So, it’s that time of the year when WordPress sends you a little report about how your blog fared. Here’s what they sent…
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
19,000 people fit into the new Barclays Center to see Jay-Z perform. This blog was viewed about 130,000 times in 2012. If it were a concert at the Barclays Center, it would take about 7 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
To me, it doesn’t say very much at all. Honestly, I blogged a lot less this year. But, I am a bit startled to find that my most popular posts were those written two years back. This was the case last year as well, and it feels a bit weird to me that people are reading such old posts, when I have moved on so much from my old blogging style (or at least I think I have). I mean one of my most popular posts is about a coffee shop I went to in 2010, the coffee shop doesn’t even exist any more!! So strange.
Apart from that, the report is a nice little pat on the back for all WordPress bloggers and I love that WordPress does this each year to remind us about blogging milestones.
About 2013 blogging goals…well, I have one, but so far it seems so out there, so out of my league, that I am not even going to talk about it in this post. It’s something I have been thinking about for a while, but if and when I eventually get around to accomplishing it, I will definitely point to this post and say, hey…I achieved my goal after all.
So what are you planning for your blog in 2013? Or for your life? I have made tons of resolutions but those need an entirely new post.
And hey, here’s wishing you a very happy and joyful 2013.
WordPress.com has very kindly sent a blog report summary this year to all users of its platform. I found it interesting enough to post the report here and acknowledge the great readers of this blog for the support and kind words that inspire me to keep going even during some hectic personal times. I have summarized the report and my thoughts in this blog post. If you want to click here to see the complete report.
First of, I need to acknowledge the top commentators this year:
Of course, I also have to thank the many quiet readers on this blog. I appreciate you all just the same .
I also need to give a special thanks to WordPress.com for featuring my blog on their Themes page and Judith for hosting the Literary Giveaway bloghop and sending over so many new visitors to my blog.
The latter part of 2011 was a little blah in terms of blogging. I have never been a very proliferate blogger but 2011 was pretty sad even by my standards. Only 99 posts! Pregnancy, childbirth, and now severe sleep deprivation have left me too drained to even pick up a remotely complex book. I have ended up sticking to gothic romances, and run of the mill thrillers, none of which inspire me to blog about it . Things are starting to follow a routine now, and so hopefully I will be able to read one or two interesting books that I have waiting on my shelf.
Another nice thing about my 2011 blogging year is the upgrade of my Google page rank. For the past 2 years, it has been a steady page rank 3. This year because of the increased user activity and back links, it has been upgraded to 4 and it’s something I am outwardly rather blase about to my friends, but inwardly, I am super thrilled .
So, that’s my thoughts on blogging in 2011.
How was your 2011? Are you happy about your blogging life last year?
I also hope all of you had a great Christmas and New Year and wish you a very happy and prosperous 2012!
I was pleasantly surprised by my blog statistics yesterday. For some time, my blog has been comfortably static – regular bibliophile visitors turned blog buddies, along with real life family and friends.
So, today when I logged in and saw my site visits have almost doubled in a single day, I knew I had to investigate further. Could it be my Google doodle video post going viral? No, it was something else…getting featured on the WordPress.com theme page for Selecta that has resulted in so many page views.
Wow! Getting linked from WordPress makes a huuge difference! Thanks WordPress.com for featuring my blog. It’s a great blogging platform (have never looked back since I migrated from Blogger four years back), and Selecta is an awesome theme!
Four years ago, I moved my blog from Blogger to WordPress and have never looked back. My reasons for the move were:
Ability to use tags and categories to label my posts, instead of just using labels.
The Misty look theme, which I loved, and still have a soft corner for.
Akismet spam blocker
I definitely did not move for the writing/usability experience. Most people I know who have moved from Blogger to WordPress find the dashboard slow, clunky and user-unfriendly. The editor window was no great shakes. But all that’s changed now. The new WordPress dashboard is super-fast, and best of all the distraction free writing is awesome.
