7 Quick Takes Friday (31)

First, I ask you to please pray for Jennifer and her friends and neighbors as they mourn the death of a young man killed in a motorcycle accident in her neighborhood this week. Hallie of Betty Beguiles is hosting for us today.

I find that I'm doing a lot of writing about writing these days, and today's post continues that trend. This week I had yet another moment of insanity when I considered moving my entire blog to WordPress but chickened out changed my mind. Turns out, I actually like Blogger and it suits my needs just fine for now. Usually when I start thinking I need to switch blogging hosts it's because I'm bored with my set-up/layout and I need to spruce it up a bit. So, I wasted valuable writing time worked diligently on that this week.

Today I'm musing about some of my thought processes, as well as what stayed and what went and why. I know this is only interesting to geeky writer types, but since I happen to fall into that category, I'm okay with that. Also, this is the kind of stuff I would love to read about other bloggers. I enjoy knowing the journey behind what I read.

Agent E

1. Changed my blog description. For almost two years, I used "random musings from a random mommy." I don't really know why . . . it just kind of popped into my head as I was creating the blog (which I originally did back in 2008, so if you view my profile it says "on blogger since August 2008" even though I never actually wrote a post until June 2010). Anyway, I now use the same thing I wrote for the "About" on my Facebook page, which I think sums things up better.

2. Deleted the tabs at the top, including the Home tab. I think everyone can pretty much figure out that if you click on the blog title it takes you back to the homepage. And I moved everything else that was a separate page with it's own tab to another location, so the home button looked kind of lonely sitting there by itself.

3. Placed only one post at a time on the homepage. I don't know why, but it just seems to look better to me that way. I really don't like when blogs have their 20 most recent posts up, and you either have to "click here to read more" or scroll for miles. I'd much rather just check the archives (more on that in a bit).

Agent J

4. Updated all the photos. For the first time, there is a picture (okay, two) of all of us . . . my favorites from our family photo shoot two weeks ago. I changed my profile picture, too. (It's still not of me, but it's all three kids instead of just E and J.) I also moved the photos of the three Agents from the sidebar to the bottom (these are new as well).

5. Added an About Momma section. I had this before as a page with a separate tab; however, I find that when I visit other blogs I like to see a little blurb about the author right on the homepage. Can I just tell you how hard these are to write? I'm resisting the urge to mess with it, as I'm going to be updating in few weeks anyway when we move.

6. Reviewed the sidebar information. I decided to keep my popular posts pretty much where they were; I just changed the title. These are the ten posts that received the most page views since I started the blog. I also kept the labels/categories of things I blog about, but limited them (more on this in #7) and changed from a list to a cloud. I considered going through all the archives and redoing the labels so I wouldn't have quite as many, but I don't think that's a task I want to take on. Plus, if I did go back and reread all of my previous posts, I would likely be leaning on the delete key a lot. Some of my older posts . . . ugh. No words, people, no words.

Agent A

7. Moved the archives and certain labels/categories to the bottom. All past posts can now be perused at the bottom of the homepage under the adorable photo of Agent A. I created a separate "cloud" for carnivals, blog hops, and link-ups (like this one), as well as a separate place to find other places I've written.

(Okay, this is clearly going to take more than 7 . . . forgive me?)

8. Included some favorite resources. I may still move this back to a page with a tab if I decide to expand it, but for now I have listed some of my go-to parenting websites as well as some of my all-time favorite books at the bottom (just below beautiful Agent J).

9. Shared the blogging love. Under the picture of gorgeous Agent E you can find just a few of the many wonderful blogs I read/follow. I find a clickable list like this much easier (and less cluttered) than blog buttons, which I complained about mentioned in a previous Quick Takes.

Fellow writing friends, what have you done with your blog lately? Any big changes on the horizon?

I hope you will poke around for a moment and check out the new look. Enjoy your weekend.

Thanks for reading and have a blessed day.