Welcome to my Bloggiesta!
Today begins Bloggiesta, a three day marathon for doing blog-related tasks, hosted by Maw’s Books. I’m getting a later start than I planned due to the necessity of shoveling snow, but Care of Care’s Online Book Club also had shoveling snow on her list, so I’ll just put it on mine! That will give me the satisfying prospect of marking something DONE right away.
Here are the things I hope to do over the next few days to improve my new blog, in roughly priority order:
- Shovel snow (DONE)
- Redesign the banner (completing this task will also complete the mini-challenge at SMS Book Reviews) (DONE)
- Rework the color scheme (DONE)
- Send an email to some real life friends and family to introduce them to my blog and request feedback (DONE)
- Install the Editorial Calendar plug-in (DONE)
- Install the Post Template plug-in (DONE — with Rick’s help. I used the Article Template plug-in)
- Research and install other plug-ins — I am open to suggestions! And thanks to @Bloggiesta for the ones she gave me on Twitter while I was still composing this post, including the above Post Template plug-in (DONE — installed the OpenBook Book Data plugin, see the top of Book Review: The Year of Magical Thinking for what it does. There are more I would like to look at, but this needs to be it for today. ETA: I deleted this because it made my site too slow. )
- Do the Favicon and Gravatar flashback mini-challenge (DONE)
- Do the 10 Things Bloggers Should Not Do mini-challenge (DONE — need to work on SEO)
- Do the Vanity Alerts flashback mini-challenge (DONE)
- Do the Blog Directories flashback mini-challenge (DONE)
- Do the Mr. Linky mini-challenge
- Do the Grade Your Blog flashback mini-challenge (DONE)
- Draft several posts
- Research and list books that I could use for my Reading Challenges
- Add a paragraph about my healthy lifestyle to the Bio page (DONE, made do with a sentence)
- Make a Colophon page
- Make a graphic signature for my posts (DONE)
- Look into and dream about going to the Book Blogger Convention (DONE)
AWESOME! It was the perfect temp to shovel – not too cold and I didn’t get too hot! However, when I made it to the back deck, the wind had picked up, the snow wouldn’t remove itself from the shovel and it was MISERABLE. I spent some time making a few mini-snow-people, too.
You’ve got ambitious sounding (to me) goals! BEST to you!!
Love the new blog! I am always looking for new books to read…so look forward to see what you come up with!
Glad that snow got done! And I love that post templates plugin! Seriously changed my blogging and made it so I was much more productive.
Looks like you’ve been busy! I love the new header.
Not sure how shovelling snow helps your blog LOL but glad you got it done. Your banner looks great, good job on it and thanks for doing my mini-challenge. What did you use to make the banner? I wish I had seen your old banner to compare but this is my first visit here. Great work.
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You have a great and ambitious list of tasks! Good for you!
Don’t just dream about going to Book Blogger Con, do it! When you meet blogging folk in real life, the whole thing feels more real. Plus, BEA and the free books you pick up there are amazing. (Say “Hi” if you come, I’ll be there.)
Looks like it’s been a productive Bloggiesta for you so far! The blog looks lovely.
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