Renovations in the works

I’m not talking house renovations, because we’re socking away every cent into the mortgage for the time being!

It’s this tired old look that’s being renovated, and I’m going for a whole new design, with this gorgeous studio on the right as my inspiration.

I figured, if I can’t have my own dedicated work space yet, I might as well redesign my blogs to look as good as Posie’s studio!

I’m going with fresh pink, green, cyan & yellow accents on a clean, white background:

You Comment ~ I Follow

Ever seen those little doodads in people’s sidebars and wondered what the heck they were about? I used to think they were something to do with entrecard or something similar.

Turns out, it’s a new~ish blogging movement to make comment links count towards your search engine rankings.

Okay, it’s like this. A few years ago, Google got fed up with giving out GoogleLove to every Tom Dick & Harry with a comment~spamming~robot and came up with a new html attribute (read: tricky code), “no-follow”.

The search engines and blogging platforms clambered onboard in hopes that this would spell the end of comment spam forevermore.

As we all know, it didn’t work. And it also adversely affected those commenters who were genuinely taking part in the blogging community.

So bloggers taking part in the “You Comment ~ I Follow” movement remove the “no-follow” from their comments on their blogs and put up this cute little doohicky device to let others know about it.

There’s a number of ways to rid your blog of “no-comment” blues:

• Wordpress bloggers can use the Semiologic No_Follow plugin,
• Blogger users can alter their template code,
• Moveable Typers can disable No-Follow, too.

I’ve joined up because I think that one of the main points of comments is to build community and by spreading the linklove, we’re doing exactly that. If you need help making the changes, just give me a holler.

You can get a No-Follow badge and become a follower here.

I done got my blogging mojo back.

After weeks of sickness, hosting issues and blah inspiration I am finally back in the groove.

I am inspired, verbose and um, I forgot the word I was going to use next.

Needless to say it wasn’t one that means “I have a great memory”, or indeed any memory at all. Where was I?

Oh yeah, blogging. Mojo.

So nice to walk into a room and be hit with ideas to die for (instead of a coughing fit). I am relieved, because for a while there I thought I might be *gasp* losing interest in blogging.

I know this shocks you, because how could anyone lose interest in blogging???

So I’m sure you’re just as relieved to learn that your world view remains firmly rooted in reality, with nary a sign of being undermined.

It’s important to be realistic.

So realistically, this has a lot to do with the blog makeover that Shauna has been working on for me.
Do you like it so far?

By the way, I hope your blogging is going well for you all, too.
Let me know if you’re having a mental block and I’ll throw you a prompt, free of charge.

My brain is overflowing…

In fact, I’m thinking of adding a daily blogging prompt here. What do you all think of the idea?

Back End Stuff Gets Down & Dirty

Okay, for those people who found their way here via some strange google search, this is a family blog.

But I don’t want to disappoint you, so here’s something for your trouble…

For all you usual suspects, I’m actually talking about working on the back end of my blog.

The nitty gritty. The coderoo.

Plugins, php & whatnot.

See, WonderHubby found the Wordpress Plugins Directory on Sunday afternoon and sent me a huge email of goodies that we can use to customise our beloved blogs. From 5 metres away.

I’ve been there before, looking for a sitemap doohickey to let me index Kidzarama on google. It looked pretty crowded, with all kinds of wotchermacallits.

Now I know it is.

I have a two page email here, made up entirely of links that have WonderHubby salivating and drooling all over his laptop.

I’m the resident blogging ‘tech~head’ here you see, since I’ve been blogging for all of five months now. So I get the list.

Does that explain what I’ve been doing tonight?

Yes, I’ve been playing with my back end. And fursing profusely.

Candid Carrie & Shauna~the~Great

I. am. so. lucky.

I just wanted to tell you that.

I have two beeeeooooteeefool, healthy children.

I have WonderHubby, who puts up with my tiredness and grumpiness (especially in the morning).

And now, I have the honour of being the winner of the fabtastic Blog Makeover Competition from the amazingly generous and wonderful Carrie.

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