Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Life in our little cottage in the country

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Working on My New Site

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Shredding Status: Pending.

Yes, my friends, I managed to avoid it yesterday, as well.

I have an excuse. I’m working on my new blog/website that will be devoted to helping you with your blogs. I’ve spoken about this before in this post. I’ve helped several fellow bloggers in the past, including my pal Brenda. And she’s the one who has urged me to hang out my shingle and offer my help to anyone who needs help with Blogger or WordPress. Brenda also has a new blog where she will talk about blogging, with interviews, conversation and helpful information. We talk about blogging all the time and we think our sites can work together to help all of you.

I consider myself a Blog Tweaker. Maybe a Blog Whisperer. This is how I explained it in the earlier post:

You see, I’ve learned a lot along the way during my 4½ years of blogging. I’m not afraid to play with html coding, I’m learning a lot about CSS coding, I’ve designed my own banners, I’ve tweaked my sidebar, added graphics, and many other things. I changed my Blogger blog many, many times. I figured out how to build on and tweak the design elements of my WordPress Blog. I helped Brenda do the same thing with her blog. I held her hand as she followed Sharon’s instructions on How to Move from Blogger to WordPress (in my sidebar.) I’ve helped many fellow bloggers in tweaking the elements and design of their blogs.

I am going to work on the details this coming week, but I plan to offer my services as mentor and coach for my fellow bloggers who use either format: Blogger or WordPress. I will make sure my prices are reasonable and affordable for most anyone.

But let me state clearly, I’m not a blog designer or a graphic designer. I’m not going to move your blog for you. Sharon, whose book is on my sidebar, has written clear-as-a-bell instructions on how to do that. But I can hold your hand as you cope with WordPress or Blogger. I can answer questions. If I don’t have the answer, I’ll research until I have it. If I can’t answer your question, I’ll be honest with you and direct you to someone who does have the answer.

I’ve set up the new site. I’m trying to determine how to handle pricing – which will be very reasonable. Since I will handle a variety of requests, and I’m not a blog designer offering a menu of packages, I’m leaning toward an hourly charge. If the question posed can be answered fairly easily, perhaps the fee would be for half an hour? And if the project or work on a blog were more involved…?

Do any of you have thoughts on this? Do you have experience with charging a fee for a service? I want to figure this out so I can get the site up and running – but the more I ponder it, the more confused I become. I would greatly appreciate your input.

Am I crazy for doing this?

Happy Thursday.

Blogging Stuff

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If you’ve been blogging for a while, as I have, your blog has probably gone through a lot of changes. Mine certainly has. And while I have some screenshots of Mockingbird Hill Cottage’s past incarnations, I don’t have all of them. So when I saw this link on another blog the other day, I had to investigate. It’s an internet archive called the Wayback Machine and if you enter your URL, you just might find some earlier screenshots of your blog. I found two (from the days this blog still had ‘blogspot’ in its URL:

Check out my blue glasses. Those glasses were very popular here in blogland. I had a lot of comments on them. My blogging pal Elizabeth still thinks of me as Claudia-with-the-blue-glasses. Eventually I bought another pair of glasses (not in blue) and I had to quietly phase this photo out. Confession: I have another pair of the same blue glasses now. They’re readers and are a bit too strong for my eyes at this moment. But for all of you who loved them, rest assured, I sometimes wear them – usually for crocheting.

But on to the design itself. The background was from the Background Fairy and I really liked it. The banner was based on a photo I had taken of peonies. I asked a designer friend to come up with the font in the blog title. And yes, that is the Papyrus font you see in the body of the blog. Despite all the negative stuff I have read about this font, I really liked it. Still do. And those capital letters in the post title? I resorted to them when I couldn’t figure out how to make the post title larger. Now that I know more about html, I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t be a problem. Those capital letters are now the bane of my existence. I am currently in the process of going back to each of the posts that have caps (over a year and half’s worth) and changing them to the normal combination of lowercase and uppercase, because in this new blog look, the all-caps-look is HUGE.

I’ve often referred to the period of time when the look of this blog was courtesy of a designer. Here it is:

Since I loved that earlier look of blue borders and faded writing I asked the designer to come up with something in that vein. I sent her 3 photos that I liked and she designed the header. I was still using Papyrus, but that eventually changed when I started using Century Gothic. During this particular incarnation of the blog, I began playing around with html. I changed font sizes, I increased the posting area, making the blue border more narrow. I eventually got rid of the ecru spidery writing background of the posting area because it was just too hard to read the posts. I added some red highlights, eventually finding my look: the combination of aqua and red. But I started feeling like a bit of an imposter because this look I wanted the designer to create no longer seemed like ‘me.’ It was too frilly. And I’m not frilly at all. I tweaked the banner because it took up too much real estate. I changed the font. When my efforts to contact the designer for some updates failed, I took control of the blog and changed everything. New banner, new borders, new everything.

After using the usual photo collage as my banner, I eventually ended up with this (taken with my iPhone):

This was the look of the blog until I moved to WordPress. Now, with the possibilities of the WordPress platform, I have been able to create a look I really truly love. Clean. Colorful. Less extraneous ‘stuff.’ All of which helps to highlight the content and the photos, which is really what a blog is about. Every previous incarnation of this blog helped me to find my true voice. Everything extraneous has been sorted, purged and distilled down to this new look.

Have you checked in on your blog lately? Is it serving you well? Does the look of it fit who you really are? Does it enhance what you are writing about? Our blogs reflect us. It’s a good idea to step back and look at your blog with fresh eyes. And since we all love to decorate and fluff, why not do it to your blog as well?

Just some thoughts for today.

Tweaking the Blog

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I’ve been wanting to join in on my pal Brenda’s Tweak it Tuesday for a while now. The problem?

I haven’t been tweaking anything lately.

Oh, wait….except this blog.

Some major tweaking has been underway at Mockingbird Hill Cottage. Over the course of the past month or so, I’ve been working on a move to WordPress. I could have done it more quickly, but I took my time with the whole thing, especially with the design. And I used Sharon Hujik’s book How to Move From Blogger to WordPress to help me with the nuts and bolts of the move (link in my sidebar; I’m an affiliate.)

I did it all by myself! I still can’t believe it went so smoothly, but it did.

Here’s a look at Mockingbird Hill Cottage in its early days:

I rather liked that free background with its pretty browns and creams. Yikes, look how big that header is! That’s one of the early templates from Blogger.

Along the way, I’ve redesigned the blog several times. I even had a designer have a go at it. But it’s all about control for me. The last time I redesigned it on Blogger, I eliminated every element from a designer and created my own design elements. I didn’t want to be dependent on a designer any longer; too many things can go wrong, believe me. Here is what it looked like around here a mere two weeks ago:

 

I loved that design. But for many reasons, some of them involving serious concerns, I wanted to move to WordPress.

After a few weeks of tweaking, I ended up with what you see here:

I love it. The colors are pretty; it’s clean, crisp and simple.

It was the right move to make. If you’re interested in more information, I’ve written about it here and here.

I’m very happy in my new blog home. Same URL, no more Google Friend Connect, but plenty of ways to follow along. This move involved some extensive tweaking – and it was worth it.

Linking to Brenda’s Tweak it Tuesday party.

Lambs Like to Party

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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