For the past few months, I’ve been having a variety of blog issues.

I may go offline for a while until we can get the problem settled/resolved.

You will notice that the blog looks strange right now.  I’ve been fighting spam attacks.

Nothing catches God by surprise, however and I do plead the blood of Jesus.  No weapon formed against me will prosper.

And once the wrath of God falls on the hacker, God help him.

Are you wondering why I have the “old” version of this blog back up?

I’m going through an experiment….I’ll return it back to “normal” on Monday of next week. For now, I have some business to take care of.

Lynn

All comments from first time signers go to moderation. Also, comments from regular readers sometimes go to moderation, depending on content that the system tends to flag for me to approve.

If you are a first time signer or regular reader and your comments go to moderation either this evening or tomorrow, be patient. My husband and I are taking a mini trip and will be back by Sunday evening. At that time I’ll look over the moderation que and bring your comments forward (as long as they are appropriate).

Lynn

Some time within the next few months, I plan to start the second blog I have been talking about.  Initially I was going to create it around a barber shop theme but instead I want to create it around the power that blacks have.

About 6 months ago DeeLove indicated that she would be happy to be a moderator for the blog and I’m holding her to it.  I won’t bug Diva, as I have Diva moderating Hicktownpress.

My thought is to continue Hicktown “as is”.  I discuss everything here, positive and negative.

I’d like BlackPowerLine.com to be different.  In that blog I want to highlight all that’s positive in the black community.  I’d like to highlight successful black business owners, black children who are doing great in school, and black social societies that are giving back to the community.

If you have any other positive ideas, let me know as I’m in the incubator stage right now!

Lynn

Something has been going on behind the scenes that I have not discussed up to this point. Wanted to get things straight first.

Hicktownpress was receiving close to 2,000 visitors per day. I woke up one morning, checked my numbers and saw that I had abruptly dropped to 500 (still well above average, but low for me).

After some research I noticed that while Bing and Yahoo were still sending me plenty of traffic, Google was sending me zero traffic.

Further research revealed the fact that if Google removes you from their search index, it more than likely means that your site has been identified as a spam site.

Okay…..all I do is write articles. I’ve never spammed anyone. So with my limited computer knowledge, I disabled the “contact form” in case that was a source for spammers and I deleted the ads from my site.

I wrote to Google to inform them that I don’t spam and I shared with them the steps I had taken.

Then the horror of all horrors happened. Googlebot stopped visiting my blog. Googlebot is the “crawler” that Google uses to index your blog’s pages.

Again, the reason my blog is not in death valley is because Yahoo and several other search engines are keeping me afloat. Also, my links and my visitors keep the lights on here.

But again, to go from 2,000 to 500 is HUGE!

I searched around the internet and found a blog that answers Google related questions. A moderator over there told me that my site is infected with “Pharmacy” spam links.

WOW! Very upsetting. My guess is that the links got in via the various plug-ins that I have (A plug-in is the cutesy stuff such as your ability to email my articles to your friends, the contact form, etc.)

This blog is sooooo infected that I might have to totally ditch it and start over from scratch.

Very upsetting.

My blog was down all day today.  I called my host company and they told me that the server was down…and it took them all day to get it fixed.

This is actually very disturbing.  The company had contacted me several weeks ago, excited that they were moving its members/clients to new servers for better service.  Thus far, with the new servers, my blog is averaging off line time at least once per day and if they don’t get it straight soon, I’m switching blog hosts. Simple as that.

Apologies to all who attemped to get online today but could not.

By:  Lynn

 For the next few days, you will start to see changes to this site.  Don’t worry about it.  We are under construction [as I had mentioned recently that we are ready for a change]

OPEN THREAD

This blog will not be updated again until the new site design is completed.

Until the design is complete, feel free to use this thread as a catch-all to discuss whatever you desire.

By:  Lynn

Depending on the browser you use, this blog may or may not look right when you sign on.

If you are on a jacked-up browser, you will sign on and see the two columns but the middle of the blog will be waaaaaay down the page.

 Not only that, but this blog was designed by a guy in India who I told you all about in the past.  He ended up deteriorating mentally and scammed many, many people on the internet.  He even got some money out of me during his scam days and failed to do some work I paid him to do.  Abhishek is his name.  But the Lord and karma will handle him.

Therefore, I want his blog design and the last remnants of anything pertaining to him out of my life for a fresh start. Plus, I’m tired of looking at this design anyway.

I’ve contacted the local guy who services my computer and I asked him to upload the new design—it’s called “Thesis” and it’s by Wordpress of course.   I’m then going to get a web designer to design it once it’s uploaded.

I’ll keep you all updated but during the design phase, the blog will be offline.  I also have not forgotten that I want to create a second blog, one that deals more with the black community and that won’t be as strict as Hicktown.  But first things first.  Let me get my main blog straight.

By:  Lynn Green

  I am in the process of working on a second blog that deals specifically with black issues and ways in which we may work on those issues in a positive manner.  It will highlight the positive, good things about the black culture and ways to work out solutions to our problems.

The goal is to illuminate the positive aspects of black culture. If anyone wants to see both sides (positive and negative) they can simply view HicktownPress because we have a little bit of everything here.

While creating the blog idea, I thought about barbershops and the fact that blacks often hash out problems and potential solutions while sitting in the neighborhood barbershop or hair salon.

I wanted to call the blog “Black Barbershop” but that name is already taken. So I switched to “Negro Barbershop”. I’ve also considered “Town Barbershop” but “Negro Barbershop” makes it clear who I’m addressing.

I have created a “temporary” practice blog which I have put on “private”. It is on a free blog system for now. Once the real blog is created, I’ll have it professionally designed, put it on a paid server, and go public.

I’d like for some Hicktowners to email me @ hicktownpress@gmail.com and let me know if you would like to be a part of this trial blog, to help me with creating the correct direction for it.

Private Wordpress blogs only allow for 35 people. I only want people who are willing to actually SIGN the blog. No lurkers, please.  I need feedback.

I will talk to DeeLove about becoming a “Barber” (writer) in the Negro Barbershop so that she may help me in finding and posting about positive articles about black life.

My stats reveal that Hicktown is a “mixed” blog in terms of gender. We have pretty much equal amounts of men and women visiting Hicktown, even though mostly women sign.

If you are a man who reads Hicktown often and you would like to be a “barber” in the Negro Barbershop, email me privately and let me know—or state it here on the blog. This would mean that you would be responsible for finding POSITIVE articles about black life and posting on them.

Email me as soon as possible everyone so we can get this trial blog going. Remember…it will not be another Hicktown. This blog will not be as strict. I want it to be more concerned with positive solutions to black issues than anything else.

Not all Hicktowners will like the other blog and that’s fine. Just stay in Hicktown and keep doing what you do!

Lynn

Hicktowners, I just got a response back from IC, of the blog, Independent Conservative. He told me that in order to make your comments bold, do the following:

1. By hand, you have to put in the following code in front of the word or group of words you want to make bold: <b>

2. You MUST close it by putting a </b> at the end of the phrase you are making bold, or single word you are making bold.

3. To put something in italics the code is: <i> and close it with </i>

Thanks, IC!