Heart Like a Dog

The Good, the Bad, and the Oh My God of living with dogs!

Heart Like A Dog

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As most of you know, I’ve been looking to take the next step with my blog.  For me that means moving it from the free WordPress account to a self-hosted blog.  My struggle has been what to name the new blog.

The problem is that the wordpress account was www.jodistone.wordpress.com.  Normally speaking you wouldn’t want to change the blog name, just remove the wordpress and make the account a dot.com.

As I’ve mentioned here, there are already at least two authors using the name Jodi Stone, one of which has the website with the dot.com, which meant that I can’t use my name.

I could have gone with, Life With Sampson and Delilah but my plan is to have an official website for all my writings, and some of those writings may not be about Sampson and Delilah.

For months I’ve been popping around your blogs saying, “Just Be The Dog.”

I really did love that saying, but as I’ve mentioned in earlier posts there is already a website with a similar name.

After months of agonizing and indecision, I saw a saying posted on facebook one day and it ended with Heart Like A Dog.  I knew immediately that was the perfect name for my blog.

When I think of a dog’s heart, I think of courage, faith, determination, persistence, generosity, wisdom, devotion, strength and love.  These are just some of the traits I admire in my dogs.

To give of myself to others like my dogs give to me, is a worthy goal in my opinion.

Yes, it’s true, I really want to be more like my dogs.

Great!  I found a blog name.  Then the real agonizing began, I didn’t want to ‘launch’ it until it was perfect. The problem is I know very little about marketing and designing websites and that’s where some of my amazing blog friends came to my rescue.

Without these incredible women, this blog would not be here today.

So I’d like to say a huge thank you to:

Jodi Chick from Kol’s Notes who spent a rainy (at least it was rainy here) Sunday afternoon listening to me whine chatting with me on facebook and who was the one who came up with the tagline, The Life, Loves and Writings of Jodi Stone.  (I think it’s something in the name.) 😉

Julie Melfi (yes, Cali’s mom) from The Daily Dog Blog, who transferred the blog from the free wordpress account to the bluehost server, and has answered many ‘how do I do this’ e-mails.  Maybe you didn’t know this about Julie, but besides writing a daily blog, she’s also a website designer.  You can check her out at legupcreative.com.

And last, but certainly not least Kari Pike from Houndgirl who designed the entire website.  That header, she whipped it up one afternoon.  I can tell you here and now, her child is extremely lucky because Kari has the patience of a saint.  I’m a bit of a perfectionist and she never said a bad thing or told me to shut my pie hole and stop e-mailing her.

These ladies all come highly recommended by me.

Jodi, Julie and Kari, thank you from the bottom of my heart. xoxo

(If I did this right, you were re-directed to this site automatically.  I’m not sure how it works as far as subscribing to the blog or how it is affected in your blog readers.  Please take a moment to add my feed to your readers.  I’ll be working on the subscribe button this week.)

Please bear with me as I figure out the social media buttons and how to subscribe features. 🙂

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Comments

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Comments

  2. Yay!
    I really like the blog’s name and its tag.
    I’ll be following as usual, as I told you before, people will come to your blog for the writing, how it looks it’s important but what engage people is the way you write.
    All the best in this new journey.

  4. Looks great and I love the name! You solved all the problems and came up with something really distinctive. Great job.

    And you assembled an awesome team to help you bring it off. Congratulations!

  5. Great job, Jodi. Looks so professional. I love it. I’m very proud of you!!! Your determination and passion is very inspiring.
    Love ya lots!!

  6. Love the name, the design, the tagline, the header… everything! Congrats on the new blog, and it’s awesome that you had a team of helpful pet blogger pals on your side. 🙂

    • Thanks AJ, those ladies are amazing, it couldn’t have happened without their help. 🙂

  7. Woohoo! You did it!! Congratulations 🙂 It looks fantastic!! (hope you didn’t pull too much of your hair out yesterday!!)

    • I did and there wasn’t any tears either! LOL Thanks again for all your help, you are amazing!

    • Thanks Al, I’ve added a subscription button so you can sign up for an e-mail. If you read your blogs in google reader just add the main link and it should update automatically. 🙂

    • Awe Kari, I couldn’t have done it without you! You will teach me, I know you will. 🙂 Sometimes just knowing what to look for helps! LOL

  12. Great look, GR brought me right to this site. If I didn’t dislike change so much I would do this, but maybe you will inspire me and be my role model.

    • That’s good to know Jan, I wasn’t sure how it would work in the readers. You can go self-hosted if you want, I would say the harder issue was figuring out what I wanted. Once we knew that Kari was fantastic!

  14. I love your new website, the title and tag line and header are great! Jodi, Julie and Kari all did a wonderful job in helping you. I”ve been on the receiving end of Jodi Chick’s help numerous time and she’s always so willing to help, and so smart about social media stuff. I’m giving you, your new blog, and all your great helpers a big Pawsome Pals award! (I just made that up! But it fits!)

    • They are all amazing women Peggy. I like that Pawsome Pals award, you will have to come up with a badge for that! 🙂

  16. Fantastic job Jodi and the new site looks great!! Love the name 🙂

    I have wanted to move mine to self hosted since I already have a website with my own domain name so all I have to do is…well that’s the problem I am not real sure on the all I have to part, lol

    • Thanks Misty, does your domain name website have a blog? If it doesn’t I think it would be easier.

  17. I clicked on your link in my GR because it looked unfamiliar and I was wondering how it got there to begin with. LOL. Lucky I didn’t. So yes, I was redirected. Looks like a smooth transition. Congratulations Jodi Stone x

    • Well that is wonderful news. I was wondering how that would work. Yay, I did something right! LOL

  18. Look at you go girl….teaching the dogs new tricks and then learning some yourself!! Looks great and it appears that the transition was smooth…. Good luck.

  22. I love your new website Jodi, it’s so fresh and appealing, and so professional – congrats!
    The name is perfect and I love your tagline. A great result all round!

  27. Hey Jodi – Just catching up on some blog reading because I haven’t been online much, and I nearly thought I clicked on the wrong blog! Those ladies who helped you did an awesome job – the new site looks great! Congrats, and I hope it helps you to achieve your goals!

  29. Hooray for you and your snazzy new blog! I think it was a fabulous move and those are some awesome ladies you had in your back pocket there. By the way, my reader was unaffected. 🙂

  30. Congrats on the new self-hosting! the blog looks great 🙂 I love the header (polkadots!) and the new blogname suits you and your blogging perfectly.
    Holy cow, I miss a lot in a week and a half gone from blogland!