{amylouwho} stories of squatters, domains, and changes

This picture has nothing to do with this post, other than it makes me happy, while the things I've been trying to work out today have not.  This was my lunch on Friday I had with lovely ladies from the Sewing Summit. YUM!

Ugh, I've spent the entire day trying to recover my old URL. It turns out there are URL squatters that wait in the wings for URLs to expire so they can buy them and turn around and resell them for ridiculous amounts of money back to their owners.

So amylouwho.com is now on auction for $2,800!!!!  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?  Someone said I should be flattered that they think my domain is that valuable, personally, I think it's slimy and opportunistic to take advantage like that. In case you were wondering, a URL costs 10$ a YEAR to register.  Yeah.  So, there's no way I'm paying that kind of money to get it back.

Again, nothing to do with the post.  But they make me so happy! And I need a dose of happy today.  I'll tell you about these soon too!  Go check your local Ross if you want some Amy Butler bedding. Just sayin'.

From my experience today I would not buy a .com (URL) through blogger - they use GoDaddy (boo - hiss), plus you have to set up an extra google account that isn't linked to blogger and/or an existing gmail account.  This is why I never got my renewal emails (because I didn't check that other email address).  Find a host separate from blogger (I went with Moniker - Thanks Candy for your ridiculously knowledgeable help today!).  It's cheaper, I have an account with them, and any renewal emails I get will come to the email I use all the time.  This really is my own fault to an extent, but they don't make it easy for you to keep track of things either.

So, the biggest problem is that any link on any site to amylouwho.com will no longer work.  That's about 2 years of linky parties, sew & tells and nice people who just linked to me because they wanted to.  At this point I would rather just move forward and try not to think about all of that.

I have purchased a new .com for $2,792 less than my old one. (Look at all the money I saved! How much fabric can I buy with that?!) And I need your help again.  I'm not going to ask you to go back and change all of your links, BUT, I would love it if you would fix a Sew & Tell button if you have one.

Here is the new code:

<a href="http://www.mommyandbeyond.blogspot.com/search/label/sew-n-tell" target="_blank"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2491/4140008620_26a064ef2d_o.jpg" /></a>

And if you have another link to me on your sidebar other than a direct feed from blogger or something similar - would you change that to  www.mommyandbeyond.blogspot.com too?  When the new URL is up and running all mommyandbeyond links will forward to the new address.  This lovely blogger feature is why you all can still get my blog through your readers.  THANK YOU so much for all of your responses the other day.  It made me feel so much better!

And really, it's okay if you don't want to go through the hassle of changing stuff around.  It's just a blog after all.  I do realize there are much more important things to worry about! Like posting about sewing summit! Which I will now get to since I think I have this mess worked out.

You people are lovely, thanks for being here.