carnivals, guest posts and links
(picture from my visit to the Russian village of Suzdal in 1998)
Here are a few links to round up, as well as some site updates at the end of this post. It’s a beautiful weekend in the northeast – if you live up here I’m sure you know what I mean.
I had a post at I’ve Paid For This Twice Already… about the need for a good breakfast. I was very happy to do a guest post for one of my favorite blogs. If you haven’t checked it out before, do so now: try this post.
My post on stopping negative thinking was included at the Personal Development & Happiness Carnival: Issue 13 at The Next 45 Years. Lukeprog.com has an interesting post with 100 free motivational posters.
And now for more about the blog…
“It is simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences”. Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC), Rhetoric
I am going to drift into metablogging – blogging about blogging, and specifically blogging about THIS blog – so bear with me. I am making a few changes in the blog. Hopefully these changes are for the better, and make the blog more accessible.
Inspired by this article I took a fresh look at my blog. It is cluttered. I am going to make a few general observations – most of them cobbled together from Skellie’s excellent list.
- Blogroll, archives and recent comments will all soon be gone to a “Links” tab. I genuinely like all of the blogs on my blogroll. I read most of them every day. I think you should visit all of them. However, I’m not under any particular illusion that people are using this tool heavily, and in fact chances are good that if you read Brip Blap you’re already reading many of these blogs, anyway. Archives and categories are both great ways of navigating, but I suspect “search” trumps all of those.
- Linklings daily posting – gone. It’s just too much. I think it drives the actual posts off the top of the blog, and if you visit the blog I usually want a non-linking post at the top. I’m not The Simple Dollar with 4 posts a day. What I plan to do is go back to a one-time-per-week big link roundup, combined with a summary of carnivals for the week (a la The Digerati Life).
- Tumble Log - in case you didn’t notice, it’s gone. My stats indicated that hardly anyone was visiting it.
- I also cleaned up some of the “social networking” links at the end of each post.
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I like Skellie’s article too, and need to de-clutter my blog (and get a new theme!). I’m working on it!
Thanks for writing the guest post and the links!
I look forward to seeing the changes
. I can’t bear to move my blogroll. I am much too attached to it. lol
Aren’t we all constantly making our blogs better?
In case you haven’t noticed, check out the following 2 sites:
(1) Michael Martine @ ProBlog Design is giving out free tips for every commentator who sends him an email.
(2) Mohsin @ Blogging Bits is giving out a free back link to anybody who leaves him a comment.
I love Skellie’s review. She was very thorough when she made recommendation for my blog. Good luck with the changes.
PS: Your blog always look great, so don’t worry about design too much.
I moved my blogroll to a separate page a few weeks ago – I think if you have a large roll this is more worthwhile.
I liked the blog format article but sometimes it’s tough to say what to get rid of or to change the format of.
Mike
I’m trying to do the same link roundup strategy, I hadn’t noticed that I’d copied it from The Digerati Life.
I haven’t decided to move anything else from my sidebars yet – I’m kind of attached to my blogroll as I used these a lot when I was first getting into reading about personal finance. I also like to use the recent comments on other people’s blogs to see where interesting conversations are up to.