Tag: WordPress

Really, It’s an Honour To Be Nominated…

I woke up this morning and did what I always do, I rushed down to my laptop to see how many views I’d gotten whilst in the land of Nod.

*Sad, I know, but such is the life I lead.*

I found out that John, fellow blogger and ‘followee’ had nominated me for the Versatile Blogger Award. After scraping the sleep from my eyes, I shot back a quick comment of thanks. I then read his latest post,  Another Award and I Can Still Keep My Humility and realised that this was going to require a little ‘work’ on my part.

So making a very strong coffee I decided, between sips, to still be honoured by the nomination, despite the fact that it required labour and (God, the irony) thinking.

So, firstly I have to thank John for the nomination *bit of explanation required here, every time I hear the phrase ‘nominated for’ I think of the Academy Awards* and then following the rules I have to nominate ten more Bloggers and link to their sites.

**Is it just me or is this starting to feel like a ‘chain’ nomination??**

1. Creature with the Atom Brain

2. Ghost Cities

3. Myteensavers’s Blog

4. 3teensmom

5. True Mister Six

6. Bucket List Publications

7. J.P.’s I’m Outta Here Movie Thoughts

8. while ( aboutMe < Mathf.Infinity ) { … }

9.  Bridgette Gallagher

10. Renard Moreau

Wow, that was tough. I like all the Bloggers that I follow and it was really difficult to narrow the list to just ten. Sorry, if you got missed! Okay, checking my ‘must-do’ list…Right here is the award:

Of course next up is the all important thank you to John of  jmount43  with a link back to his site. Thanks, John! Seriously, I get stupidly pleased, excited and happy if I am ever nominated for anything, dude, you’ve made my day.

Now for the rules part:

1. In a post on your blog, nominate 10 fellow bloggers for The Versatile Blogger Award; and link to them.

2. In the same post, add the Versatile Blogger Award.

3. In the same post, thank the blogger who nominated you in a post with a link back to their blog.

4. In the same post, share 10 completely random pieces of information about yourself.

5. In the same post, include this set of rules.

6. Inform each nominated blogger of their nomination by posting a comment on each of their blogs.

Last and definitely least I have to inform you,  friends and neighbours, of ten things about me:

1. I have a natural tendency to be a smart-ass.

2. My favourite meal is foot, it must be because I’m constantly shoving the damn thing in my mouth.

3. I have been married twice…and divorced twice.

4. I once auditioned for Leon Vitali, Stanley Kubrik’s right hand man for the part played eventually by Alan Cumming in Eyes Wide Shut.

5. I am addicted to video games and films, both tend to equal lot’s of late nights.

6. I am becoming addicted to Blogging.

7. I have an eighteen inch scar running right up the middle of my back.

8. I always wanted to have “any identifying marks or scars” so #7 helped me out there.

9. I was once addicted to so many pain pills that it took me two years to get off all of them.

10. As a rule, when I am angry, one-liners shoot from my mouth like a verbal machine gun barrage.

And that’s it, except for the, letting my nominees know that I nominated them via comments. Which I will do as soon as this is published!

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The Wonderful World of Blogging

Back in 2010 I started my first blog. I wrote a minute post and published it. I then ignored it for almost exactly one year.

I quite literally had forgotten all about it.  I had so many other things going on in my life that I didn’t have time to post to a blog.

I was a literal ‘babe in the woods’ when it came to the wonderful world of blogging.  There were loads of things I didn’t know, except that my daughter hated doing them for her university course. She much preferred the pdf format for her uni work and the blog’s for her own thoughts.

In my mind, since she directed so much vitriol towards the required blogs, I decided that they must be terrible time consuming things best left alone. That belief combined with my own personal version of the Queen’s annus horribilis meant that my blogging days were to be postponed for quite a while.

Our family had been going through some incredibly stressful days/months/years and the inevitable divorce followed. 2010 was a year of running, rushing and realization. It was also a time of starting over.

I spent so much time trying to re-establish myself that I forgot that I also needed to get back in touch with myself. I had completely lost track of who I was and what I like doing. It had gotten to the point that when I looked in the mirror to shave in the morning, I would say, “Hello stranger,” to the shell-shocked face that looked back at me.

So it took me a year to remember that I had started the damn thing. I decided that I would do a minimum of one post per day. I had wanted to be a writer before I’d ever dreamed of doing anything else. I felt that this was a good way to get back into practise.

