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Happy Anniversary to Me! It was one year ago today that I launced my first post here on MamaBloo. 298 people visited my blog that day!!! Since that first post, MamaBloo has published 129 more posts on this blog and received over 425 comments. MamaBloo has had over 17,300 page views and those views come from all 6 continents. But not Antartica. No penguins here.
But more than the numbers, this past year has been one of exploration for me. One that first day when I went “out there” and live with my blog, I have placed a part of myself in my reader’s hands. It was not easy for me to open myself up through my craft — to expose my writing and my life to anyone and everyone. I have struggled with what it means to talk about kids on a public forum — to put their names nad faces out into the world for anyone to see (some may say that once we appeared on national TV the horse was outta the barn on that one!!). I have to face my own inner demons of what kind of approval I have needed from my own readership, soaking up comments like a comment-glutton. I have studied Google Analytics (which tells one how many people are visiting one’s blog) and I have also walked away from statistics and fasted for months — not knowing if anyone anywhere ever read a word I was writing — and contemplating whether or not that was even important. I have been pursued by advetisers, product reviews, even other bloggers, to put up posts about what they want.
But a year ago blogging wasn’t really an option. I mean, I had to start this blog. I was bursting to write, to document my family, to put my thoughts “out there.” I knew that starting a blog was a MUST the day Dave decided to perform a dubious (at best) home surgery. A few years back we discovered that much like Chandler on the show Friends it seemed that Dave had grown, well, a third nipple. He liked to call it his “love bump.” So, one day he got tired of it and asked the family at the dinner table, “Who would like to cut off my love bump??” The look on my face communicated, what kind of freakin question is that to ask of these lovely, genteel children? But, I was wrong. Lily (age 7 at the time) was all for it. So, the two of them grabbed the fingernail clippers and scurried down the hall to the bathroom, where all home-surgeries are performed. The rest of us hid under a blanket. I then knew that I needed a blog.
But more than the personal rewards that come with writing, it has been a good discipline for me to write regularly. Some weeks I have to force myself to sit down and try to come up with something to say. Some weeks stories just burst out of me. I have had to be very open to the process of creation through writing. And that process has opened me up to myself.
But now it is more of an option. I sit here tonight wrestling with where to go from here. I feel pulled to both keep the blog going and to stop and take a break. I honestly cannot say which is right for me. I keep looking for a sign to tell me where to go. When I was younger, I used to ask God for signs that went something like this, God if you want me to do this thing, make a blue bird land on my windowsill in the next 10 seconds. Yeah, seriously. I can picture God listening to me and saying, “Yeah, seriously? I am not a performing pony. But I like your creativity.” The blue bird never seemed to come and I have learned since that “signs” do not usually come on demand. Instead they require an atuned ear to the universe that is sometimes hard to muster inbetween diaper changes, band concerts, dinners, clean ups, and sore feet. But I do trust that the path will be revealed.
But no matter what happens, on this lovely first birthday slash anniversary, I want to say THANK YOU to all my readers. Your comments have meant so much. You subscriptions have meant so much. Just knowing that there are people “out there” reading my words has meant so much. Truly. Each reader has been a blessing to me in his or her own way. I really have such a great group of readers — some of you I knew before, some of you I have met since I started this journey. You have all treated me with kindness and honestly, and I love you all.
So, here’s to all of YOU! The thousands of you who have shared this last year with me. Thank you and Cheers!!!!
If anyone out there needs information from me and they find me to be, oh lets say, resistant, the simple solution is to park me in front of a slow computer and make me try to compose blog posts on it.
It won’t be long until I am begging for them make it stop. I’ll tell you ANYTHING YOU WANT TO KNOW, I would whimper. Just give me a few more gigabytes, a faster processor, an a truck load of RAM. Just don’t make me restart one more time or wait 5 freaking minutes for my internet browser to load.
I am pretty sure that I would rather be waterboarded than use a slow computer.
Pretty sure.
§ May 28th, 2010 § Filed under Blogging Tips § Tagged Blogging Comments Off
Now that you have made the important decision what to call yourself and how to host your blog, it is time to think about what your actual blog will look like.
When you are thinking of the basic design, there are three ways to go with this:
1. Free Template: These are everywhere on the web. If you type in “free blog template” into your search engine, you better be sitting back with a beverage and childcare because you are going to have oceans of free blog templates to look through. This is where your initial research will help you out. It will help narrow some of your searching to just a giant flowing river of templates. What I did was download about two dozen templates and run them on my blog before I was officially live (in other words, I was live, but no one actually knew that yet). That way you can look at each template with your blog name, subtitles, etc and get a sense of if it feels and looks like you want it to.
One super big important thing to remember is that most free templates are customizable. Meaning, if you love the template but you wish something was a different color, you can change it. To do that, you have to dig into the html code and figure out the hex color codes and (have I lost you…??) that can take time and a bit of trial and error until you get it right. For example, the highlight color on MamaBloo used to be ORANGE… now it is a nice shade of gray. There are other customizable options as well.
2. Not Free Template: Same deal as above but the templates cost money. Some designers who normally charge big bucks for custom design will have a small gallery of templates you can purchase for around $25-$60.
