Tag WordPress

New Blog Layout

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Evidently WordPress dropped some plugins, which makes me pretty sad. It used to be so easy to find related articles and links to Wiki or IMDB for the things I was writing about, but now it isn’t automatic. 😦 I guess they want me to “Go Premium,” but I won’t be doing that anytime soon, as I already “bought” my domain name. I’ll either work a little harder for more links on my blog or I won’t. 🙂

Not much else going on here… a great grown-up slumber party last night means I’m exhausted tonight. I work overnights Monday and Tuesday, so I’d better try to bank some sleep. I know that Monday I’ll be enjoying my current book – and getting ready for my next blog tour book! Two weeks!

Happy Monday, everyone!

Three Years!

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WordPress

WordPress (Photo credit: Adriano Gasparri)

Just got a “Happy Anniversary” message from WordPress – it was 3 years ago today that I created this blog!  Woot!

My “Hello, World” blog can be read here.
The blog started as a place to blog about books that were discussed in Walkie Talkie Book Club meetings.  It has digressed somewhat from that intent, but oh well!

If you read my blog online (rather than through a Reader or email) you will note that I change “themes” quite a bit… have a favorite?

Well, here’s to… 3 more years?  30 more?  🙂

and it’s 2012!

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English: The logo of the blogging software Wor...

Image via Wikipedia

Well I set my Goodreads goal for the number of books to read in 2012 (70) and that’s the only goal or thought I’ve put into goals so far.  It doesn’t mean I won’t “resolve” to do other things, I guess it means that I’m just working on each day as it comes and not doing much planning for 2012 – yet.  I’ll get to it, maybe even next week after the busy-ness of life settles down.  I’m sure I’ll keep you posted.

One more reflection on 2011 came from WordPress in the form of “Your Year in Blogging – 2011”.

  • I wrote 130 new posts in 2011!  Wow.
  • The blog had 1900 views!  Wow.
  • People found the blog by searching for “accordion naked” (among other things)!  Wow.
  • Most visitors were from the US but Germany and the UK weren’t too far behind!  Wow.
  • The blog had visitors from Africa, Asia and Australia as well!  Wow.

I like blogging but I don’t know how important it is to me to have my blog seen around the world.  It’s kind of fun.  I do check stats.  And today, for some reason, I’m getting a lot of hits because of a Hungarian site which linked to my post about movies!  Crazy… It’s turning into a high traffic day.  If you’re a blogger who reads this, how did you decide you wanted to go BIG with your blog rather than keeping it personal?

One thing that I woke up thinking about this morning (and will probably turn into a plan for 2012) is that I read way too many blogs and twitter feeds.  It’s becoming cumbersome, so I will do something about that.  I love technology but when it feels cumbersome, it’s time to pare it down.

Many of the blogs that I read are aspiring to many book-related challenges and it just wears me out!  Non-Fiction challenge; Fiction challenge; Bookshelf challenge; European challenge; Classics challenge; etc. etc. etc.  I participated in a few challenges/read-alongs in 2011 and I probably will participate in a few in 2012, but I’m certainly not joining any right now.  A year long challenge sounds like a little much right now.  I liked the seasonal or book-specific challenges and I think that’s where I’ll stick.

Well, off to read (something besides tweets and blogs!)!

Blogs

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I added links to my page with some of the blogs that I “subscribe” to. I only included BOOK blogs, although I do subscribe to others that I really enjoy. Maybe that’ll be another list sometime.

I feel like I’m kind of hodge-podgey in my subscriptions to blogs – whether or not I’m “following” via google, “subscribing” via email, anonymously stalking… I’m not sure why. It’s very random, based on how I am feeling at the time. Most of the blogs were found when I signed up for a challenge – I checked out all the other blogs that signed up for the challenge and subscribe to those (through blogger) that I felt had the most interesting blogs or the most similar tastes to me.

I went back to using blogger after my utter frustration with wordpress subscription’s slooooooooooooow loading. Also, blogger is the feeder for the reader app I use on the iPad. SO I moved “booky” blogs over to wordpress and back again. This summer I check the reader twice a day, reading (or skimming) about 20-30 new blog entries at each time. I star those that I want to read more thoroughly or whose books I want to add to goodreads TBR.

So, tell me about your blog reading? How do you keep up? How long do you give a blog before you “unsubscribe”? What reader do you use, or do you read via email?

Do you have any suggestions for more great blogs for me? I’m always open to a few more!!!

Off to read!

“One Day” by David Nicholls

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Never Judge a Book by its Movie

Image by Enokson via Flickr

Read a big chunk in the book yesterday and then finished it up today.  I loved the premise – one day a year in their life – and I liked the characters.  I loved how it ended but I didn’t love some of the things that happened.  I don’t want to be **SPOILERY** so I am not going to say more than that.  I look forward to discussing it more with others who have read it!

I’m going to start a QUOTES page.  I love quotes and collecting them, and I think it will work to start a page and continually add to it!  So, send your favorite quotes about books or reading or the life of being a reader or a writer or even a quote from your favorite book my way!  Yay!

I’m not so sure I’m crazy about wordpress.  The blogging features I like.  I like the current design of the blog and the widgets available.  I don’t find it difficult to post, although it took some research to be able to incorporate graphics easily.  But I love to read my blog subscriptions and find it very easy with blogger, but through wordpress my blog subscriptions take FOREVER to load!  If they will at all!  (Yesterday and today they won’t.)  I moved all my blog subscriptions about books or writing over to wordpress, since it’s a booky blog, but that maybe wasn’t a great idea.  Hmm.

Any others experience the same frustration?  Ideas to lessen my frustration?

Do you have favorite quotes?  Send them my way!

Have you read “One Day”?  What do you think?

Does anyone else have OSCAR FEVER???  I’m ready and excited to watch!

Well, off to read!