And before you could say, “Bob’s your uncle,” I was mixing my metaphors with the best of them. I also discovered that when you added something to your blog it was called a post. I still think of them as articles, I can blame Journalism 101 back in the 70’s for that one.

It has been therapeutic, this blogging business. It has helped me get back in touch with my inner child, my raved imagination and most importantly with myself. I am still a bit rusty. Like Dorothy‘s Tin Man, I’ve needed a spot of oil now and again to get those rusty brain cells working in a smoother fashion.

It has also allowed me to ‘vent my spleen’ about things that irritate me and it helps me to take strolls down memory lane.

I’ve also learned that reading other writer’s words of wisdom, wit, opinions and thoughts has opened up a plethora of worlds, cultures and ideology that I otherwise might never have known existed.

I have also learned that if I am writing about something factual, I have to do all the required research before I post the dog-gone thing.

There is one other thing that I’ve found, an almost invaluable tool that I am convinced not everyone uses. At least not as much as I do.

Spell-check.

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WordPress versus Blogger.com

WordPress
WordPress (Photo credit: Adriano Gasparri)

I will openly admit to loving wordpress.

Don’t think that this declaration of love was easily given.  But, dog-gone it, I’m impressed. I have had a blog on wordpress for a fraction of the time I’ve spent on Blogger.com and Tumblr.

Image representing Blogger as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

In the very short time-span I’ve had three to five times the amount of views per post that I was getting on Blogger. And of coure, Tumblr never shows you how many folks have stopped by.

I will admit that I was a complete ‘noob’ in the world of blog posts and blogging.  But I got stuck in and decided that I did have an opinion about lots of things and I wanted to share it. Not to mention, I like writing almost as much as talking so blogging gave me an outlet.

Image representing Tumblr as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase

I wish I had started with wordpress rather than immigrating over from  the other blog sites. But I didn’t know any better! I had no idea that you could put tags and categories to link to your blog post.

I also didn’t realise just how user friendly wordpress is.

In half the time it took me to set up my previous blogging accounts, I had set up a new one in wordpress. They had a huge amount of free and ‘not-free’ templates for your site. You have access to Zemanta which makes finding free images a lot easier and it also gives you links to similar articles for inclusion on your blog.

Image representing Zemanta as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

WordPress also shed a light on Reddit and StumbleUpon, neither of which I had ever heard of before. Both of these sites have increased views to mine and I’m so glad I found them.

So here’s to you wordpress, my little post of appreciation. Have I told you today that I love you?

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Oh Boy, I’m Really Getting a Lot of Views, Wasn’t I

Reddit Sticker
Reddit Sticker (Photo credit: cambodia4kidsorg)

I have been doing a blog now for about a year and a bit. My views have been modest to say the least. I started out on the Blogger.com site and used them for about a year. Some of my posts got around sixty views and I was quite pleased. I then started doing posts on Tumblr and although I like the site well enough, I had no idea if anyone was even reading the bloody posts.

I then decided to use WordPress. Right off the bat my views shot through the roof. I was getting a minimum of 27 or 30 views. Again I was quite pleased with the result. My views were steadily rising and I was getting around 70 or 80 views a day. I felt like someone was finally reading my posts.

Then I discovered Reddit. The first day that I joined, I linked about four of my posts to Reddit. My views went into the stratosphere. That first day my views reached 1,185. I was delirious with excitement, the next day was even better. I finished with 1,436. I was massively impressed with the coverage that Reddit had given my little site.

 

English: See User:Jorgenev/~research/Wikipedia...

 

On the third day, my views dropped to 729 and the next day they dropped even further. I am not sure what happened there. I have looked over the posts that I linked to Reddit and I cannot really find anything about the posts that garnered that sort of response. Still regardless of how or even why I got that many views doesn’t really matter. For a very short time there, I felt that my blog was seriously growing.

Obviously the “honeymoon” period with Reddit is over. I still link my new posts to the site and it is still generating views, but I’d be lying if I said I don’t miss the huge number of views that my little blog got those first two days. Don’t get me wrong, I am happy if only one person reads my posts. I do write them primarily for my own enjoyment and if someone else gets pleasure from them, I feel like I’ve accomplished something.

Of course the other benefit of writing a blog  is getting the chance to read other blogs and to comment on them. There are a lot of talented folks out there who are mighty handy with a pen (or a laptop).

So I’ll keep on writing my three or four posts a day and hope that folks still enjoy reading them.

WordPress
WordPress (Photo credit: Adriano Gasparri)
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