory usage. I eventually upgraded to a higher resource level, so I wasn’t so stressed to find a solution quickly, but guess what I still hit the new limit as well! It was such a pain in the ass to figure out what was causing the spikes and how to get those things down.

I eventually found this handy website that was mentioned in of of the posts on Nosegraze her blog. It tests how fast your website is. I figured out one of the problem with Lola’s Blog Tours website, I embedded the google drive forms to sign-up for tours on my site, but those forms took a lot of effort to load. So now I linked towards the form instead of actually embedding them in the posts. It might be less handy, but it helped a lot for getting my website faster. I switched all the banners on my site from uploaded ones on my site to uploaded through flickr. I am planning on uploading all tour banners and other images to flickr in the future, so all those bloggers who use the premade html codes aren’t using my bandwitch to load the images.

I also changed something here on Lola’s Reviews, now you don’t see the whole posts anymore when you go to my homepage, but excerpts instead. What do you think of this? I am still not sure if I like it, it does give a better overview, but I am so used to seeing the whole posts it takes some getting used to. Again this helps having the site load faster. I also deactivated and even deleted some plugins.
I also found a caching plugin that would help reduce cpu and phyical memory usage, but instead it broke my site! I had to go to cpanel and deleted the files and remove some text from a certain document. The only good thing was that the makers of the plugin had written down specifially whats to remove when your broke your site. I was so stressed and so happy when my site was working again! Michelle advised me last sunday to remove the rafflecopters from older posts, so that’s another thing I did. I haven’t gotten them all out yet, but I got quite far. From now on I’ll remove the rafflecopter giveaways when the giveaway has ended. I also removed some tags from posts, not sure if this actually helps, but after reading this post about tags I decided to remove some tags and use less tags per post. All these things took a whole chunk out of my days and the problem still isn’t solved :(. I just didn’t check my hosting stats for the past two days, to prevent me from worrying about it. I’ll check again monday.

Pita seems to be recovering nicely, she still got lot of attention this week and she seemed to enjoy it. It was a bit difficult to make sure the other two girls got enough out of cage time, I think they where a bit frustrated as they get out more often normally.

And my mom brought us some fresh applejuice last weekend and it was so yummy we drank it all in a few days, lol. I tried out a new recipe for Mixed Vegetable Kurma, it took a few bites to get used to the taste but after that I couldn’t stop eating.

On the blog it was a busy week as well and next week will be busy as well. I posted another post about dreams, this one focussing on common themes in my dreams. And you can vote on which book you want me to-read this month during the My To-Be Read list poll, I choose 3 non-review books this month as I would like a short break from review books to recharge. Then there where two release day posts, a cover reveal and a blog tour. It also was a busy week on Lola’s Blog Tours as I had 2 new blog tours starting this week and a cover reveal that took place.

I’ll be attempting to make pecan cheesecake today, as my mom brought us lots of pecans, so I am hoping it turns out well!

Random Picture(s) of the Week:
 photo SAM_8528_zps51478201.jpg
Snickers and Smarties begging to get out of the cage, I feel a bit quilty I haven’t given them as much attention as normal this week.

This week I posted about:
Cover Reveal: Cross Me off Your List by Nikki Godwin
Book Blast: The Makeover
Release Day Blitz: Brew by David Estes
Blog Tour: On the Move by K.V. Flynn – tens list
Lola’s Ramblings: common themes in dreams
My To-Be Read List #2: Poll

What to expect next week on the blog:
– Blog Tour: Sonar series by B Truly
– Cover Reveal: Suspected (The Elected series #2) by Rori Shay
– Blog Tour: Willows of Fate by Suzanna J Linton
– Lola’s Ramblings: Do You Participate in Blog Tours?
– Pre-release post: The Roche Hotel by Mysti Parker
– My To-Be Read List #2: Chosen book

Tours open for sign-up on Lola’s Blog Tours:
Review Opportunity: Chills: a short story collection by Sahar Sabati – sign-ups open till further notice
Review Opportunity: Flawless by Jennifer McGill – sign-ups open till further notice
Review Opportunity: Paranormal Keepers by Jen Naumann – sign-ups open till further notice
Review Opportunity: The Luthier’s Apprentice by Mayra Calvani – sign-ups open till further notice
Review Opportunity: Daughter of Isis (Descendants of Isis #1) by Kelsey Ketch – sign-ups open till further notice
Review Opportunity: Cross Roads by Donald Wilson II – sign-ups open till further notice

