Bloggiesta: Finish Line
April 1, 2012 24 Comments
Bloggiesta is organised by Suey from It’s All About Books and 1st Daughter of There’s A Book. Bloggiesta is an online event for (book) bloggers in which we are encouraged to spend the next three days working on our blog in any way we see necessary. We Plan, Edit, Develop, Review and Organise – no wonder our mascot is called PEDRO! Olé!
Bloggiesta has ended and I spent three days doing a lot of work on my blog. I changed my theme, as you can see (below is a picture of what it used to look like), I backed up my blog, I wrote 9 reviews/blog posts (not all of them from scratch, though), I created a page for the challenges that I’m doing, and so on.
I also spent a lot of time on other people’s blogs, seeing what they were up to and leaving comments, and I attended one Twitter chat, which was very enjoyable too.
The full list of what I did for Bloggiesta:
- DONE – Back-up blog (LW, BB). In WordPress, go to Dashboard, Tools, Export, choose All (first option).
- DONE – Send in my entry for Kimbofo’s Triple Tuesday feature (LW)
- DONE – Play around with WordPress themes and get new one (LW) This is what my old theme looked like:
- DONE – Update challenge posts (LW)
- DONE – Add links in reviews to reviews by same author (LW)
- DONE – Find books to offer on Bookmooch
- DONE – Do at least 5 mini-challenges / old mini-challenges (LW, BB) How to write reviews faster and I wrote a review in the process; Sidebar help, deleted some buttons and I put all my challenge buttons in a separate Challenge page; I signed up for a blog event (24h readathon); mobilize – here is the post that I wrote on my phone; I changed my facebook and other share buttons on my blog posts; comment on other people’s posts.
- DONE – Update Reviews page with links (LW, BB)
- DONE – Shelfari – Update reviews. I added 20 reviews to books – copied over from my blog. A lot of work but it’s done.
- DONE – New Arrivals (new books)
- 4 reviews from Indie Lit Awards – DONE: King, DONE: Cline, DONE: Ness, and (NOT DONE) Grossman
- DONE – The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson
- DONE –The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman
- DONE – Every Last One by Anna Quindlen
- DONE – Half Brother by Kenneth Oppel
- DONE – A Tiny Bit Marvellous by Dawn French
What do you think of my new theme?
It’s pretty white now. Like it?
About Judith
Leeswammes' Blog 
The blog is looking sweet! DO you love it? Whenever I change mine I am a super dork and I log on just to look at it….LOL. It’s true!
Still working on Bloggiesta here, its only 1:37 pm now so I am hoping to get in several more hours today.
Sheila, I like it, but still have to get used to it. It isn’t 100% how I would like it, but every time I look at it, I like it better. Glad your blog is just as you want it. Goodl uck with the last few hours of Bloggiesta.
You did a lot of work 🙂 Congrats on achieving your goals. I like the new theme. It is simple and clean.
Thanks, Deborah.
Nice and Fresh! Well done.
Thanks, Karin. I also like it for being so light. I liked the brown theme loads, but I wanted a change.
Wow, Judith, you also got a lot done. Like I said before, I like the new look. White is always good!
@Sheila, I know what you mean. After changing my theme I always stare at my blog because I like it so much….until it wears off and I MUST change the theme again, 🙂
Rikki, I was ticking things off as I did them and was surprised at the result. I’m contented with all that I’ve done.
You had a very productive weekend. And added a nice new theme, too.
I’m still working on a few more things before I call it a day.
Glad you like the theme, Leslie. Good luck with the last few items for today.
Your Blog looks great! I love the new header and how clean & simple the design is!
Great job! You accomplished a lot this weekend, too!
Thanks Amy. Glad you like the new look.
I liked your last theme but I have to admit I like the white/lightness. Clean, uncomplicated (your old them wasn’t complicated… as you know some bloggers have very busy blogs) 🙂
I can’t believe how much you accomplished! Impressive. Now it’s time to relax for a while, if you can stop looking at your blog. 🙂
Mari, I do have a quick look at my blog every now and then, because normally I’ve got the “behind the scenes” screen open but not the actual blog page so much. I still like it. 🙂
Wow you got so much done – and love the new look!
Thanks, Shelleyrae.
You did quite a lot 🙂 I love the sea header 🙂 It gives the blog a calm look. I like that for your blog, it suits you 🙂
Uniflame, the header is a cut-out of a photograph that I made last summer. Glad you like it.
WOW!!! You got an amazing amount of stuff done! I love the new design–looks very clean. I would love to lighten up my blog as well but just can’t decide on anything certain. I did have to look for the comments, though–did you just recently move them to the top of the post?
Trish, I spent a long time looking at the different WordPress themes before I made up my mind about this one. It’s hard to decide as there is always something not-quite-right. Like the comments on this one. It automatically goes to the top of the posts, I can’t do anything about it unfortunately. When you click on the title link it does have a comment box (and other people’s comments) below the post, as usual.
I’m late coming to the finish line posts…lots of stuff going on yesterday and Sunday. You really accomplished a lot, and your header is gorgeous. Very serene, which fits the clean lines of your theme.
Great idea to show the “before” photo.
It sounds like backing up WP blogs is fairly straightforward…I need to try that!
Thanks, Laurel-Rain. Glad you like the header. Backing up on WP is very easy! Definitely do it soon.
Wow – you got a lot done! Don’t you feel good after productive weekends like this? My big task was to create a review archive which ended up taking me almost a whole day. It’s done, but I still want to go back and tweak it a little. I also plan on going back to some of the minichallenges over the next few weeks.
Kristin, I loved getting all this done in just one weekend! It was wonderful. Have fun finishing off your plans!