Is it Tech Tuesday or Thankful Thursday?

If you are here, you know that I just moved my blog. This whole process started because I noticed that other blogs I visited had white borders around their uploaded images and mine did not.  I emailed  Wendy of Jollett etc. (one of my first followers) asking her how she did it on hers. Through a few back-and-forth emails, we figured out that some Blogger templates allowed you to configure borders around images and some did not. The one she was using (Simple) allowed them and the one I was using (Picture Window) did not. Since I really, really love borders around my images, I decided that I would have to change my template. And since I was changing my template, I decided to take the plunge and redesign/refocus my blog–something I had been thinking about doing for some time but was too scared to try.

For the Tech Tuesday portion of this post, I will share with you what Wendy and I learned from this exercise:

I didn't want to change my blog title without changing its URL because people expect the blog URL to reflect the blog title, for example my old blog "My Mother's Family" URL was mymothersfamily.blogspot.com. However, I was afraid that if I changed the URL, I would lose my followers. It turns out that settings in the Blogger Dashboard let you change both the blog title and the blog URL without losing a thing! My Google Followers came along for the ride, but the Networked Blog followers did not. I will have to hope that they realize I moved and follow me to the new site. The downside of retaining the Google Followers is that everyone that is set up to receive email notifications when there is a new post got a notification for every single one of my posts as if they were new. Lesson learned: this is not something you would want to do if you have hundreds of posts.

Another consideration is that if there are any links to your old blog URL anywhere on the web, they will be broken. I knew of a couple of them and emailed the site owners letting them know to change their links. To accommodate the links I could not change, for example the Sepia Saturday Linky List, I had to get a little more creative. I ended up creating a new blog with my old URL (mymothersfamily.blogspot.com) with one post saying I moved. And for those links to specific pages in my old blog, I created a Custom Page Not Found in Settings directing folks to my new blog address. It works perfectly!

Now for the Thankful Thursday portion of this post. Although she didn't really know much, if any, more than I did about the tech side of blogging, Wendy took time to help me figure it out. Between the two of us we brain-stormed ideas and came up with solutions and we both learned a few new things. Thank you, Wendy!

This experience taught me something else:

Tech Tuesday + Thankful Thursday = Winning Wednesday!

Thanks for dropping by.

Tech Tuesday and Thankful Thursday are daily blogging prompts from GeneaBloggers. Winning Wednesday is my own invention.

Expanding My World (well, the Blog part of it anyway)

I've been blogging for a year and a half now. It's been sporadic, but I still manage to publish a story now and then.

When I started "My Mother's Family" I didn't really know how I was going to use this venue and decided to restrict it to posts about my mother's side of the family hence the name. But I found myself posting about my father's side sometimes and I want to post about my husband's family, too. So...since I have changed the purpose of the blog I have given it an entirely new look and a new name. It is now "All My Family Trees".

I hope I didn't mess up any links or followers. Thank you to all that read my blog. I hope that I will continue to entertain and maybe even educate you a little.

Something from the Hessig/Hessick family tree to
get things rolling.

Thanks for dropping by.

Tech Tuesday (on Thursday) - The Case of the Missing Followers

I noticed almost as soon as I started blogging that the nifty Followers gadget would disappear! You know the one, it has a blue "Join this site" button to follow with Google Friend Connect. The word "FOLLOWERS" would show up, but the button and the list of followers would not. I had to refresh my page (sometimes multiple times) to get it to come back. This problem occurred whether I used Firefox, Chrome or the IE browsers. I noticed that some of the blogs that I read had missing Followers buttons as well. Refreshing the page temporarily solved the issue, but I knew that not everyone would know to try it and that we might be missing out on some awesome followers.

I searched and searched the Blogger Help Forum and it seemed that a lot of people were having the same problem but there was no solution! Then finally I ran across a forum post directing me to the Code from an English Coffee Drinker blog that explained how to fix the problem. I now have a Followers button that stays put. Thank you, Mark!

If you have this problem, head on over to http://englishjavadrinker.blogspot.com/2011/09/followers-what-followers.html. Maybe you'll get more followers if people can see the button.

Thanks for dropping by.

    


Tech Tuesday is a daily blogging prompt from GeneaBloggers.