So, did anyone work on their blog for the first week in April? I made the suggestion that folks think about their template or color scheme. I’ve been thinking-but not yet implementing!
Last year, I attacked reorganizing my sidebars during the second week of Improve Your Blog Month. Even though I did a pretty good reorganization and cleaning at that point, I find myself needing to take a look again. My blog rolls and such seem to have taken up more space than I intended. . . Some changes I intend to make:
1. I think that instead of having the entire Frugal Blogroll showing, I may change over to the Frugal Hacks button-that way folks can click through to the entire list if they wish. The entire list has grown so long that right now when folks visit to read the newest post, they may not ever scroll down far enough to see what is below that blogroll.
2. I’ve also been meaning (since last year) to create a “New? Start Here” button that leads to a nice introduction page that gives an explanation of my blog and links to some of the popular articles to browse through.
3. I need to clear out the badges in my footer. Many of them are for directories/listings that I signed up for when I first started blogging. I rarely see an inbound link from any of them-so why am I giving them free advertising space? Sitemeter and Statcounter will probably stay, as I actually USE those.
Does anyone else have some suggestions on what I might look at?
Oh, and if you made any changes to your blog in the last week and would like folks to pay you a visit and critique/discuss/encourage/give advice. . .please write a post detailing your changes and post a link in Mr. Linky below. Make sure you make the link to your specific post, not just your main page.
If you want to participate Improve your blog month, feel free to join at any time!
I recently changed my template and am interested in adding/making changes to sidebars.
I’ve recently changed my whole blog too. Thanks for letting me list my site.
I am working on a change to a 3-column format. My blog still shows my existing 2-column layout, but I’ve created a ‘test blog’ for coding, etc. (If you click thru to my profile, then you can see the other test blog page with 3-column layout.) Now I have to figure out how to add the widget stuff to make it all work, and re-format my header graphic to be wider. Then, hopefully, I’ll be able to transfer all of that over to my main blog.
I’d also like some suggestions on how best to organize my sidebar layout.
I’m pretty happy with the color scheme of my blog–it has a calm palette that lets the food pics be a feature. At least I think so–if there are any suggestions in that area, I’m happy to hear them!
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We did switch over to the Frugal Hacks badge and I really like it a lot better. People can still access the information, but it isn’t taking up space on the side bar. I think it would free up some space for you, otherwise I think you are doing such a great job!
I can’t wait to see what progress you make!!
I just stumbled over here from The Motherload and I wanted to say hello. I look forward to catching up on your blog, my fellow frugalite!
At risk of stepping on some toes, I am going to post this here because it seems that while everyone is working on improving their blogs is a good time to mention it.
I hate Blogger blogs. Many of them are impossible to navigate, with literally no means at all for getting to older posts. (That is, of course, not the case for yours. Your navigation is well-enabled.) They are also atrocious for commenting on. I frequently do not comment on blogs on which I would otherwise comment, because it is such a pain in the rear to comment on Blogger blogs. I regularly have trouble with the pages not loading, or not loading fully, or refusing to accept my login, or not loading the Captcha image, or taking all of my information and then failing to send it properly when I click submit. The pop-up comment forms are the worst, though. (This is my fifth or sixth attempt to open the comment form for this post.) If you must use a Blogger blog, please, please, please enable whatever navigation options you have, and set your comments to not pop up in a new window.
I linked in… but I’m just starting, so no changes yet… contemplating though. Thanks for a great article.