Normally, I run out of steam at around 500 words or so…probably because the older editing window was so cluttered. But with this new window, I just banged out an 800+ word post as easy as pie. Maybe there is something to this distraction free writing after all.
Whether me churning out 800 + word long posts is good or bad…well, you be the judge of that
If the series of theme changes makes it look that I am totally fickle, then I have to plead not guilty. I was quite happy with my old Vigilance and Pressrow themes for the longest time.
All this confusion started early this year when I got tempted by the series of themes being issued by the WordPress theme team. Each theme sounded more intriguing than the last and I got sucked into the vortex of the almost monthly theme change.
I did try out Coraline earlier this year and I really liked my blog look a lot. However, then the negative feedback rolled in…it’s too bright and brash, the 3-columns make everything look very cramped, and so on. I immediately made a jump to Paperpunch, but never really felt comfortable with it. It seemed rather dull after Coraline, and no amount of wallpapering could make me like the fonts.
So, yes, I have decided to switch back to Coraline, and to commit to it. Sure, it’s a bit brash/bright, and so on, but it’s more me somehow than the rest of the themes I tried out this year.
So, here in public, I state my intention of sticking to this theme (and its variations). I love the fonts, the customizability, the header appearance, everything in short…so I have decided to publicly state my preference (in the hope that it will stop me tampering with my blog appearance yet again). I have a feeling the constantly changing appearance is impacting my blog viewership, and that is something I definitely don’t want. Also, this theme makes me want to update my blog more. Isn’t that silly? but it’s true! I have been in a sort of blogging funk since the time I changed to Paperpunch (not that it’s a bad theme, but it just does not suit me).
So, Coraline it is for now…or at least until Vigilance,Pressrow, /Journalist/, or Twenty ten themes get some interesting upgrades
What do you think? Would you like me to stick to this look (or some other look that you liked?), or do you like the idea of a blog appearance that keeps changing?
I have mentioned loving the iPad in an earlier post. In this post, I will list and describe in specific the iPad apps that I am addicted enough to turn to everyday…because after all any Apple product is ultimately about the apps, right? So, here we go:
iBooks: I’m in love with the design of this app. Since I got iBooks I have read a book a week and haven’t paid a cent for it. There are thousands of free classics in there. Some of the books I’ve reread recently are Black Beauty and Gulliver’s Travels. What I particularly love is the extensive dictionary. I can look up any word just by tapping it twice, and I can easily highlight and annotate favorite passages in several colours. It’s awesome for book bloggers!
Note: I am not aware if Kindle or Nook have this functionality, so I can’t compare. Also, I am seeing that the prices of some books are much higher when bought through iBooks as compared to Amazon…so, yeah, I love the app, but would like to see better pricing on the books.
Flipboard - My own personalized magazine consisting of my Facebook and Twitter feeds laid out in magazine format. If you are not into Facebook or Twitter, this app has its own feeds of cool stuff from around the internet…plus, this app is free.Here’s a video demonstrating how it works:
Houzz: If you are decorating/building a house and looking for inspiration, this is THE app to download. Again, free…it provides a series of ideabooks based on a particular theme. The images are awesome and there is enough variety to cater to everybody’s tastes. A word of warning though – this app provides ample scope for domestic disagreements. We are currently in the midst of building our house, and K and I are quite dismayed to find out that so far, we are drifting towards the opposite ends of the design spectrum . The only thing we agree on is that this app totally rocks!
Chicfeed: This is totally fodder for the girl interested in seeing what people are wearing. Do you spend a lot of time trawling style blogs such as The Sartorialist? Then, download this free app to your iPad now. This is a fairly basic app that gathers all the latest photographs from widely popular style blogs and displays it on the iPad. You can happily kill a few minutes scrolling through the latest photos from The Sartorialist, Face Hunter, Jak And Jill Blog, Cherry Blossom Girl, LookBook, and altamira. Because the app displays only one photo at a time, the page loads are faster than the actual web pages. So, you end up using your time more efficiently !
