Got My Book

**Today's Question: Will I Ever be able to Stop Tweaking My Blog?**

The 2016 Discussion Challenge is hosted by Nicole @Feed Your Fiction Addiction and Shannon @It Starts At Midnight. “So often book bloggers mean to post more discussions on our blogs, but we just don’t quite get around to it. Well, we wanted to give everyone a little motivation to keep the discussions going, plus give us a place to link up our discussions so that more people will see our precious words of wisdom (or … you know … our GIF-filled rants).”

Background

I started this blog in January, just to have an additional place to post reviews of audiobooks I had received for review. But I was having so much fun tweaking my design and reading other blogs that I ended up deciding that I wanted to get serious. At the beginning of May, I made major updates and posted "Introducing GMB 1.0." (Yes it was originally 2.0, but I downgraded it since I felt that I was previously in Beta mode)

Since then, I have continued to tweak things and make small improvements. In July I made the big (for me) decision to increase from 2 reviews a week to 3, which I did at the beginning of this month. Despite the extra work, I love this schedule since it lets me post 1 adult, 1 YA, and 1 MG review each week. Also this summer (when creating a posting calendar for the rest of the year), I discovered that my library of owned books is heavily weighted towards fantasy. This is interfering with my efforts to alternate SF & F equally. I am working to redress this. In addition, I have been making improvements (I hope) to My Musings & my Sunday Summary posts.

I had also collected a list of other things that I wanted to change, but hadn't gotten to yet. Which bring me (finally) to...

Fall Bloggiesta 2016

(Sep 15th-18th)

Note - I am hosting a mini-challenge: "Increase Readership & Engagement with a Wrap-up Post" (includes "upgrade" options for those who already do one)

Task List

• COMPLETED Update: "My Review Policy" (on the "Got Policies" page) and implement a mandatory Review Request submission form (I have already drafted the changes & created the form) If you've got a minute, check it out and let me know what you think
• COMPLETED Update: the "About/Contact" page to reflect the change / Also, add buttons for each of the Blogger Directories I am listed with.
• COMPLETED Update: my Twitter bio & header photo (I have already drafted the bio and decided what text I want to add to the header). I will add the same photo to Facebook & G+ also. [For more info on why I am doing this, check out: Tackling Twitter] (I confess, I started early and did this before midnight Wed night.)
• COMPLETED Update: my "Got Indexes" drop down menu to have separate entries for the various sections of my Review Index (by title, by author, by narrator, by rating, series)
• Test my Commenting systems, type up instructions; add the instructions to my HTML (between the two available options) - I won't be finishing this one quite yet. I am still tweaking the layout & design.
• COMPLETED Make some small changes to my Sidebar
• COMPLETED Play around with Blogger, Tumblr, and Wordpress in order to choose a mirror back-up site for the blog. I am marking this one off, but it has largely been a failure: 1) my blog name has been taken on both Blogger (completely empty) and Wordpress (hasn't been updated since Feb 2015). 2) Tumblr just recently discontinued the "post via email" feature, so I won't be able to use it as an automatic backup.
• COMPLETED Participate in at least one Twitter chat.
• COMPLETED Find a small box to go under my desk as a paper recycling container (I keep meaning to do it).

Main Project = Posting Roll-through [IN PROGRESS - will continue to work my way through them all]

I am going to go through and edit every post I have done so far in order to:

• Backup all drafts, and any posts that I missed (I haven't always been consistent and BookLikes hasn't inspired a lot of confidence lately)
• Create a PostIndex.xls for my use (containing the permalinks etc)
• Create an Index of the My Musings posts
• Update my Tags, using the new list I have created (I will also be updating my Tag Index to reflect these changes)

This is obviously a very ambition list. I will try to finish anything that is left undone before I start Blog Ahead in October.

Talk to Me (pretty please)

• Have you reached a point where you are satisfied with your blog the way it is?
• If you have tried at least two of these sites (Blogger, Tumbler, or Wordpress.com), which would you recommend as a Backup site for my Blog?
• If you have commented on my blog: Have you had any problems? If so, what happened (you can tweet it to me if nec)? / If you are able to comment as your blog in the Facebook section, how do you do it?

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• If you are a first time visitor, how did you discover my blog?