Book Blitz: Ghost Heart by Ripley Patton – sign-ups open till 19 October

Blog Tour: The Sonar Series by B Truly – sign-ups open till 5 October.
Blog Tour: Flury Journey of the Snowman by Tony Bertauski – sign-ups open till 13 November
Blog Tour: True Calling by Siobhan Davis – sign-ups open till 14 November

Book Haul:
The Roche Hotel Cover_FinalThe Roche Hotel: Season One
by Mysti Parker

Format: e-copy
Source: for review
You can’t find The Roche Hotel on Goodreads

Blurb:
After her husband ditches her for a blonde actress wannabe, Jane Seymour needs a job that pays the rent. The struggling Roche Hotel needs a miracle. With the former owner’s wife butting her nose into the renovations and new owners who are in way over their heads, Jane may be the answer to their prayers. Sure, she can handle The Roche Hotel’s quirky staff. But, can this skittish divorcee keep it all together when handsome Henry the Donut Guy makes his first delivery? This collection of serial fiction stories is a Tudorific romantic comedy that will leave you laughing out loud and hungry for more.

otherworld nightsOtherworld Nights (Otherworld Stories #3)
by Kelley Armstrong

Format: e-copy
Source: through Netgalley
You can find Otherworld Nights on Goodreads

Blurb:
This short story collection features a brand-new novella and many other stories collected together for the first time. Most feature the werewolves of the Otherworld, Elena and Clay, Jeremy, Karl and other members of the American Pack. These are some of Kelley Armstrong’s best-loved and most enduring characters, from bestselling books such as Bitten, Stolen and Frostbitten.

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22 responses to “Sunday Post #94

    • Next time I do site maintenance I hope it’s for a better reason though ;). But all in all I am happy with what I’ve accomplished on the blog this week. I really can’t recommend Kelley Armstrong enough, she got me into reading Urban Fantasy and has been on my favourite author list since I first read a book by her.

    • Yeah it felt like I needed to change so many things and every time I changed something I had to found out the next day it didn’t help enough. It certainly gave me a headache, let’s hope I can solve it this week.
      I am really happy Pita is doign well, we placed her back into the cage with the other girls today and she got a quail egg, they love eggs!

    • Website problems can be so annoying, what kind of issue did you have? I am really nervous about my stats, although not checking them for two days seems to help. Maybe I’ll take a look tomorrow if I dare.
      Smarties and Snickers were a bit frustrated this week as they didn’t got as much out of cage time, so I hope they cheer up now that’s Pita back in the cage.

    • Actualy I am still not sure if I solved the issue, but I tried to de-stress a bit this weekend, so I didn’t check the stats. They certainly can be a headache, I wish I knew more about hosting and websites so it would be easier to figure these things out.
      So far I love the Otherworld short stories and it’s so much fun to get back to that world again, so I am really looking forward to readign them.

  1. I am so glad you got it all cleared up. I started using a different way to post my book covers because I don’t want to lose space. It seems to help and I might at some point go back and fix some of the posts that have rafflecopters and linkys and take them out.

    Yum Pecan Cheesecake. Let me know how it turns out, might need that recipe 🙂

    Have a great week Lola!!
    Michelle@Because Reading recently posted…Oh well it’s broken ~ WIR & TSPMy Profile

    • Actually I am still not sure whether the issue is completely solved, but at least I changed some things for the better. Fixing old posts is one of the worst things, because they don’t drive trafic to your blog anymore, but bots and crawlers still visit them, so they can still bog down your site. So far I really like Flickr and I also started the habit of linking book covers to goodreads now, as I already have to change a few things in the image code html anyway.

      I haven’t tasted the pecan cheesecake yet, but it looks and smells delicious!

    • Yeah website problems are certainly annoying, I am still not sure if the problems are fixed. They couldn’sit with me when I had Pita with me and as Pita sat with me most of the time, the other two didn’t get out of the cage that often. I feel so bad for them, but this week they get some extra attention.

    • I am glad you like the excerpts, I like how they provide a better sense of overview now on the mainpage or when searching for a certain post. And indeed I just want it all to work and it’s frustrating searching for solutions.

    • Thansk Katherine, it drives me crazy as well. There just doens’t seem to be an easy way to fix it, but lost of little time consumign things that might or might not work.
      The Pecan Cheesecake turned out pretty well! I was pleasantly surprised by the taste, although I wasn’t 100% satisfied with the dough. I used the dough from another recipe as this one used a storebrought dough.

    • I never realized that rafflecopters could be an issue either, it’s a pain to remove all of them now. But basically it takes time to load those thing even on old posts. I am really glad Michelle pointed the rafflecopter issue out to me.

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