WordPress: How could I leave out this one? In an earlier post, I had complained that I couldn’t figure out how to publish my posts. But after a little playing around, I found the trick. Now, I totally love this app. It’s so easy and convenient for me to jot down my thoughts as and when they occur, and create a post out of it when I have the time. It’s faster than the wordpress.com admin dashboard, and it allows me to respond faster to comments. In short, it rocks!
Ebay: Ebay has always been my reference point to check for prices of gadgets and books online. And now, with the iPad app, I can watch/bid/respond to buyer-seller emails faster than I ever could. Earlier, I would just space out and forget to respond, but somehow the app’s notifications remind me if I am being neglectful, which is almost always Also, like chicfeed, and WordPress, the page loads and search results are much faster through the app.
So, these are my favorite apps. True, there are more than 5…but why restrict myself to a number? So, what are your favorite apps? I would love to know. Btw, all the apps mentioned above are free…I am cheap over things like that sometimes
I bought it when I went to the United States in May on work, and I can’t believe I have managed to keep this quiet on my blog for so long.
Well, I had my reasons to keep it quiet. I wanted to take my time with it and to figure out what exactly it’s good for and isn’t good for, so that I am able to post something meaningful about it, rather than just post a list of stats and apps.
I am a total Apple newbie, I have never used any of their products before (yes, I don’t even have an ipod), so when I opened the package I was totally surprised by the beautiful and simple design of the product. The images that I had seen on the web simply do not do enough justice to this product. I was even more surprised when I was able to configure my wireless network connection and email within a matter of minutes. All in all, the initial setup on the ipad – internet, mail, twitter, and facebook took less time than my laptop takes to even start up and detect the wireless connection. My laptop is pretty old though and is pretty much on its last legs, but still I was amazed at how quickly I was up and running on the ipad.
After the first initial euphoria, I encountered itunes. To say that itunes sucks would be an understatement. The interface and the search functionality suck. I tried to use itunes to sync up music and photos from my laptop to the ipad, and found it a pretty tiresome experience. It would have been so cool if I could have just directly connected the ipad as a device to the laptop and just moved the files accordingly, instead of going through this itunes rubbish interface.
The itunes experience turned me off the ipad for a few days. However, once I accepted this disappointment and moved on, I found a whole new world of great things to do on the ipad.
Remember an old blog post where I commented that the ipad had the potential to convert a whole new generation of kids towards reading more books? That was an off-the-cuff comment, but I can see it coming true with the snubnose.
She often used to turn her nose at the books that I bought or borrowed for her to read. But the children’s e-books on the ipad have really captured her imagination. And why not? Some of these book apps are extremely interesting.
The snubnose’s favorite book app is Toy Story. It’s amazing how flexible the app is. She can configure the book to read using Tom Hanks’ voice, or we can record our own voices instead. The pages of the book are in bright, vivid colors…but if she feels like it, she can just turn off the colors on any of the pages, and color it herself. So many options, but they are so simple and user-friendly that she can figure it out and do it herself. How cool is that? Oh, and did I mention the app is free?
Here is a demo for the app in case you are interested:
Reading e-books has also enhanced her interest in actual paper books. So, that makes me happy as well …at least the books I bought for her are not a waste. This experience also made me realize that e-books will probably be the medium of choice for the next generation of readers. All the books on my library shelf might as well be antique pieces.
How do I find the e-book experience?
I found e-books to be a pleasant surprise. It’s not that I haven’t read books online, I have. But those were mostly badly formatted PDFs, which I read purely because I could not wait for the actual book to come in store (Harry Potter). Before you ask, I don’t feel guilty about doing that because I eventually bought the books anyway. It’s just that I could not be bothered to pre-order and wait in line.
Anyway, I like iBooks. I also downloaded the Kindle and Borders e-reading apps. This is great because it allows me to take advantage of book deals on offer on these e-readers. I am still figuring out how it all works, but it does seem like I have more reading options. However, the quality of the iBooks app is far and away superior to the Kindle and the Borders ones.
