So last week I started telling you about some changes that I have been planning on for a while.  For those of you that may have missed it, there has been some things that I have had on my heart for a long time.  I have been chewing on it for a long time but just always put it off as something to maybe do later.  Well, I finally decided that it was time to go for it and I am hoping that God will bless it and use it.

The other side of it was that the domain that I had decided on and was centering everything around was taken.  Someone in New York had taken one of the two best options and someone in Florida had the other.  Huge bummer!  Well, now for the update!  I have emailed back and forth with the guy in Florida and he has decided to let us have the domain!  That is huge!  I don’t have to come up with a whole new idea!

So now I wanna ask a favor from you all.  I know I haven’t told you much about what is to come, but I am really excited about it.  I know you don’t have details and I know that we don’t know this guy with the domain, but I wanna ask all of you to join in with me in praying for what is to come and that God will use it in ways that make my dreams for it look weak!  Also, pray that the guy in Florida would be blessed for being so gracious and willing!  Thank you all so much!  I can’t wait to unveil the thoughts and ideas for it all!

Plans are in the works for a major renovation here at brookjames.com.  I have been thinking and praying about this for a while now and I’m tired of just not doing it.  So over the next couple months (hopefully not longer than that) I will be working on a brand new look to this site.  I hope and pray that it will be something that God will use in all kinds of ways.  I don’t know what the finished product is yet, but I have some pretty good ideas of what I’m shooting for and I am very excited about it all!

So, here is where you come in.  I have come up with some plans and concepts, but the domain name that I want to get to add to it has been taken.  It was claimed back in 2008 and has not been used.  Unfortunately the owner has it until 2012.  Boo.  While there are other options, this one is my absolute favorite so far.  So if you would join in with me in praying that this lady in New York doesn’t ignore my emails, has a heart, no plans for it, and is willing to pass it on to me I would really appreciate it!  It won’t stop the plans from moving forward if she says no or ignores me, but it definitely will be a big bummer!

Thank you all for your support, prayers and love.  I seriously can’t thank you all enough!  Stay tuned for some awesome new stuff coming soon!

The time has come to launch the new theme!  There are still some bugs in it that I haven’t figured out, but I guess that should be expected when the creator of the theme advises you not to use it because he hasn’t messed with it much.  Oh well.  I guess I will keep searching for the perfect theme, but for now here we are!  Thanks to Human3rror (who has some really great WordPress themes) and his Simpl3 theme, we have an all new site!  There are tons of brand new headers (with more to come), new buttons, some ads for some of my favorite places, new content and a new twist on some of the old stuff, and a Video Of The Week spot still to come!

It’s amazing how much you can learn through trial and error about something that is way over your head.  Enter html and css.  I still am not sure I know what I’m doing and know for sure that I couldn’t pull off coding my own site.  So I just modify when I can figure it out.  And here you have it!  So as the hunt for the perfect (free) theme continues (yeah, good luck, I know) enjoy the new site!

Well, I have to say last week was a great one.  We got to see both sets of parents as well as do plenty of fun stuff.  And my staycation was awesome!  I’m actually really bummed it is coming to an end.  I guess I would get bored at some point, but I wouldn’t mind another week of it!  Still so much I needed to get done.  Oh well.  Sooner or later.

This week coming up will be a great one too!  It’s the first one of the year.  I love getting to see everyone working hard on their new year’s resolutions.  Those are not for me.  I figure…well, I’ll just make that a post.  Anyway, this week is gonna be good.  Here are some of the things I’m expecting.

• The bowl games have been great so far and there is one more big one to go.  The National Championship game should be a great game!
• With the new year, many people like to make their new year’s resolution to go to church.  God is going to use the Church to hit up some new folks!
• With the last of the company leaving town until March the house will be pretty quiet again.  I expect that Jack will be a fan of that (although he always loves having his grandparents around).
• The nursery is almost complete.  I expect Jack to calm the crap down and quit wearing himself out worrying about if we are moving or not.
• I am almost ready to launch the new brookjames.com.  I think I’ll do it this week.

I hope you all are expecting great things from our all-powerful, awesome God this week!  He is more than capable to blow your mind!

So I have been blogging now for over a year and I have never really thought of a good tagline for my blog.  Apparently that’s what you are supposed to do.  Your page should say something like this.

Blahblah.com – A Place Where Everyone Blahs

But I never really had that.  I had one that I kinda borrowed for a while, but it didn’t really have anything to do with what was actually written here.  So I am asking you.  As I launch my all new website here soon, what should my tagline be?  Help!

brookjames.com – ???????????

Ok, so I have been trying to figure all this out for the past week.  There are two different ways to do WordPress.  The easy way is just going to wordpress.com and signing up for a blog.  The hard(er) way is to go to wordpress.org and download the files to have your own self hosted blog.  I have done the easy way since I started blogging on WordPress.  I want to try the hard way.  

Well, after many fatal attempts to make it work, I have finally succeeded in figuring it all out.  Great!  Now what?  Well, now I have found out that you not only have to own the domain (mine is brookjames.com) but you also have to be able to host there too.  I used GoDaddy.com to purchase my domain.  Fortunately they have free hosting!  Woo!  

Unfortunately that excitement was short lived.  As soon as I got all the self hosting WordPress stuff figured out I found out that GoDaddy is a punk and the free hosting they give you is free…but they tag on an awful looking header onto the page with their ad.  Awesome.  So now I can have a sweet looking blog with whatever template or layout that I want (which you can’t do when you blog the easy way with WordPress), but the page looks stupid because of the crappy header from GoDaddy!  Could they not have been nice to us and let it be a footer?  Grrr.

I always thought I was pretty good with computers (but not quite a computer nerd), but this has been a complete learning experience from the start!  I didn’t have a clue!  I just hope I can figure it out if I ever try to do it again!  So does anyone out there know of a good web hosting place?  I would prefer a really cheap one.  GoDaddy wants to charge me about $5 a month to get rid of their ads.  Is it even possible to use a different hosting place with a domain purchased from GoDaddy?

No this picture has nothing to do with web hosting.  I have no idea what a good web hosting picture would look like.  So here.  This will do.  Now look at the picture again and say awwwww!

Well, it is official!  The fat lady is singing.  My wife and I have said goodbye to the WordPress name.  Are we changing blogs again?  NO!  It is still the same…if you want it to be.  From here on out, you can go to http://brookjames.wordpress.com if you want and you will be redirected immediately to the new site.  So you have no need to worry!  For those of you that are bloggers you can update a link you may have in your blog roll, but again you don’t have to!  It’s just much cooler now.  

So from now on, the web site is http://brookjames.com.  The end.  That’s it!  Come visit me!