Question of the Month

A Life Examined has the question up this month: What are three pieces of advice you'd give to people starting their own blog?

That's a hard one. Every blogger has their own way of doing things.

1. Comment back to those that comment on your blog. If you have time make a few comments. That's a big part of how you get people coming back.
   
   I have to admit that I sometimes struggle with blog relationships when I comment and comment, and that blogger doesn't comment back very often. It's especially hard if they once did. Did I write something that rubbed them the wrong way? Did I open my mouth up too much about something they wrote? are things that enter my mind. I am who I am. I guess if they are going to judge me over one comment I wrote on their blog, or one post that I wrote on mine that's silly. More than likely it's nothing about me. They are just busy in that thing called life. Don't take things too personally.
    
2. Try and be as true as true can be. There are times where you are going to not see eye to eye with people. There are people that look at things the same way as you. Remember that our differences and likenesses are what makes up this large, yet small world we live in.
    
3. Set schedules for yourself. I participate in Word Full or Wordless Wednesdays. I know a lot of bloggers do, so it's a great time to bounce around, make comments, and hope people come back to comment on my blog.
   
   Side Note: You can come link up on my blog on Tuesday nights even if it isn't a Wordless, or Word Full post. I'm not all about rules. If you're going to come comment on my blog, I'll make an effort to comment back on yours.
   
   With this tip comes some extra advise. Just like you need to set schedules for yourself, you also need to know when to let things go. I used to do a thing called Out of the Box Saturday. It was time where I'd post about a visual artist, band or musician that was out of the box. While I enjoyed it, I also knew that it took time that I was running out of. In order to keep my blog going I had to let go of something. I let go of the weekly post I loved. This helped me to not feel too pressured, and burnt out. I can always go back to my Out of the Box Saturday weekly posts at a later time.

Starting Fresh

As you can tell I have a new header, social media buttons, and domain name. Behind the scenes I've been wanting a new look for awhile.

I took photos in the fall of my kids eating apples. I had pictured what I wanted in my mind. Per usual the situation was not perfect. I got them to stop pestering each other long enough to snap some photos by letting them eat apples.

Ok all was good. I knew I'd have to merge two photos together to get what I wanted -done. One kid always looks better in a photo, when the other one looks wacky. That's why I take several photos. I was ok with the turn out. That was until I uploaded the photos, and saw on my big screen that Isaak's fingers were gross - see below. My cute 7 year old had been digging in the dirt when I was setting thing up.

I was thinking I'd have to reshoot. But...fall was pretty much over. I wanted the lighting of late fall. Sunlight beaming, not the dead look of winter.

Then I had problems with my computer. It was making all the lights in my pictures pixelated. It kept happening off and on. You know when your car acts up, it's not consistent, so they can't fix it?  It was like that. 

Finally my computer took a long break of pixelating images. I felt like I was out of the 80s, and into the now. Isaak's fingers weren't as hard to fix as a I thought they would be. What you see on the banner is a cleaned up image. It's not perfect, but it's far from his messy little self. Truth be told: Isaak is the kid that always has messy fingers, and holes in the knees. He'll put holes in his knees in a months time of just getting new pants. He's a true boy with that. 

I played with an apple logo for our name. Our name Apel is actually pronounced A-Pull - not Apple. I often call Apples Apels in our house. I wanted something from before to be a part of our branding. I had to move away from Planet of the Apels because that already exists. I didn't know that it existed before I came up with that. Travis said, "Don't put our name in an apple!" I didn't. 

Despite Isaak's dirty fingers, and the pixelating images from my computer, the most stressful part was getting a domain name. I kept thinking, What if I buy my name, and then can't get it to work? Of course I kept getting an error when I tried uploading my new domain on blogger. BUT...I found out that error was common place. It's what I was supposed to get. Imagine that. Things can never be easy. 

Why stay on blogger? I know wordpress is the shebang of the blogging world. I had a few reasons I didn't switch: 

1. My work at times blocks wordpress and facebook. On my lunch hour I blog at times. I teach my students to make a blog for their nonprofit campaign on blogger because of wordpress being blocked at times. 


2. I'm not putting anyone down that has a wordpress blog, but I hate how the comments take so long to go through. It really is slower. 


3. I was afraid if I transitioned to wordpress I'd stop blogging altogether. I've known bloggers that made too many changes at once, and now blog very little or not at all. 


4. The learning curb is a lot. It's not that I'm unwilling to learn, it's just that it's a lot right now. 

The social media buttons on the top were fun, but tedious to make. Do I make the icons teal, or white? What icons do I include? I use more than I wanted up there. Decisions!

Things are fairly consistent. I did have to go through and resize all my buttons for my facebook page. They have to be a certain size in there. It's done. YAY!

My goal for 2015 was a little late - rebranding my blog and getting a domain name, but it's nice to start out 2016 with a cool new look!

This Week I Feel Pretty Proud of My New{ish} Blogging Skills

I'm no expert on blogging. Especially compared to some of the other blogger's that are out there. I'm getting better though.

I changed my banner without huge issues. I only had to make one change after doing it. The font, "PLANET OF THE APELS" doesn't exist. I had to draw it in Illustrator. It was kind of a pain.

Here's my reference:

I changed my button. I was happy that I only had to tweak it in a small way after I uploaded it. I remember the first time I did this I had a headache afterward! All I could get to show up was code and no picture, then picture and no code! You can grab my new button if you like me. ;)





<center><a href="http://theapels.blogspot.com/"><img border="0" src="http://i666.photobucket.com/albums/vv29/alissa4illustration/PlanetButton2-1.jpg" /></a></center>

I changed my background color from green to blue. It's my own background, so I did have to go into Photobucket, re-upload and mess with the coding. I was putting it off because I did not remember how I did it in the first place. Once I looked at my html coding; I saw where I had put it.

Ya last year I messed around with my background, and my whole blog disappeared. That didn't happen this time! YAY!

Then I changed my Favicon. I didn't even know what that was a year ago. It's not a bird like it sounds. It's the little planet symbol up above. Nothing fancy, but now you can pick out my blog easier from your other tabs. Here's a great tutorial on making a Favicon.

I want to learn because I teach my students how to do this stuff. Someday I'll dive into WordPress. I've already played with it. There are problems with it just like there are problems with Blogger. Then making comments are SLOW! Even with the added app. I don't know how many times I've made a comment, and it said, "You're making comments too fast! Slow down." Sorry! ;)