So what else can I do with the ipad?
Well, social networking is a breeze for me now. Earlier, Twitter and Facebook were strictly weekend activities, and most of the times I just did not bother. I mean who’s gonna take the pains on my slower than slow system just to send out a random tweet or message. Well, now, it’s just so damn easy. I use the Twitterific and Facebook apps to post my updates and photos within seconds.
As for blogging, hmm…that’s a slightly different story right now. I downloaded a WordPress app for blogging, and it works great…it’s only got 2 problems-major ones though.
First major problem – Editing and uploading images is super smooth. In fact, it is much easier and quicker than doing it on WordPress.com. However, I am having issues getting the blog post published. I am still trying to figure it out, but my first inclination is to set it aside as a bug.
Second major problem – Saved drafts created using the WordPress app do not appear if I open the Admin Dashboard on WordPress.com and look for it in the Drafts folder. This sucks big-time as you can imagine. Both these problems combined renders the whole app pretty much useless.
However, I am hopeful that the next version of the WordPress app (hopefully there is one) will fix these issues and make blogging on the go a reality for me. However, this is a WordPress issue, and not an ipad one…so no putting the blame on the ipad.
Apart from blogging and social networking, I use the ipad to check and respond to work email quickly. I can also use it to make and mail notes to myself. I have yet to attempt any word processing applications though and I also don’t want to try. Do not want to get into frustrating compatibility issues with iPages and MS Office (what I use for a lot of my work).
The one thing I have yet to try with any seriousness on the ipad is Farmville. Yeah, that game that keeps clogging everyone’s Facebook walls. I have always been curious about it, so it was one of the first things I downloaded. I don’t really get the game, I tried it out and got bored within minutes. However, the snubnose seems to have got the hang of it pretty quickly. I noticed that within a very short span of time, she has grown and harvested corn, strawberries, and apples on her little patch! Impressive, right
So, in short Apple has one satisfied customer in me. The ipad’s turned out to be a gift for the entire family, and we all take turns (not without a little squabbling) with it. I would heartily recommend the ipad to anyone who asks me for my (admittedly uninformed, purely laywomanesque) opinion.
The only thing I need right now is a good case for the ipad. Until I get one, it’s going to remain securely at home.
So, any of you readers have any experiences to share regarding the ipad? Please share, I would love to know
Today, Su asked a couple of questions on my blog customization:
You have customized your WordPress blog with some pretty cool and funky features—the background, etc. from TCBOTB. I am relatively new to WordPress and can’t seem to figure out how to incorporate the background or buttons into my blog. Can you advise me on the process? Also, how were you able to add the My Stats counter? (I’ve been looking around for one of those.)
Well I started responding and then ended up having so much to say that I might as well create a new post out of it…especially considering I am running a little slow on blog post ideas
So, Su…thanks for sending in the question. And here’s hoping that I am able to help you a little bit with your blog
First up, the background:
The older WordPress themes (the one you are currently using) do not support adding custom backgrounds. You can only do that if you pay and upgrade to the CSS option.
If you want a custom background for free, change your blog theme to one that supports it. Some really cool ones out there that support custom backgrounds are:
Twenty Ten – A very neat, clean theme, which is very easy to set up.
Structure – A really attractive theme (especially the dark option), however a tad bit tricky to set up satisfactorily. I played around with it for a few days and regretfully decided that it was not for me. Still, exceptionally attractive.
And finally, we come to Bueno, which is my current favorite theme. It’s easy to set up, easy to customize, and generating questions regarding my blog, which I take as a compliment .
There are a couple of other themes that also support backgrounds. Search for them using custom-background keyword in your WordPress themes dashboard. Once you have selected a theme, all you need to do is go to Appearances -> Background and then upload any background you like.
Some good sites to download background / header / button imagery are:
And of course, some more sites that I have blogged about earlier here and here
You will need to play around and experiment a bit with combinations of themes and backgrounds till you are satisfied with the overall effect.
