It’s Mini Bloggiesta this weekend, January 25–26!
Bloggiesta is a twice-yearly event when book bloggers around the world devote even more time than usual to sprucing their blogs, especially to doing the niggling things that would never get done otherwise. But two Bloggiestas a year was not enough, so by popular demand, the valiant organizers – Suey from It’s All About Books and Danielle from There’s A Book – set up two Mini Bloggiestas, and regular Twitter chats. Follow @Bloggiesta on Twitter, and join the Saturday night chat using the hashtag #bloggiesta, at 9 p.m. EST.
New to Bloggiesta? Check out the About page on the Bloggiesta blog.
Mini Bloggiesta To-Do List
Fix categories again (e.g. Move Cape & the Islands to sub-category of Massachusetts) DONE – I converted all the countries from tags to categories. I think this is reversing something I did the last time I reorganized categories, so I may change it back next Bloggiesta if my category list seems too long and unwieldy again.
Change Akismet settings on the advice of April of My Shelf Confessions (@shelfconfession) DONE – A recent barrage of spam messages (hundreds per day) seems to have abated, but with a little change to the code given to me by April, I’ve told the Akismet plug-in to empty the spam folder daily. (Thank you, April!) If you’re interested in plugins, I found her post My Favorite WordPress Plugins to be very helpful during the last Bloggiesta, and followed a lot of her recommendations.
Go through other plug-ins and widgets to make sure they’re up-to-date DONE
Delete plug-ins and remove widgets that are no longer in use DONE
Add a book list to Book List page
Set up a giveaway for Giveaways page DONE – Enter the $15 B&N gift card giveaway here!
Schedule two reviews and/or reader’s advisory-related posts
Thank my most frequent commenters from 2013 DONE – Thanked my most faithful commenters through Twitter: Charlie at The Worm Hole, Candace of Beth Fish Reads, Care of Care’s Online Book Club, and Jennifer of The Relentless Reader. Thanks again, girls, if you’re reading this!
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Glad to see you’re participating! I think my categories could probably use some work, too, now that I’m looking at your list.
I’m joining in, too! I am making a list on paper at the moment. Trying to keep it “mini”. 🙂
Looks like a very manageable list — good luck with it! I can’t fit mini bloggiesta in right now, but am looking forward to the next full one.
Looks like a fun list! Enjoy!
Hmmmm. I’ve never participated but I’m sure there are many things on the blog that could use a little work. May have to go and check it out.
Great idea with the GIVEAWAYS page. Thinking about re-adding a link on my sidebar or making a tab to keep them organized myself. Great goals!
Great list! I’m planning to join in as well, but it may be late in the week before I manage a to-do list and sign-up post.
Those sound like awesome goals for the Bloggiesta.I sincerely hope you get to accomplish them, and I look forward to seeing more from you as I am new to Blogosphere, and Bloggiesta is the perfect thing to help me learn the ropes.
Hope you get through the list, Laurie!
It’s doubtful, but thanks! 😉
That’s the hard part!
Thank YOU for being a frequent commenter! commentor? How about: “frequent person who visits my blog and leaves comments!!!” NO, person who frequently visits my blog … etc. OK, I’ll go get another cup of coffee now.
Great list! I’ve just had a clear-out of all the plug-ins I don’t use anymore and I felt quite proud of myself for clearing them all up, haha. Good luck with your goals!
Looks like a great list of goals. Hope your wknd is productive. I am joining bloggiesta too!
Online clutter is so much easier to clear out!
Great list! I’m going to add some of your items to my unofficial list (i.e. things I REALLY need to work on!)
Good to see that you’re making so much progress through your to-do list already, congratz!
You’re a machine! I really like the items on your list related to plug-ins. I was hacked this summer, due, at least in part, to old plug-ins.
Ugh, that’s terrible that it was partly because of old plug-ins. I remember your hacking problem, and some other blogs I follow have had that happen too. I spent so much time fiddling around with tech stuff, I haven’t written a word of a single review or post all weekend!
Wow! Looks like you’re getting a lot accomplished! Great job! I use blogger so I don’t have plug-ins…that I know of anyway! I’ve managed to get about half of my to-do list done.
Looks like you got a lot done on your list too!! I really feel like I got a lot of work done this weekend. I haven’t really had a spam problem with my comments. I just switched to Disqus though and we’ll see if it blocks spam as well as blogger did.
I’m so bummed that I misjudged the date of this month’s Bloggiesta! I was thinking it was coming up for some reason. Oh well, at least the next one isn’t too far away in March!
I’m glad you found a lot of good use out of my previous Plugins post! Hopefully you’re enjoying a good number of plugins off that list and I also hope the Akismet code change helps the spam issue! I just realized I may need to update my code because WordPress just updated 😀
At least the great thing with Bloggiesta is that the site is there with all the challenges so you can tackle them even when the event itself isn’t running, one of the best resources ever! 😀
I was actually thinking of making a post for the code-fix instructions for Akismet. I think a lot of people would get some use out of it, I’ll have to talk to the hosts about doing that for March.
Looks like you made some good progress on that list! Good job!
Great job on your Bloggiesta to do list! You made such great progress. This was my first time participating and it was such an inspiration. 🙂 I am looking forward to the next one in March.
Happy Reading!
Stephanie