SITS Blog Critque
Hi, SITStahs!
Is this awkward? It feels like this might be a little awkward.
I just got word that my blog is going to be critiqued today and I’m kinda sweatin’ buckets here! (Mmm, what a delightful thought!)
Back in 2010 when my blog was only a few months old I actually had my SITS day…except I thought the following day was going to be my SITS day and I was like, “Hey, why are all these people visiting my blog?” Then I had to scramble around to get a post up…and then another post.
I think maybe I talk too much. Which is probably why I started a second blog, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. My blogs are wordpress.com because moving to .org is too intimidating. I scared!
Soooo anyway…I’d love to hear your constructive criticism on how I can improve my blog. I hope that it is easy to navigate and not too cluttered, but we’ll see. Do the polka dots cross your eyes? No. They don’t. You’re probably just mesmerized by my incredibly gifted blogging ability. Ahem.
Whatever.
Give me your worst. And your best. I’ll keep my eyes closed until you’re finished.
You can check out the critique over on the SITS Girls Facebook Page!
Posted on December 13, 2013, in Blog Stuff, SITS Girls. Bookmark the permalink. 8 Comments.
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Fun and Dysfunction 
Ooh, a blog critique day? Yep, I’d be sweating too. I hope it will be a wonderful experience for you. First off, your intro to yourself cracked me up. Nice. You have beautiful PInnable things to click on (in fact, if you would tell me how you put pinnable images in your widgets I’d be eternally grateful. I can’t figure it out on mine) Your categories tags on the side are really well organized and makes the topics easy to understand, and your follow buttons give everyone an option that should work for them. I love your book a day countdown idea…
What distracts me is the brightness of the yellow (and I like bright colors) and the ads. I understand that many bloggers want them to earn income. I fear it takes away from the value of the great content. Scrolling down to find the comment section felt a tiny bit frustrating to have to bypass all the stuff not related to the post content. I hope that is helpful, have a blessed Christmas
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Hi, Christa!
Thank you so much for commenting 🙂
I’m on WordPress.com, so I can’t use fancy widgets or plug ins or whatnot.
I use this to create the “pin it” buttons: http://business.pinterest.com/widget-builder/#do_pin_it_button
…and then I just copy and paste the image codes and the pin it button codes into the sidebar. I use the same codes within my posts as well.
The yellow. It’s too bright. One of the most popular critiques today. I’m going to work on trying to mute it.
I don’t make much from the ads. I’m on WordPress.com with the WordAds program, so I have no control over where they put them 😦 I can just turn it off altogether, but I can’t move them.
I’m going to remove the repetitive Christmas buttons from the bottom of each post. I agree that it’s waaaay too much. Actually, I put them in my posts for my email subscribers so that they have easy access to other related content. BUT I need to remove them from the post after I publish, because on the blog itself it is WAY too much.
Thanks for your comment! 🙂
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Thanks Jenn, I kept seeing the widget builder with code. For some reason I wasn’t realizing the pictures had a code too. Not the post code, but the actual pictures? Thanks for any help
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Yeah, the Pinterest widget builder only makes the “Pin it” button and you have to place the code for the widget underneath the code for the photo.
If you already have the photo that you want to use embedded in a post somewhere, you can just go into the html for that post and copy the code for the photo and paste it into the sidebar and then paste the code for the “Pin it’ button underneath.
For example, the “Christmas Book Countdown” image in my sidebar has it’s own image url: https://coolestfamilyontheblock.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/bookadventimgp2694.jpg
(I upload all of my photos directly into WordPress.com while others may use photobucket or something similar)
You can embed a photo into a post or a widget using the code:
(a href=”https://coolestfamilyontheblock.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/bookadventimgp2694.jpg”)(img src=”https://coolestfamilyontheblock.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/bookadventimgp2694.jpg/)(/a)
^Just replace all of the “( )” with greater than and less than signs, and replace my image url with your image url.
Then you would take the code that you got from the “Pin it” button widget and place it under the image code.
Additionally, I always link my sidebar photos to their specific posts. So, from my sidebar you can click on any photo/graphic and it will take you to the cooridnating blog post OR you could click the “Pin it” button and post that image directly to Pinterest without ever visiting the blog post…or you can do both. I like options 🙂
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In that case you would just replace the first image url with your post url
Img URL: https://coolestfamilyontheblock.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/bookadventimgp2694.jpg/
Post URL: https://coolestfamilyontheblock.com/2013/12/02/christmas-book-countdown/
Like this:
(a href=”https://coolestfamilyontheblock.com/2013/12/02/christmas-book-countdown/”)(img src=”https://coolestfamilyontheblock.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/bookadventimgp2694.jpg/)(/a)
So to recap, if you want to post an image into your sidebar you can use the following format (Replace anything in italics with your information):
To embed a photo and link the photo to your post:
<a href="YOUR post url here“><img src="YOUR image url here“>
Add the pin it button code here!
To embed a photo only and not link it:
<a href="YOUR post url here“><img src="YOUR image url here“>
Add the pin it button code here!
Hope that’s helpful! 🙂
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I’ve never done one of these before so forgive me if I overstep. You have a lot of followers already so you’re obviously doing something right. Good for you! But personally I find all the graphics and colors to be a bit overwhelming. Of course I read blogs because I really like to “read” and too many graphics is a turnoff to me. I also feel that too many different type styles look messy to me. You do make it very easy to find and access your categories so that is very helpful to readers. Hope that helps! ~Kathy
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Thanks, Kathy!
No worries, not overstepping at all. I LOVE getting the opinions from others.
So, if I can pick your brain a little more…
Is it the bright yellow background, or the polka dots, or both?
Is it the crazy repetitive buttons at the bottom of each posts?
(See my response to Christa above about that. I’ll be making that change very soon.)(I’ve removed them)Is it the buttons in the sidebar?
Is is that the category labels are all different colors?
Or is it all of the above?
🙂 Thanks for your help!
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Must know where you got that adult sized onesie. It cracked me up.
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It came to me magically from the onesie fairy! Seriously! 🙂 You can find the history of the onesie and other onesie fun here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1Afz3sw7UM&feature=share
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