Using Buttons or Widgets:
I haven’t really used any buttons in my blog, but I have used a lot of widgets, and I think that is what the question is all about.
My Stats Counter widget is something I love, I never changed it since the time I added it, which is saying something considering how dynamic my theme’s appearance usually is. I selected mine from Amazing Counter. Just click on Create a Free Counter and choose from the various options available there. Fill up the form and then follow their instructions. It is a fairly straight-forward procedure.
Regarding the other widgets, they are pretty basic stuff – the standard WordPress widgets.
To find the widgets available for your theme, go to Appearance > Widgets. See WordPress widgets for information on how to use all the different widgets they support. Bookmark it, it’s one useful site!
Well, I guess this should be enough to get WordPress newbies up and running.
Recently happened to stumble upon an art site that had some wonderful imagery that folks can use on blogs or as wallpapers (if you are not into blogging).
I could not use some of the imagery I liked because of WordPress security restrictions (no Javascript-based widgets), but you blogger users who like to jazz up your blogs could play around with a few. I particularly liked some of the lovely clocks.
I eventually decided to just use the following image as my laptop wallpaper…
My Current Wallpaper
There are plenty of options available. Unfortunately, this site does not have a good search option (in fact, search is non-existent), so you do have to patiently go through the images to find the one that you like. In addition, half the text is in Japanese, so apart from the images, I had no clue what the site was about.
If you’re still wondering whether this site is worth all the bother, here is another lovely wallpaper option…
So, last week WordPress announced the creation of a new theme team. You guys by now must know how much I love playing around with the appearance of my blog…so news that there is a dedicated team for theme-creation (how come it took so long) could only have me jumping up and down in joy.
This news was immediately followed by the introduction of the new Inuit Types theme. I immediately played around a bit with it before realizing it was not for me.
I then thought a little bit about the various themes I have used and what I loved about them, and then tried to put it all together in the following wishlist…
Love the dreaminess and the fonts of Misty Look
Love the crispness and the look of the header text of the Pressrow theme
Absolutely love the flexibility of the Vigilance theme – the ability to change colors, the ability to add 2 sidebars as well…this is my favorite WordPress theme by far
Love the colors of Motion and the ability to add categories to your header. Love the rich color and texture of the theme.
So, why did I try these themes and eventually discard them if I love them so much?
Well, I left Misty Look because with Pressrow, my photos displayed to better advantage. I left Pressrow because of Vigilance’s awesome customization options.
For a long time, I was very content with Vigilance, but when WordPress introduced Motion, I just had to try it out and I was hooked. I loved the bottom sidebar widget, as well as the option to have Categories displayed on the header. It also displays photos to great advantage.
The only problem was with the text. When I wrote a post with a lot of text and no photos, I found it a bit hard to read. So, I eventually moved to Titan, which is quite similar to Motion, only with a lighter background and more clear text.
I do find it a bit dull though, and so I am really looking forward to more theme options coming from WordPress.
And if you theme team guys are reading, here is a wishlist of features I would like to see in a WordPress theme:
A 2-column theme that allows me to display large photographs (similar to what is available with Vigilance/Pressrow/Motion)
An ability to use the theme with a white/black background (similar to what you have with Inuit Types)
Also provide excellent customization abilities like Vigilance
The ability to display Categories on your header as well as to have drop-down header menus (like Motion). I don’t want to give Titan as the example here, because 2 rows of Categories on a Titan header displays really awfully.
And whatever other awesomeness you would like to add
So are you WordPress users as excited by the possibility of new themes?
Over the weekend, I also noticed that there is a new Surprise Me option that I immediately signed up for. I then went to my blog wondering about the surprise, but so far nothing yet…did anybody else try this out? did something happen?
Addendum: I finally saw the surprise when I published this post. Meh! my suggestion is don’t bother with it…
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. Things are starting to follow a routine now, and so hopefully I will be able to read one or two interesting books that I have waiting on my shelf.
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Also, like chicfeed, and WordPress, the page loads and search results are much faster through the app.
