I am often asked how long it takes me to write a blog post. For me, this is the often the easiest part of blogging. Today I'm offering a glimpse of some other ways large chunks of time can be spent blogging.
Have you ever gotten confident with a skill, only to be immediately humbled by it?
This weekend I was playing around again with the design of my blog. I added a new title heading to the search bar to make it easier to spot, and I updated my Recipe and Fiction indexes. Things were going well, but just when I was starting to feel confident in my blog designing skills I made a huge mistake. I wasn’tcompletely happy with the order in which one of the main tabs in my drop down menu appeared, so I decided to move it to a different spot. That is where the trouble began!
Oops!
Confident that I knew what I was doing, I had made some changes to the html code, clicked “Save” and “View Blog.” To my horror, the titles of my menu tabs did appear - but in random order and scattered all over the place! (Had I had the presence of mind, I would of taken a screen shot of it so that I could show you now - but I was too panicked!)A matter of pride
It took all of Sunday afternoon and many trials until I finally figured out what I had done wrong, and corrected my mistake. I debated about putting out an SOS message to Kim Six Blogger Support as she had originally helped me to set up this drop down menu, but it became a matter of pride to be able to fix it myself! If you visited this blog during that time period, you might have really wondered what was going on. It was a good lesson for me though - not to get overconfident with my coding skills, which are tenuous at best. |
| This is a screen shot of the menu I was working on - finally looking like it should again. |
It is important not to be paralyzed by fear.
After I got the drop down menu fixed, I found the courage to work on one more project. I wanted to update my blog button with my new blog color scheme and place it on my sidebar - but I proceeded cautiously!By the way, if you are wondering what a “blog button” is, basically it is a hyperlinked image or "badge" which links back to a website.
I learned from my previous mistake!
- First, I backed up and downloaded my blog template and contents (as every blogger should do before making any significant changes.
- I also remembered to “Preview” my work before I clicked “Save Arrangement” so that I could cancel my changes if they did not appear to work.
It took me a while to get it right, but I was successful in creating not only a new blog button for my blog, but also one announcing "I was featured on The Most - - of Every Moment." I updated the information on my "Grab my button" page, and added it to the bottom of the right sidebar of the blog
If I have ever featured your content - grab a button for your blog!
Any blogger whose content I have linked to or published on my blog is welcome to grab the code, and display this logo somewhere on their own blog. I really hope you will!
If you are a blogger, what is the biggest challenge that you face with your blog?
If your do not have a blog, did it surprise you to read that bloggers deal with these sorts of challenges?
This post may be linked to one of the great link-up parties I follow and list on my blog. Check them out!
Great post! So very true that it takes sooo much work to be happy with blogging because there is so much to learn!
ReplyDeleteSooo much to learn, and always sooo much to do!!
DeleteWhen I started, I thought I would just sit down and write something whenever I felt like it. Wrong! There's so much more to blogging, and I know I'm seriously falling down on the job these days. Someday I'll have more time! I love everything you've been doing here, and I'm proud of you for figuring it all out yourself.
ReplyDeleteYou are not falling down on the job Lana - your blog is wonderful! We will be glad of our blogs next year - to fill the void of our boys leaving home!
DeleteI had to laugh when one of the first few sentences was "writing is the easiest." That is so unbelievably true! I had a scary moment this morning when changing my permalinks after reading an article that said taking the dates out of the permalinks was the best choice. I did this at 1 am and being sleepy and somehow didn't hit the save button when I edited my .htaccess file. So the permalinks changed, but the redirects for the old links didn't. I woke up to a total mess and all I had to do was hit save! It took me two hours to figure that out and I felt like an idiot. They say the best way to learn something is to screw it up first because then you will never forget it! I guess we will both remember our lessons well! Haha!
ReplyDeleteOh Rena - I feel your pain! Permalinks are something I have not tackled. Good for you for figuring out your mistake.
DeleteYou are much more brave than I am! Anything that involves getting into the HTML of my layout makes me nervous!
ReplyDeleteI am still pretty intimidated by my main template html Carlee, but working within a widget is a little safer!
DeleteYou are much, much more technically ept (and courageous) than I am.
ReplyDeleteLoud applause.
I'm not sure the applause is really that well deserved EC- I have learned more than I ever thought I could -- but certainly do not consider myself to be "technically ept"!
DeleteNot techie over here so not about to attempt anything like what you have done.
ReplyDeleteWe all deserve a lot of credit Delores, just for being able to maintain a blog at all is no easy task!
DeleteHTML scares the pants off me! I go into it with fear and trepidation and a lot of googling beforehand. So far I haven't done a major stuff up but it's like Alice going down the rabbit hole - one thing leads to another and hours can disappear!!
ReplyDelete