I’ve been following along with Sophisticated Dorkiness’s Blog Improvement Project since the beginning of the year, and I’ve enjoyed reading everyone else’s posts about their efforts to make their already great blogs better. Here’s my third quarterly recap:
Project 13: Blog Post Bingo, Round 2
I didn’t specifically participate in Blog Post Bingo, Round 2, but I did appreciate the list of the different types of blog posts. I’ve been trying to mix it up every once in a while.
Project 14: Highlight Key Posts
I took this particular challenge very seriously. I set up a “featured posts” media box on my site using the Featured Content Gallery plugin for Wordpress. It was a bit of a hassle to set up but worked really well. Unfortunately, I recently did a series of other changes to my blog layout that were incompatible with the plugin. So, for now, it’s not on my site. I do like the idea of highlighting key posts, though, and will work to do so in other ways.
Project 15: None.
Project 16: Blog Somewhere New
This mini-project asked participants to go somewhere else and blog. Take your laptop outside or a notebook to lunch. What I did was the notebook to lunch idea. I brainstormed into my little Moleskine. I found it to be very effective. It’s nice to think about my blog without actually being in front of a computer. I think I will continue to do this from time to time.
Project 17: Update Old Posts
This mini-project was particularly timely for me because it came right before BBAW, when I had planned to do some clean-up anyway. I went through all of my old posts and updated links and particularly links to images that had expired. I also fixed a few latent typos and some formatting issues. This is a good project to do every few months. One of my continuing goals in this vein is the interlinking of my own related posts.
Project 18: Organizing Your Blog Reading
This is something that I continually struggle with. There are so many lovely book blogs out there that I could spend all of my free time immersed in them. Unfortunately, the realities of life do not allow for such a luxury. Thus, prioritization must occur. For this mini-project I spent time honing the system I already have in place. In my Google Reader, I have a number of categories of book blogs. One category is my favorite blogs – the ones that I want to make sure to read every post. I also have a number of other categories for things like challenge blogs and meme blogs. I also used to have a book blog database where I sought to keep track of all of the book blogs of which I was aware. Fortunately, many other bloggers are doing this better than I am. I finally decided to give up my own list and use Fyrefly’s Book Blog Search Engine.
I’m still having a great time with the Blog Improvement Project. I hope you enjoyed this recap.
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I just got a new Moleskine notebook (with a flexible red cover), that I’m excited to use. I’ve been blogging from coffee shops more lately which I like — it helps me focus. Thanks for the update post, I’m glad BIP things are going well for you :)