Bloggiesta 2013

I’m so jazzed for this year’s Bloggiesta! I have been waiting all year for this.  I even jumped the gun and got a new design before it even started :) No worries – I still have a humungous list of things to do this weekend.

Friday: I’m going to my first opera (OMG! I can’t wait) and I’m sure as heck not doing anything.

Saturday: Time for the real work

The Big Things

• Set up auto-posting to Tumblr with NextScripts plug-in.  I already did it for Facebook.  It’s kind of tedious to do it this way because you have to set up an API, but I like having control about exactly how it posts everything and not worrying about it stealing pageviews like I’ve heard Networked Blogs does.  They have really detailed instructions and Facebook was not hard at all to do.  Plus this plug-in is free and it does other social media posting, too.
• Install the Ultimate Book Blogger Plug-in so I can set up auto-updating archives for my book reviews.  I’m also going to set up the social media, the blog roll, and someday add all of the Author info with the plugin to all my reviews.  I mean it does a ton and won’t be able to set it up all today by I’m sure going to try.
• ADDED: I want to change the featured images on my past posts. This new theme sticks an image at the top of every post and it looks pretty (which is why I bought it). But it only looks good if the feature image is the right size. And wow do I have a lot of past posts that look weird.  I mean, I know that no one is going to be looking very much at my old posts (heck I don’t even look at them that much). But I will know that they look ugly and it will bother me. So I’m going to work on one category at a time: Author Interview (3) Blog Tour (2) Book Review (111) Book Signing (13) Events (72) Flashback Friday (18) In My Mailbox (42) My Fictional Stories (1) My Reading Diary (47) New Releases (39) News (46) Reading Challenge (35) Series Theories (5) Top Ten Tuesday (8) Waiting on Wednesday (33)
• Update my page navigation.  I want to add drop-down menus to my policies page, my about me page, my events page, all the pages. Add a Dusty Bookshelf Page. Challenges page.

The Little/Tedious Things

• Add content and genre tags to all 111 of my book reviews (Should I have like a Elevnty-First Book Review Party? And bring the one ring??)
• add cute photo border with captions and without I’m going to just leave it as the default. I think the photos look fine without a border, right? :D
• Tweak sidebar. Move all the links into one sidebar and remove anything I don’t need.
• name after posts?  I don’t like the way it displays the author of the post on this new design, so I need to think of something else. Maybe add a signature to the bottom? I just have my name linked to my new about page at the top and bottom of the post.  I also added the time at the bottom of the posts cuz why not? :)
• change visited and unvisited link colors (visited lighter orange) It’s only slightly lighter and I don’t know if you can even tell. It’s mostly to make blog hops easier which I don’t do very often. I’d rather have the pretty orange look uniform throughout than have a big difference between the visited and unvisited links.
• about me sidebar? I think my new wordpress theme supports this in some sort of fancy way and I want to look into it.
• Fix currently reading Goodreads badge.  Oh huuuuubbbbby are ya busy? Could you write me some custom javascript? :D HA! I fixed it on my own by just using a different Goodreads widget. I love the way it looks now! So clean and no ugly Goodreads Logo.
• change comment layout. It looks funny and I have no idea why.
• use buttons for sidebars like for signing up for The Dusty Bookshelf reading challenge etc.
• fix date on posts.  My husband had it all cute and then I changed the fonts and messed it up.
• ADDED – get a good search widget.  mine sucks.

Mini-Challenges

I want to do a few of the challenges if I have some time.  I’m going to at least check out all of them and do the ones I can.

Organizing Reviews: Learn how to use Excel spreadsheets to keep track of your reviews fromLauren at Lose Time Reading. (@ooohgirlie)

Google Reader Replacement Options: In light of the announcement that we are losing Google Reader soon, Jenn from The Picky Girl has listed some options for her mini challenge. (@picky_girl)  She did a great post about all the RSS readers out there. I’m loving Feedly!

Through a Visitor’s Eye: An awesome challenge from Amanda at On a Book Bender that shows how to look at our blog in a new way and how to make sure you have everything you need for visitors. (@BookBender) I’ve been using my site a lot with this Bloggiesta and I found out that my searching sucks on here! I’m going to need to fix that.

Getting to Know You: Join Suey from It’s All About Books in discovering one new blogger to connect with during this Bloggiesta event. (@SueySays)

Reviewing in Many Places: This flashback challenge from Shanyn at Chick Loves Lit will help you get organized and post your review in lots of places, not just on your blog. (@shanynlee) Added a special to-do list for books that need to be cross-posted.

Anything on my list that you’re doing too?