Useful bloggy stuff...

You know Pinterest right? Lots of gorgeous images of hazy summer days, beautiful continental back street cafes, cake, cute kittens, incredible art, crafts and interiors I could only dream of reproducing, more cake, even more cute kittens, some inspirational quotes, designer outfits, famous people wearing designer outfits, some famous people wearing no outfits at all... and so on. Oh, did I mention kittens? And cake?

But there is more to Pinterest than kittens and cake. Honest.

I can happily spend an entire Sunday afternoon/football match/episode of Top Gear scrolling through pin boards repinning anything that catches my eye. Some of it is even quite useful (recipes, craft, DIY's etc). I began one board 'Useful Bloggy Stuff' a few months back. It's packed full of hints and tips on improving your blog, making it pretty and using social media (including Pinterest) as a way to promote it effectively.
Yesterday I thought it might be a good idea to actually apply some of the tips and pretty up my blog a bit.

The first thing I did was take a fresh look at my template - I have removed the background image, adjusted the column widths slightly, changed the font to one that is a bit easier to read (I loved the curly 'Crafty Girls' font but it is quite difficult to read, worse on some browsers than others!) and simplified things by using only 2 fonts - one for the actual posts and something a bit more fancy for the titles, tabs and side bar.

Then I tidied up the side bar - getting rid of all the different social media buttons and adding some funky matching buttons instead. Can you see them at the top of my side bar? aren't they a bit cute? Now it's easy peasy to click through and follow my facebook, twitter and pinterest accounts or subscribe to the RSS feed.  There's room for another so who knows - I may start a YouTube channel next ;-)  You can find loads of different styles of buttons (including hearts and stars) in many colours to download for free at Bourne Creative along with basic HTML coding to add them to your blog.

Another great piece of coding I found was pinned from a lovely blog called Something Swanky - this one is what is known as a Blogger Hack - basically some clever person has taken a popular and useful Wordpress widget and coded it for use on Blogger blogs. This one is for the horizontal bar running across the top of the blog (look above this post) and showcases recent posts with clickable pictures. Cool, huh?




Finally (and this is the best one!) I have added a 'Pin It' button that appears over any picture on my blog and allows other people to pin what they like to their own boards!
Go on try it - let your mouse hover over the image, click on the 'P' and you are ready to add it to your own pinboard!
Again, just a simple bit of HTML applied in the right part of the template coding from KEVINANDAMANDA.COM and now my blog can fully join in the Pinterest party!!

Source: kevinandamanda.com via Anthea on Pinterest

There are a few more tweaks I still want to do - I love this idea from Living, Laughing and Loving. She has created cute co-ordinated side bar titles to really tie her blog design together. I also want to have a go at creating a 'library' of tutorials and recipes like this one from The Crafty CPA .

I'm sure I will find more tweaks to try as my 'Useful Bloggy Stuff' pinboard grows. But one thing at a time :-)

Do you have a blog? Fancy having a go at some of these tweaks? Why not turn your little corner of the internet into something a bit more special. (Please remember to back up your blog before you start. Just in case)  If you do please let me know - so we can all pop over and 'ahhhhhh' at your gorgeous blog!

Dear spammers . . .

Go away!

Seriously.

I am getting tired of logging in to my blogger dashboard, seeing that I have 10 comments for moderation and finding every single one of them is some gobbledygook, very badly translated from whichever language is your native one (it certainly isn't English), that bears absolutely no relevance to the post you have chosen to contaminate and ends with a link to your website that wishes to sell me cheap (fake) makeup/sunglasses/bags/cigarettes or, worse, inviting me to 'enlarge my manhood' (stop sniggering at the back there!), lighten my skin or get rid of my acne scars forever.

I work hard on my blog. I like to think I write well and I take care to include content I think others might be interested in. I spend a lot of time choosing the right images to illustrate my posts - 99% of them are my own photographs which I edit to look their best. I value every single one of my readers and love getting their point of view which is why I have comments enabled and why I don't use CAPTCHA coz I know just how annoying that is. I build up relationships with regular readers, some have even become friends. I am pretty certain none of them really want fake cigarettes either . . .

I'm glad that Blogger's own inbuilt spam defences work well and send most of it directly to the spam folder. It's smart enough to recognise most other types of spam to. In fact pretty much any comment with a link in it goes into my 'awaiting moderation' folder and most are swiftly deleted.

So it's very rare that any spam makes it onto my actual blog.

Which makes me wonder why you actually do it. I mean, do you really think any self-respecting blogger will allow that spam to sit there undeleted? And if it does get missed do you really think anyone would actually click on your link?

Does ANYBODY ever click on a spam link?

Really?

There is one upside - my stats (page hits) look pretty good (and however much we say we don't care about that, we do really don't we?) but as with everything it's quality rather than quantity that counts. 400 hits a day is amazing (for me). It's shame that 300 of those are from sources that have 'xxx' or 'adultblog' in the address!

I want to keep writing and sharing my life, my passions,  my makes, my pictures and my random ramblings but I really wish that those of you who wish to use my blog as a platform for your own (probably illegal) money spinning schemes would just bog off.

no love,

Me x


* If you blog, do you get plagued with spam comments too? Is it a sign that our blogs are doing ok and ranking well and we should just put up? I would love to hear your thoughts (and I may even add some of the spam comments - without the spam link - that come through for this post too, just to illustrate my point)

This post has been linked up to Mummy Barrow's fab 'Ranty Friday' 

Please click on the badge above to read more ranty posts :-)

Exciting news...

I have some exciting news to share - I have been selected - along with a dozen or so other fabulous bloggers worldwide - to be a Jane Means Ribbon Stylist Blogger!!! 

For those of you unaware of Jane Means, she is an internationally renowned gift wrapping expert and ribbon designer - what this woman doesn't know about ribbon, quite frankly ain't worth knowing.

I am over the moon to be joining her Ribbon Stylist Blogger team and literally jumped for joy when my lovely postie delivered my big box of ribbons this morning!


Just look!  Dotty, spotty, stripey, gingham, stitched and vintage denim ribbons galore! A selection of wired organza ribbons in just the most beautiful colours. There are even some brand new designs I am not allowed to show you yet as they haven't been officially released.




 I truly am in ribbon heaven! I am bursting with ideas - lovely things to make, tutorials to share and some ribbon styling ideas around the home to plan.




But first things first, it's my sister-in-laws birthday in a couple of weeks. Her presents are gonna have the best wrapping treatment ever!

*apologies for the not amazing pictures - Little Man was running around today with loaded paintbrushes - I just couldn't risk getting them out of the plastic wrappers!

Dynamic Views no more...

Ok, so I have been fiddling a lot with this blog since I got my laptop back in February.

I do apologise.

I had tried the new Blogger template 'Dynamic Views' when they first released it but didn't like that fact that it removed ALL my sidebar gadgets - you know the lovely followers bit, the badges, the blog archive and the tags. All they had included was the email subscription tab. I felt it took away the character of the blog, After a week or so I went back to my old template.

That said I did like the clean lines. It looked different to all the other bloggy templates out there...