Two Things for a Better Blog

Okay, since this week has been pretty slow at work, I was able to do some more research on successful blogs. Two things stood out to me that not many people think about: having a calendar of upcoming posts and the ability to email the author. I took the liberty in adding both of these to my own blog.

The calendar may seem like it’s just another add-on, but one way that bloggers can utilize this awesome thing  is by ‘living up’ to it. Think about it–if you broadcast that you are planning to post something, it gives you an incentive to actually do it. I set mine up by planning a year’s worth of posts (at least 2 a month) and putting them on my calendar. As I was making the calendar, I also added specialty posts around holidays and seasonal events. I may not have something to post every day, but now I’ll at least have 2 posts a month that you will know about (more if I add another post topic.)

How do you do this? It’s actually quite easy! You just have to create a Google Calendar, plan out your posts, and sync it to your blog (I found it the easiest to make a new page and put it there. The tutorial that I followed to do this is here). The calendar automatically updates whenever you add to remove something from it from the Google site, so you don’t have to worry about updating 2 calendars, and your readers will see the updates instantly. Right now, I have many holes in my calendar because I ran out of topic ideas, and this is where my other addition comes into play.

If you’ll look to the right, under the sign up bar, there is now a section that give you the option to email me. Once you click it, it pulls up an email automatically addressed to me so that you can request topics or give personal commentary. Like I said, confidentiality is extremely important to me, and I will not spam your email, and I will not give out your email address. The only thing that I will do is reply to you to: 1) accept your topic and tell you what day I will be posting about it, or 2) ask for clarification.

If you would like to have this option on your blog as well, all you have to do is (either on your About page or on the Text widget) use the HTML code as follows: <a href=”mailto:youremailhere.com”>email me</a> This particular code would pull up a blank email addressed to youremailhere.com after you click on the words ‘email me’. Simple enough, right? (If you just want to put it in a post like I did above, all you have to do is highlight the words you want people to click to email you [i.e. 'email me'], click the hyperlink button, and put your email address instead of a web address.) And, tada! You can now be emailed through your blog just like me!

Now you can have your own calendar and email option! I hope this post has been helpful to any (and all) bloggers out there! Thanks for reading!

~Love Lindi

 

 

A Few Things All at Once

First of all, happy belated 4th of July! I hope you all had wonderful times with friends, family, and fireworks!

Instead of shooting fireworks like we normally have done in the past, we decided to attempt to make glow in the dark bubbles by mixing the glowy stuff from glow in the dark bracelets with a bottle of bubbles. It didn’t work. The bottle was glowing a promising shade of green, but it wasn’t thick enough to make the thin walls of the bubbles glow. It was fun, though! Kind of like a science experiment that you’re afraid to release in case it’s toxic to the ground and might make perfect little circles of chemical death all over the yard. (Which it hasn’t…yet and probably won’t.)

Another thing that I’m tossing to you is that I’m making this post entirely on my iPhone using an app called BlogPress. I like it much better than the WordPress app because I can stick links into my post. With the WP one, I had to save it as a draft and then have to finish it on my computer at home. That was too bothersome! But not any more! The only thing that I don’t quite like, but will tolerate, is that you have to manually type the link. That’s fine with me, but if the links don’t work for a while, it’s because I’m having to figure out how it works. Here’s my first try: Information about the 4th of July. Update: It worked, so don’t worry about any links not working from here on out!

I hope you had a wonderful 4th! Thanks for reading!

~Love Lindi

It’s Official–I’ve Converted to Mac

Le gasp!!!!

That’s right! I’ve officially given up my beloved Windows for the streamlined perks of Mac (including, but not limited to iCloud and less chance of getting a virus). I will admit, though–the deciding factor on my conversion was the fact that I could put the formatting bar of Pages and Mac Word on the menu bar instead of having to put up with the annoying floating bubble that has everything smushed onto it.