3. Custom Design: This is where you contact a designer and start the “design process.” Starting from scratch or almost scratch a designer can build you a blog that looks, supposedly, just the way you have dreamed it up in your head … or close enough… or even better! The prices are everywhere on this one… all the way up to $10,000 or more for a profession blog that will put all the other bloggers to shame. The GOOD things about having a pro designer design your blog, is that you don’t have to give yourself a bald spot figuring out all the technical aspects. I have worked with two designeds: Emily June and Mandy Hornbuckle. Both were awesome to work with, reasonably priced and very, very helpful. A note of caution here. Be sure you check out the portfolio of your designer so you know what you are getting. I, for one, do not like “cartoons” of moms juggling a computer, a wooden spoon, and a baby bottle, all the while smiling some maniacal smile. Hey, if YOU do, great, but that is so not me. So, it was critical that I found designers that got that. There is nothing wrong with starting with something free or cheap and then upgrading when you are ready.
After you have your basic look figured out, you can get to work on your SIDEBAR. There are infinite possibilities for your sidebar. And, as above, you can usually customize the size of the sidebar by digging into the code. Mamabloo is considered a two-column blog, because it has one sidebar. You can have three -olumn blogs with two side bars and I have even seen some 4-column ones. As you think about your design choices above, the sidebar issue must be considered. As MamaBloo is a two column blog — meaning, one sidebar, it is pretty simple. When I do get around to upgrading my look, I will FOR SURE move to a three column blog — with two sidebars. I just need the space — think of it like getting a bigger closet.
I do recommend spending some time on your sidebar design. This is were all you subscription options, ads, buttons, gimics, etc will be. Take some time to think about what you want to live there — don’t just go with the wordpress (or other host) default options. The result will be a very generic, stock looking blog. Adding widgets, text, and other such candy to your sidebar is as easy as clicking on the widget you want and dragging it into your sidebar template on the back end ( the back end is the magical place where blogs are designed and crafted… the part that readers never see).
Common sidebar elements include:
Blog Roll — this is where you have a list of links to other blogs you read and/or like. I personally am very careful about who I add to my blog roll. Some blogs have dozens and dozens of links listed, but I prefer quality over quantity.
Previous posts – This can look like a list of categories, or a calendar, or a drop down menu.
Tag Cloud — this is that paragraph looking things where some words are bigger than others. These are the “Tags” of your individual posts. The bigger words are tags that you use more often.
Subscription Options — Email, RSS, Google, amd Yahoo are common
Twitter/Facebook/BlogFrog — Ways to follow your blog
Search — so readers can find things on your blog
Buttons – Graphic links to other sites. These are usually square and promote fellow bloggers or organizations. You just cut and paste the html into a text widget and voila! Pretty.
You can take it from there. As you start to search for WIDGETs to add to your sidebar, you will find lots of choices. Again, this is where your initial research in step one will help you get some sleep at night.
Next Up: Are you Plugged In? What in the Heck to Write About, and Ethical Concerns (yes, even in blogging…).
§ April 30th, 2010 § Filed under Blogging Tips § Tagged Blogging, Goals Comments Off
Okay, so if you have been following along, hopefully by now you have done some research about the oh, I don’t know, bazillion things to look at on the bazillion blogs out there.
Good. Next step.
Time to think about what to call your blog. Naming your blog may feel akin to naming your children. Because, in reality, your blog is going to feel like a child, or more like an infant for a long time as you nuture it, dress it up in different outfits, put it in timeout, and so on. So, for me, it took a while to find the right name. Here is what I took into consideration:
First, I did not want my own personal parent-given name to be a part of the title. Other people may think differently about this, especially people who may be running their own business and want their names “out there” and everywhere. I felt a bit more protective of my name. I wanted a “handle” or nickname or pseudonym, both for fun and for a tad bit more privacy. Of course, if I make it big, the privacy part is gone no matter what the blog is called.
Also, I thought about the topic of my blog — motherhood stuff — and wanted that to somehow be represented in the title. But in a way that said “me.”
I thought about search engines. What would my readers be searching for? And how would the name of my blog lead them to my articles.
After I thought about those things, I googled my name ideas to see what came up. You should do this, because one time I googled “Freckle Face Boy” to show Ty that boys can, indeed, have freckles and PORN came up. I clicked off of the results as soon as I could. Ty asked, “Mommy, were there pictures on that page that bothered you?” Uh, ya think?
So, all of that to say, google your ideas and be sure you are not inadvertently leading your potential readers into some sort of bold sin.
Then, “cross your fingers and hope to die and stick 1000 needles in your eye” that NO ONE out there was as clever as you and picked your name already. After you confirm that you can “own” your name, then BUY IT. I do so recommend purchasing your URL and owning it. It feels more official, it’s cheap, you don’t have to have “wordpress” or “blogspot” before the .com in your address. This, of course, is all about your own persnoal preferences, but I say, DO IT.
That goes hand in hand with the idea of hosting your blog. Now, I am not talking about serving it beer and nachos during the big saturday college football game (Go Cougs!). I am talking about having a service that you PAY to maintain and “host” your blog — rather than a free blog site. I admit it, though, that I turned to el-husband for this one. He knows all about this stuff and researched it. So, we do host our blog with a fantastic service called GO DADDY. They are available 24/7 for questions, set up, trouble shooting, and so forth. They walked me through (I should say, DAVE, because he set this up for me… ) getting my URL to magically transform before my eyes into a WORPRESS blog and they also waved their wands and I got email through my blog that comes into my outlook inbox. They are miracle workers, they are.
There are a lot of good hosts out there. And it is worth the small fees you pay to have the person on the phone to call when you cannot figure out how to make something work. Unless you love to cry. Then, go with the free service.
Next Steps: Design — Free or not that Free and What Do You Put in Your Sidebar?
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