It’s Bloggiesta time! I’m a day late getting this post up, but I had to work yesterday and then I had a soccer game and then I thought I was going to be too lame to participate in the chips and salsa and margaritas and didn’t write this post. But then I got really motivated, so I actually spend some time Bloggiesta-ing on Friday night, which was cool. Check out the face lift the header and blog got — nice, yes?
I should back up. The Bloggiesta is an event hosted by Natasha at Maw Books where the idea is to spend three days just working on your blog. It’s a time to mess around with projects you’ve been putting off, get caught up on things you’re behind in, or try to get ahead a little bit.
I’m hoping to spend a good amount of time blogging today and again tomorrow while the football games are on. We’re hosting a birthday party for my roommate tonight, so I need to bake cupcakes and clean and all of that, but I bet there will be some blog time as well. Here’s my to do list, helpfully broken down by what types of projects they are.
Maintenance Projects
- Move columns
- Add BBAW award to sidebar
- Figure out post templates — I am at a loss for this one so far!
- Update Review Archive — make 2010 page, start 2011 page, fix all the navigation links, update missing review links
- Create an Archive
- Give things a face lift — adjust colors? new header?
- Upgrade Thesis
- Comments plugin — Thanks to Erin (Erin Reads) for help on this one!
- Update About Me Page
- Add Writing Samples Page — I decided not to do this.
- Fix e-mail subscribe link
- Backup text for sidebar widgets
Writing Projects
- Write Bloggiesta To-Do List — I’ll be honest, I just put this on here so that I could cross something off right away!
- Review: At Home
- Review: The Warmth of Other Suns
- Review: Cleopatra
- Review: Let’s Take the Long Way Home
- Review: The Weird Sisters
- Monday Tally for January 24
- Narrative Nonfiction 5: At Home by Bill Bryson — I only got half way through this one, but decided to be done with blogging for the evening because I’m tired.
- Write Book Apocalypse guest post and email it to Cass
- Guest Post 2 and email it to the blogger
Blog Community Projects
- Respond to comments
- Comment on 25 blogs — I lost track of the number, but it was pretty high.
- Do some mini-challenges: Jen’s Google Forms, Trish’s e-mail best practices, others?
There’s pretty much no way I’m going to get through all of that, but a girl can dream, right? My priority is the maintenance projects, since I tend to put those off in my day-to-day life and never make time for them. I can squeeze post writing in pretty often — messing around with html and css and php? Not so much.
So anyway… ole!
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I didn’t join in this bloggiesta because I knew I wouldn’t have much time. But I think it’s actually working out because I will be able to steal all of you guys’ good ideas. 🙂
Trisha: I love reading the other posts people put up with to do lists because I get so many ideas too! Not that I need more blog projects to work on or anything…
Wow, you’re making great progress!!
Kathy: Thanks! Maintenance stuff has been going relatively smoothly, so I’m going quicker than expected on some of that.
I’m not participating in Bloggiesta this time around, but I am spending my weekend writing a bunch of posts because I’m way behind after my trip. I don’t really know why I’m not participating, mostly because I don’t have a ton of time to devote to my blog this weekend besides writing posts. Maybe I’ll need to have my own Bloggiesta some time soon!
Ash: I never quite do as much Bloggiesta as I want to when I sign up — things tend to come up and I get distracted. But I like at least making the effort to work on projects. This afternoon is all about post writing, if I can write while watching football!
Good luck! I also made maintenance a priority, since that’s the stuff I tend to put off. Bloggiesta has been a great opportunity to complete a few less-appealing (but still necessary) tasks.
Memory: That’s what I like about Bloggiesta — there some big motivation to work on annoying things, or things that get put off. I always avoid playing with the layout, etc, on the regular basis because I get bogged down in it. But doing it over a weekend is manageable.
Good luck with all of your goals! I’m reading The Warmth of Other Suns right now and I’m trying to figure out how am I going to be able to review it. I can’t wait to read your review.
Vasilly: I’m still not sure how to write a review of The Warmth of Other Suns, other than to say the book was great and I’m so glad that I read it. I think that’s one of my top reviews to work on for this afternoon
Great list and you’re already accomplishing good stuff! I need to stop reading other people’s blogs and work on my own (a common problem for me) 🙂
Helen: Ahh yes, it’s so easy to get distracted reading other blogs. I like having Bloggiesta as an excuse to put some of that stuff aside for a couple days and focus on my own stuff for a bit.
I can help with the post template thing! I use a plugin called article templates by Binny V A. It lets you create various templates and then when you make a new post, at the very bottom of the page you can chose which template to apply. I’ve already used it and absolutely love it! Here’s the link to the plugin site: http://www.bin-co.com/tools/wordpress/plugins/article_templates/
Good luck!
Amanda: Thanks Amanda! I have that one installed, actually, but it stopped playing nicely right around the time I upgraded Wordpress. The templates are all there, they just won’t upload into posts… it’s the weirdest thing. I think I’m going to try and reinstall it and see if it works that way, since it works for you.
How odd! Yeah mine’s working fine. I hope a re-install works for you. :/
Amanda: Me too! I didn’t get a chance to do it during Bloggiesta, but hopefully next weekend. I’ve no idea what went wrong with it.
The site looks great, Kim! I love it! I’m using the same template Amanda’s using for article templates, and so far, so good. Can I ask what you’re using to display your shared reader items? That’s such a cool idea!
Erin: The shared reader items is actually a thing from Google Reader. If you go to Shared Items -> Sharing Settings in Google Reader and scroll all the way to the bottom, there’s a link that says, “Add a clip to your web site or blog.” If you click that, it will give you some code that you can copy + paste into a sidebar text widget. I started using it awhile ago instead of doing a blogroll because I felt like it would be more accurate to the stuff I’m reading and not need to constantly be updated.
Thanks, Kim! I’ve never noticed it before…I guess that’s a benefit of new layouts! I like it better than just posting a blogroll or, as you say, constantly updating. I appreciate you sharing your secrets 🙂
No problem Erin! The new layout uses a smaller font, so I think stuff that was buried in the sidebar before moved up a bit, which I like.