Blogger Friday on a Saturday? Why? What are Plug ins, are you plugged in?

So I was not on my game this week and didn't share why to other that follow the topic of blogging on our group site.  How did it make you feel?  Were you upset that there was nothing?  Did you keep checking the site to see if anything was there?  or worse yet did you give up on the writer and figure you have better things to do or follow?

Your time is valuable and to be a successful person on any site you need consistancy and if at all else give the readers a heads up about what is going on if you cannot produce what is needed for the blog on specific days when needed.

You have deadlines and commitments just like your readers.  If you were at a job could you miss your deadline without probable cause?

Here is the deal the universe pulled me into a different direction than I had planned for.  A friend tragically died this week losing her battle to cancer.  That was not the biggest problem.  Back in early November, I think it was, I went to visit he and she was sitting on her chair with her dog(s).  She had fleece blankets, which are great but they there can be quite a bit of dog hair on them.  So I told her I would make her a warm quilt to keep warm with that would be made out of cotton material and not hold so much dog hair. 
At the end of November I was doing a few squares here and there with my new machine not really rushing because I really thought I would have more time.  Needless to say, after Christmas she was back in the hospital.  I was out of town during that time so I was not working on the quilt like I had hoped but what are you going to do.  Roll with it!  That Saturday, January 16th, I went up to the hospital to see her and it was not good. That next day she was gone and I did not fulfill my promise to her.  I do not like to do that so that is what I have been doing, quilting.  I, off course bit off more than I could chew.  When I do quilts I try to really personalize my work to fit that persons life.

idea 1?

What can you, the writer of a blog, do?

• Tell your readers as soon as you know what is going on.  You do not have to give full details but tastefully accept that stuff happens.  Many people do understand that so they will be thankful for the heads up.

•  Be prepared.   When you are done with the last post start on the next one or at least part of it.  Try to be about a week in advance of your schedule and set the date in your post settings for what day it needs to be out.   

• If you don't have anything, maybe have a post revisiting something you have already written or if you know of other team members of your group or friends of your post something on that topic ask if you can repost in your blog. 

• Get help.  If you can ask for some help in advance just in case you can't get anything done but post something.  Never let your site go if you have a date that something will be posted

I did make mistakes this week and should really follow my own advise but I had gotten so overwhelmed I shut down.  This is never a good deal for either you or your site.  Buddy up and have someone call you to double check what is going on. Sometimes just talking to a friend can get you motivated back into whack!

What kind of plug is it?  Will it hurt? Is it messy and/or do I have to do something special so I don't get zapped? 

A plugin is what can give your site more functionality.  When you set up a site on either WordPress or Blogger they have them available to insert into your page.  For the computer savoy Plugins are bits of code that perform specific functions on your site. 

For blogger on Google the ones that can and have helped me has been the stat counter.  This helps track the people coming to see what article.  It can show me what country a person is looking at my site, the time of day my site is most active, which day or article has the most activity.  Recently, my site was visited 1,000 times in the past month.  It may not sound like much but for me, the visits to my site have tripled since October.  I love to look at what is going on with my site so I can tweak it as necessary to keep the traffic flowing.

Other plugins that can be helpful for WordPress are:

Yoast SEO – this plugin helps you with your content on your site.  The technical side of what your are saying such as keywords when writing your article.

Akismet – is a feature that can weed out the spam coming into your site.  It will automatically filter out any yuck comments.  There can be comments that come in with URL’s having misleading links.  This helps save your disk space and speed up your site.

IMsanity – This helps to resize huge image uploads.  This can fix the size of the upload and replace that original image so it works better for your site.  This can convert BMP files to JPG so that the image can get scaled.  WordPress does have one built in so just double check that capacity.

WP Smush – This helps to resize video by compressing it.  It can save up to a 32MP and the quality is not lost because of this process.

Social Medial Widget – This is in both Blogger and WordPress.  This helps you get your message to other people in different circles.  Where ever your audience is that is where you need to go.  You can customize it to what you need to have it out there.

Now I have given you links to WordPress site because I hope to be switching over my blog but I am not sure. So next week, I will attempt to find the differences between the two sites and give you an update.  Then I will work on sharing information on what I am doing to set up the site.

As you know many things cost money, so look around and see what best works for you but make sure you own your own material.  From previous reading Google keeps what ever I do and it is theirs.  I am going to look into why and how I can own what I do free and clear.

Thanks for your understanding all!  Have a great week!