Bloggiesta Kick Off!

Mini Bloggiesta

I am very excited about this challenge! Bloggiesta is all about working on your blog and learning new book blog-related things like SEO, HTML, time management, writing reviews, and social media. A few months ago, I looked through all of the previous Bloggiesta events and worked through several of the challenges. I learned a lot. This is a mini-Bloggiesta event, so it will only be January 25-26th. Even if you cannot join the event, I really recommend checking out the Bloggiesta site and looking through some of the challenges, especially if you are new to blogging or you just want to review some skills that you haven't used in a while.

My To Do List
  •  Research web hosts --> Any suggestions???
  • Write four Thoughtful Thursday posts
  • Write eight Top Ten Tuesday posts
  • Organize sidebar better 
    • Maybe move annual challenges to its own page?
    • Maybe get rid of the archive and just keep the keywords?
    • Have all of my social media buttons uniform (bloglovin' I am looking at you!)
  • Update pages
    • Explain my rating system
    • Update my About Me page
    • Begin making a page linking to all reviews
    • Create a page with favorite posts
Important Commenting Information!!! (I will keep this info at the bottom of the next week's posts.)

I just switched my commenting system over to Disqus, because I recently realized that the Blogger commenting system doesn't automatically email people when I (or others) respond to their comments. Well, it can, but it doesn't work in a seamless way. So in a moment of spontaneity, I decided to put Disqus on my blog. It is a fairly popular commenting system, so hopefully this won't be too upsetting for anyone. I find it really easy to use as a commenter, so I thought folks would be okay with it. We will see how this goes. If you all hate it, we will try something new.

If you can't see Disqus, I have found a couple of reasons why this may be happening! Please don't write this off as a Disqus issue, if you can't see Disqus, there are probably other things on the Internet that you can't see.

1. Are you using Avast for antivirus protection on your browser? If so, click the Avast icon in your browser and allow "social networks allowed." If this doesn't work, try also allowing "web analytics allowed." You can just do this for my blog or just this one page on my blog. Avast can be very stringent, and it hides Disqus, Google+ commenting, and social media buttons on sites for me. I was so annoyed that I could never find a Twitter button to share things until I changed this setting in Avast.

2. Do you use other plugins or extensions? They might be causing the issue. I haven't noticed a problem with using plugins like ad-aware/ad-blocker.  You may need to turn some of these off and refresh the page or restart the browser.

3. You may need to clear your brower's cache or cookies. On the other hand, you may need to enable cookies.

If you STILL can't see Disqus, please let me know! Feel free to email or tweet me! I switched to Disqus to improve our discussions, if you can't comment, Disqus isn't worth it.

12 comments:

Pamela D said...
January 24, 2014 at 12:04 AM

Thank you! It should be fun!

Chene Sterckx said...
January 24, 2014 at 2:53 AM

Good Luck!! I might still join but am looking forward to your progress & results :)

Chanzie @ Mean Who You Are.

Amanda @ On a Book Bender said...
January 24, 2014 at 8:44 AM

Good luck! I suggest A Small Orange for hosting. I ended up going with someone else, but if I switch (and it's possible), I'd go with them.

Nathan (@reviewbarn) said...
January 24, 2014 at 10:05 PM

Huh. I gotta update my About page and, unfortunately, my submissions page. Getting overwhelmed by them.

I know they are hated, and maybe it is because I don't have high demands, but GoDaddy has worked fine for my hosting.

Michelle said...
January 24, 2014 at 11:47 PM

I should probably look and see if my about page is updated...I've been working on getting my reviews listed on my page as well since i know I can't participate in this. Good luck this weekend! I hope you manage to get a lot done. :)

Lexxie said...
January 25, 2014 at 4:51 AM

This is a great challenge! I am using Bluehost, it's very reliable, and they are very helpful if I have a problem. I made a boo-boo once with a redirection thing, and made my whole blog go on a loop, never arriving at the home-page at all. They helped me within minutes and sorted it all out for me. They aren't very expensive, either, and they have all the privacy options, so that my full name and address don't show up in the whois.

Are you using wordpress.org? if yes, there is a plugin for $25 that will automatically sort your review archives for you - I use it, and am very happy with it. I bought it from Ashley at Nosegraze. She is a blogger and a programmer, so she knows exactly what we all need :)

Good luck, Pamela, I hope you'll be able to easily make all the improvements you want.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Lexxie @ (un)Conventional Bookviews

Erin said...
January 25, 2014 at 8:56 PM

Ive never done a Bloggiesta yet, good luck! Disqus is great so I'm happy you switched to it.

Lexxie said...
January 26, 2014 at 8:26 AM

OK, well, I think Ashley also has some great posts about transferring from Blogger to Wordpress.org, and I believe Parajunkee has some as well - so you would be in great hands when you decide to take the plunge. Good luck

Alysia @ My Little Pocketbooks said...
January 26, 2014 at 8:49 PM

I know this is the last hours of Bloggiesta but I just wanted to stop by and wish you luck on your last Bloggiesta to do items. Happy Bloggiesta

Pamela D said...
January 27, 2014 at 12:40 PM

Thank you so much! It was a fun challenge!

Pamela D said...
January 27, 2014 at 12:42 PM

There are some great tutorials on the bloggiesta website, if there is something that you have been meaning to learn about but didn't know where to start. There are tutorials on everything from coding to time management.

I am glad to hear that you like disqus. One person I know, can't see disqus when she goes to my blog, so she can't comment, and now I am stressing that no one can see disqus.

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