Well another Bloggiesta has come to an end. Last year, I had Captain Jack Sparrow take you on a tour of my new and improved blog.  But he’s too drunk right now to be bothered.  So I asked around and no one seemed willing to come on a tour of what I accomplished this weekend besides the lovely Dowager Countess.  She came all the way from Downton Abbey.

She’s really excited to be here.

Me: Hi Dowager! What do you think of my blog? I wanted to take you on a tour.

Dowager: First electricity, now telephones. Sometimes I feel as if I were living in an H.G. Wells novel.

Me: LOL. Time flies doesn’t it? So do you like the new navigation?

Dowager: I don’t dislike it. I just don’t like it…which is different.

Me: YAY! Mission accomplished.  My blog now automatically posts to Facebook and Tumblr now, too.  It’s one thing less I have to do anyway.  Sometimes it feels as if there is so much to do that I’ll never get it done.

Dowager: Don’t be defeatist dear, it’s terribly middle class.

Me: Right. Sorry. I changed all the featured images on the posts that looked wonky from my new theme. And I cleaned up the sidebar.  I was on the computer forever.

Dowager: I couldn’t have electricity in the house, I wouldn’t sleep a wink. All those vapors floating about.

Me: I know. Being on the computer so long probably isn’t good for me.  Did you notice that my name comes before and after my posts now and is linked to a new about me page!?

Dowager: And when may you suspect an offer to appear on the London stage?

Me: Pfft any day now with how awesome my blog is.  Oh. You were serious. Um, anyway.  This weekend I also changed the link colors to be different when you click them and when you don’t.

Dowager: What is a weekend?

Me: Well….it’s………..Oh look I changed my currently reading badge to be just the pretty cover! Isn’t it pretty?

Dowager: No.

Me: Well, you’re wrong.

Dowager: I’m never wrong.

Me: Ok. Maybe you have a point there.  But I fixed my dates to be all fancy!

Dowager: What? Oh I’m sorry I started dozing off for a second.

Me: Well now you’ve just made me look ridiculous.

Dowager: Life is a game in which the player must appear ridiculous.

Me: Hmm. Very true.  Well thanks for coming on the tour with me! It was mostly fun.

Dowager: Yes. Well. I need a drink….Oh, I’m so sorry… I thought you were a waiter.

Thanks for stopping by! I can’t wait til Bloggiesta in September.  See you all then!

I’m so jazzed for this year’s Bloggiesta! I have been waiting all year for this.  I even jumped the gun and got a new design before it even started No worries – I still have a humungous list of things to do this weekend.

Friday: I’m going to my first opera (OMG! I can’t wait) and I’m sure as heck not doing anything.

Saturday: Time for the real work

The Big Things

• Set up auto-posting to Tumblr with NextScripts plug-in.  I already did it for Facebook.  It’s kind of tedious to do it this way because you have to set up an API, but I like having control about exactly how it posts everything and not worrying about it stealing pageviews like I’ve heard Networked Blogs does.  They have really detailed instructions and Facebook was not hard at all to do.  Plus this plug-in is free and it does other social media posting, too.
• Install the Ultimate Book Blogger Plug-in so I can set up auto-updating archives for my book reviews.  I’m also going to set up the social media, the blog roll, and someday add all of the Author info with the plugin to all my reviews.  I mean it does a ton and won’t be able to set it up all today by I’m sure going to try.
• ADDED: I want to change the featured images on my past posts. This new theme sticks an image at the top of every post and it looks pretty (which is why I bought it). But it only looks good if the feature image is the right size. And wow do I have a lot of past posts that look weird.  I mean, I know that no one is going to be looking very much at my old posts (heck I don’t even look at them that much). But I will know that they look ugly and it will bother me. So I’m going to work on one category at a time: Author Interview (3) Blog Tour (2) Book Review (111) Book Signing (13) Events (72) Flashback Friday (18) In My Mailbox (42) My Fictional Stories (1) My Reading Diary (47) New Releases (39) News (46) Reading Challenge (35) Series Theories (5) Top Ten Tuesday (8) Waiting on Wednesday (33)
• Update my page navigation.  I want to add drop-down menus to my policies page, my about me page, my events page, all the pages. Add a Dusty Bookshelf Page. Challenges page.

The Little/Tedious Things

• Add content and genre tags to all 111 of my book reviews (Should I have like a Elevnty-First Book Review Party? And bring the one ring??)
• add cute photo border with captions and without I’m going to just leave it as the default. I think the photos look fine without a border, right?
• Tweak sidebar. Move all the links into one sidebar and remove anything I don’t need.
• name after posts?  I don’t like the way it displays the author of the post on this new design, so I need to think of something else. Maybe add a signature to the bottom? I just have my name linked to my new about page at the top and bottom of the post.  I also added the time at the bottom of the posts cuz why not?
• change visited and unvisited link colors (visited lighter orange) It’s only slightly lighter and I don’t know if you can even tell. It’s mostly to make blog hops easier which I don’t do very often. I’d rather have the pretty orange look uniform throughout than have a big difference between the visited and unvisited links.
• about me sidebar? I think my new wordpress theme supports this in some sort of fancy way and I want to look into it.
• Fix currently reading Goodreads badge.  Oh huuuuubbbbby are ya busy? Could you write me some custom javascript? HA! I fixed it on my own by just using a different Goodreads widget. I love the way it looks now! So clean and no ugly Goodreads Logo.
• change comment layout. It looks funny and I have no idea why.
• use buttons for sidebars like for signing up for The Dusty Bookshelf reading challenge etc.
• fix date on posts.  My husband had it all cute and then I changed the fonts and messed it up.
• ADDED – get a good search widget.  mine sucks.

Mini-Challenges

I want to do a few of the challenges if I have some time.  I’m going to at least check out all of them and do the ones I can.

Organizing Reviews: Learn how to use Excel spreadsheets to keep track of your reviews fromLauren at Lose Time Reading. (@ooohgirlie)

Google Reader Replacement Options: In light of the announcement that we are losing Google Reader soon, Jenn from The Picky Girl has listed some options for her mini challenge. (@picky_girl)  She did a great post about all the RSS readers out there. I’m loving Feedly!

Through a Visitor’s Eye: An awesome challenge from Amanda at On a Book Bender that shows how to look at our blog in a new way and how to make sure you have everything you need for visitors. (@BookBender) I’ve been using my site a lot with this Bloggiesta and I found out that my searching sucks on here! I’m going to need to fix that.

Getting to Know You: Join Suey from It’s All About Books in discovering one new blogger to connect with during this Bloggiesta event. (@SueySays)

Reviewing in Many Places: This flashback challenge from Shanyn at Chick Loves Lit will help you get organized and post your review in lots of places, not just on your blog. (@shanynlee) Added a special to-do list for books that need to be cross-posted.

Anything on my list that you’re doing too?