Bloggiesta Challenge Day

Did you do anything for the Bloggiesta?

Bloggiesta Stuff can be found on Twitter and searching the #bloggiesta hashtag which I just did for you. Also see my Friday Fill-In for the original information on who what where why.


I have added a Favicon to my blog, and I must tell you that was a pain in the butt. That alone took me about an hour!! So now instead of seeing the Orange B you see a teensy weensy greenish thing. Can you see it over there...>>teeny teeny thing it's really there..>> and on the tab in your browser and the address bar also.


Courtesy of The Burton Review. Was it worth it? (only for the satisfaction that HA I FIGURED IT OUT!) Then I was a little peeved that after I did all that all by myself, Trish at HeyLady had all sorts of information there. Silly Silly.


I also made a gravatar, but that whole automatic thing about cropping annoys me, because I already a 80x80 image so why do I want to crop it? So I had to choose a different image which I am not happy about because it insists on cropping. Silly Silly. But creating a gravatar adds it to your comments at places like wordpress blogs which adds to your whole branding status.

I added a New Graphic for my 'All Reviews' Link

So now you can click the Picture and Find All of the Reviews that I've written for this Blog. Go ahead I dare ya.
I bet that only Arleigh could tell me what books are on that picture!

Against Ms. Lucy's wishes, I decreased my header pic, but only about 2% and clarified it. It was always a teeny bit off center in the template and bothered me but now it's fixed. I don't think Ms. Lucy will mind the slight change. So many people compliment my header pic, so it has become a type of branding for me, therefore I do not want to decrease it any more then I have done.

I took out a couple of picture links on my sidebar that had linked to recent fave books. I guess their 15 minutes of fame were up!!

As far as actual posts are concerned, I deleted several criticizing paragraphs on my review for My Lord John and scheduled it to post. Sigh, that was more difficult than I expected. I am also preparing rough drafts for the weekly memes I enjoy.

Still to go, I need to finish up my review for Anna Elliott's Twilight of Avalon which is also going to include links suggested by both Anna and myself for future King Arthur browsing pleasure. The extra linkage is due to the fact that according to my Booking Through Thursday post, June 23rd is now Science Fiction/Fantasy Writer's Day! And as a special gift to myself and to my blogbuds Anna Elliott will adorn my blog with a Special Guest Post!! I am excited. If you are too, and just cannot wait for that, then visit Arleigh at Historical Fiction and see the guest post with Anna there!

One of the first things I had WANTED to do was to get the awards graphics into a slideshow so that they are not using up my sidebar. I think photobucket does a slideshow but I wanted to link to the original blog who gave me the award in the first place. So I don't know if I'll bother doing the slideshow due to that linking issue, I'll just move the awards down.

I used to have a review policy but at this point in the game I believe that the whole concept is really pretty self explanatory so this week I had changed up my profile to be more about me (surprise!) and not tailored to accepting books for review which I am moving away from; I would like to pick and choose specifically which books I will accept, if any. I need to focus on books that I have on my TBR pile already and that I specifically want to read for my reading pleasure.

I think I will just add a Contact Me Graphic linking to my email address but not use it as a shoutout to potential review requesters.

And do you have any other suggestions? (Besides the three column layout which I am not a fan of !)

What things have you done to your blog to improve it?

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Edited to add:

Check out this link of blog directories.. A MiniChallenge at Chronicles of an Infant Bibliophile

Joined technorati but it won't let me claim my blog which is quite annoying. I even have a wordpress holding page so I tried to link that blog and that didn't work either. Says the URLs are not valid.

Added my site to my google alerts so I know when someone is talking about me :)

STILL :: I have been trying technorati all day but it won't let me claim my blog. ARGH

I also made a new BurtonReview Mailbox Monday graphic incorporating my old one onto my badge so you'll see that weird thing Monday.

Added lots of meta tags to the HTML of the website. Here's the easy way for Blogger

In the AM I did a website grader http://website.grader.com/ with Mawbooks as my competing blog. Shows she is much more adept at this stuff. Surprise! After my changes and additions that I posted about above, I will check back in a week and see what has changed.

Both of our Google Page ranks are 4 which is GREAT!

My website grade was 79, and hers is 99. Not so great for me.

Looks like I need to get added to directories and learn how to add the Share This tool to get bookmarked or something.

GOOGLE INDEXED PAGES:

The Burton Review: 289 (my blog is 6 months old)

MawBooks: 3,680 (her blog online since October 2007)

MawBooks shows a Blog Rank, I don't etc..

See the rest of the Report here to see what you get with the Free Report

Then after my changes todday I have increase my grade from 79 to 82, yet the readability changed from Secondary/HS to Elementary. Not that I changed my words in the posts so that is a bit strange eh? But according to them, simple is better. Inbound Links: 4,531 OK so you're bored and I'll shut up.

I have to physically go in and add that HTML to each post for the ShareThis button?

EEKK

Does anyone know a way to integrate into Blogger?

I spent practically ALL DAY on the puter doing this stuff. OMG. I need a life. I did have interruptions from the kiddos but they were minor. I welcomed the break!