Fear not; there is a point to this post. I know that I am not the only one to be drawn to the Mac side. But one thing that nearly made me turn up my nose and run back to the familiar Windows was that I could only open my documents through Mac Word–I cannot STAND Mac Word! It’s clunky and lacks an alphabetizing button! I wanted to open everything into Pages, but every time I tried, my computer said that I was not authorized to do so. (You should probably know that I have been using a computer that runs both Windows and Mac, but it IS a MacBook [a MacBook6 to be precise], so I can pull doc and pics, etc. from the Windows side to the Mac side–the only problem was that it wouldn’t let me change anything.)

What does anyone who needs an answer but doesn’t know the answer do? That’s right–I went to Google. Specifically, I went here, and it SOLVED EVERYTHING!!!

And, naturally, something ELSE had to go awry once I had begun to settle into the new way of Mac–my iTunes wouldn’t recognize any of the music that I had purchased on my iPhone! I downloaded all of the updates and system updates and restarted my computer. I went to purchased items, and it SHOWED the songs I had purchased, so I eventually stumbled upon the button that allowed me to download all of the songs to the iTunes. Excited that I had finally figured it out, I hit it, but when the bubble popped up for my password, it said Buy instead of download. I had already bought the songs! I wasn’t going to buy them all AGAIN. I was a giant ball of confusion and irritability until I removed my payment info from my account, saved it, reopened iTunes, and tried again. Everything downloaded smoothly, so as of right now, I have no beef with Mac–aside form being angry at iCal because it refuses to let me delete an event I accidentally created, but that’s not really something big.)

I’m excited that now, I can constantly write on my stories and work on different documents with iCloud seamlessly and painlessly. It’s almost like I don’t even need my 8G flash drive anymore! That’s fantastic! I’ll still be sure to keep a copy of my docs on the drive in case iCloud ever freaks out and deletes my stuff (which, hopefully, will never happen). I’m looking forward to getting my own copy of Lion instead of Snow Leopard and figuring out all of the cool things I can now do, but for now, I’m content.

The point of this post is to encourage all of you who have just been converted over and to those who are considering converting that, even if things seem strange and aggravating at first, keep pushing and keep trying–you’ll get the hang of it.

Thanks for reading!

~Love Lindi

Pottermore Addiction

Okay, it’s official: I’m addicted to Pottermore! I didn’t think it would be so entertaining! It really is intriguing, and I am tempted to actually read the books (don’t shoot me!) I’ve seen the movies, but I’m not going to pretend that I know everything there is to know about Harry Potter. There, I said it.

But honestly! Pottermore is awesome! My wand surprised me–a pine wand with a phoenix feather core (awesome, right?) and my house surprised me–Hufflepuff! (Though I have to admit, the description fits me perfectly.)

I think that it’s awesome how you can literally walk through the books and interact with items. You can also make potions and cast spells to build up your house points! It’s very neat. It easily takes a place right next to Facebook and deviantART on my bookmarks bar.

If you don’t have one and like Harry Potter (even if you don’t know much about it), I suggest getting an account for the fun of it. It’s free, and, though it may seem a bit slow at first, you will soon be hooked! At least, I was when I first started.

Hope this was an interesting read! Thanks for reading!

~Love Lindi

Related articles

• Pottermore registration now open to all (theverge.com)

Tadaa Vs Instagram

I’m not sure if this pertains to many of you (who knows? It may intrigue you all!) but I was severely disappointed when Facebook bought out Instagram. I ceased use of it immediately. This is the reason my photos in my posts are just the standard iPhone photos. Sad, I know.

However, there is an app out there that is completely free, offers the same (if not better) features, and is in HD!!! What is this miraculous app? It’s tadaa! I first heard about it on this blog, and I’m hooked! You can fix up photos you’ve already taken with your standard iPhone camera, too! My first tadaa photo: 

The best part? You get to own your own photos! In fact, I read that if you don’t say that you own the rights to the photo, tadaa won’t let you publish it! How cool is that? You can link it directly to your Facebook and Twitter, and you can even opt to email and text it to your friends and family!

You should seriously check out the tadaa site!

I hope this has intrigued you all! Thanks for reading!

~Love Lindi