Bloggiesta: The Finish Line
Whew! Bloggiesta has officially ended. If you missed the fun, don’t worry, there will be another installment later this year. Mark your calendars for September 28, 29 and 30.
What I Accomplished
I didn’t count the total hours I spent working on the blog, but I did devote most of Friday, a chunk of Saturday and a few hours on Sunday to the project. Although I didn’t get everything on my list done, I feel I accomplished most of my goals.
Mini-Challenges
I especially enjoyed the mini-challenges. I officially participated in four of them but visited all of the challenges in an effort to learn a little bit about everything. My wrap-up post has the details.
Artistic Changes:
I created a new cover photo for my Facebook Page. Facebook has changed the design of their Pages and instead of a landing page, visitors are now directed to the timeline and a cover photo.
I changed the background of the blog. I was tired of the old one and wanted something different but I didn’t want to use a print or a pattern. So I created a gradient graphic and tiled it in the background. I also wanted to remove the ugly orange rss logo from the header, but my template will not allow that change and I am stuck with it.
Work on the blog
I backed up the blog, which was very easy. WordPress has an export feature for the text portion.
The self-hosting research is ongoing. I need to read more before I decide on a host. The process itself seems fairly simple. WordPress provides detailed instructions and an import/export feature. My template is available in wordpress.org. I already own my domain. All I need now is a host.
I added a copyright notice to my review post template and will put it at the end of each post. I made the text smaller and lighter in color so it is not obtrusive, but can still be noticed. This is not required to preserve my rights but it’s extra protection against someone who says their didn’t know about copyright. I had a few incidents last year where another blog copied a post verbatim without permission. I don’t know if this will help, but it can’t hurt.
I wrote a few blog posts but not the one I intended to write. I hate when that happens!
Other Stuff
I attended one of the twitter parties. I don’t do twitter very often but once I got Tweet Deck set up for #bloggiesta it was fun. I was even able to help with a few technical questions. Yaay! I will have to do twitter more often.
I did not get to clean up my email and google reader. Fail! I always seem to leave those housekeeping items for last.
I visited other blogs during the kickoff and mini-challenges. I will be visiting more tomorrow to see what everyone else did this weekend.
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© 2012 Under My Apple Tree. All rights reserved.
Under My Apple Tree 
Sounds like you accomplished a lot. Congrats. I like the gradient look of the new template..but I’m partial to blue.
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I’m also quite partial to blue. I was trying to get an ocean blue color but after I created this one I liked it and stopped playing with it.
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Its always good to stick with something once you get it so you like it.
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You did lots! I like your new facebook photograph. And your backgroud here on the blog. Only I can’t read the tagline (Mostly books…) in your header all the way. Maybe it needs to be a little bit darker.
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That’s another problem with this template. I can’t change anything in the header, all the customization is in the CSS. WP makes us pay to alter the CSS and if I’m going to start dishing out cash I want total control, so that’s another reason for going with self-hosting. Maybe I can incorporate the tagline into the sidebar, but I want to keep that uncluttered.
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That’s annoying! Hope you get the self-hosting sorted soon.
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Either that or a different template. There are a lot of new ones that are more flexible than this one. But I like the structure of this one and the transparent lines between posts where the background shows through. I know, fussy.
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Great progress! I’m going to make it a goal to participate in September. I went over to FB and ‘liked’ your page 🙂
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Thanks for the like. Bloggiesta was great fun and I learned a few new things.
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You had a great bloggiesta! It’s been a while since I backed up my blog and your post reminded me to do it!
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This was the first time I backed it up. I didn’t realize it would be so easy.
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I dont do Twitter very much either but I was on it quite a bit this weekend. It was fun and your blog looks great!
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Thanks. I was using TweetDeck instead of the web interface. I don’t use it that often but once I set it up for #bloggiesta, I was only seeing those tweets and it made it a lot easier.
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Wow, you accomplished a lot. I like your new look. I was surprised how easy backing up my blog was to do, glad I gave it a go.
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I really should do a back-up; it’s been ages. I love the new look to this blog.
How did you find out that someone had copied and posted one of your reviews verbatim? I would be shocked if someone did that with one of my posts, but how would I ever discover it? I don’t do that much blog surfing anymore, alas.
I hope to do more bloggiesta stuff next time around. i was too swamped at work this year.
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The first two I found were Weekend Birding posts, photos and text, picked up by a scraper site. They linked back to me so I saw the pingback. No contact info on their site, not much I could do with those.
The other one was another book blog! I stumbled across it accidentally. The person only posted a few times a month, but most of the ‘reviews’ were paragraphs cobbled together from other reviewers. (A google search will reveal that). My review was lifted verbatim, including the links. It took me several emails and a few threats to report her to WP and publishers, and she took it down. No reply, no sorry, nothing. I put the feed in my reader and continued to monitor and amazingly she did it again, to another blogger, but one that I visit and I immediately recognized a review I had just read. Now the site has been taken down but I’m sure it’s happening elsewhere.
Phew, that got a little long, but I think it’s important for bloggers to know that it can happen.
I was able to do bloggiesta this year for the first time because I’m not working at the moment. Company shut down so now I’m in the job market.
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