I’m sharing some embroidery hoop wall at at We Heart Life, I’m sharing my Madeit Picks, and I’m a featured blog at We All Sew!

I’ve put together this free wallpaper for you to download and use! You can even buy the matching iPhone case here and have the whole set!

Click here to download. It’s a jpg image, so just put it onto your phone, and add as a wallpaper like you would any other photo.

Enjoy!

Don’t forget to check out the matching iPhone case as well- it’s only $10!

xo
T

Problem One: The RSS Feed

Some of you may have noticed a few weeks ago I added the domain http://lifesvisualjournal.com to this blog. This was after a change in name quite a few months ago. Because I hadn’t completed the entire URL change-over some problems have occured. I am SO sorry about this.

To solve this problem I have completed moved this blog over to the new URL: http://lifesvisualjournal.com, so all the permalinks have been changed. You can still access this blog through http://taliacarbis.com until I change that to a more general homepage.

So if you have this blog bookmarked etc. then please update the link and the RSS feed.

Problem Two: The Comments

The second problem Nadiah had was with leaving comments. I know that Debbie has let me know that she’s had problems commenting before, so I thought it was definintely time to fix things. I have installed Disqus, a commenting system, which should make things easier for you all to comment.

You (hopefully!) have a few options to either leave a comment like you normally do, sign in with disqus and track your comments, or log in with facebook, twitter and other things. Now, this hasn’t been tested so if you could leave a comment on one of the entires for me (and let me know how you went/logged in) that would be fantastic.

If you don’t want to leave a comment you can also just ‘like’ the post- similar to facebook, but not connected.

Phew

So hopefully (wow, I think I have said that way too many times this post!), the problems are fixed! If you do experience any more difficulties then please just send me an email and I will do my best to fix it.

My Email: talia.carbis (@) gmail.com

I made this quick little ‘how to’ screencast to show you how to remove that pesky ‘Blogs I’m following’ category from your google reader.

The main reason that I chose to do this was because I wanted to categorise the blogs i follow via the ‘follow’ button on their blogs, in the same way that all my other blogs are categorised.
For me, categorising is an important part of blog reading. It means that I can access my regular reads quickly, and that I can draw inspiration on certain topics easily by browsing the blogs in that category!

Remove Blogger from Google Reader from Talia Carbis on Vimeo.

Lately I’ve been learning more about bounce rates in my Google Analytics. Here’s a bit of a summary on what they are:

“Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality – a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren’t relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert. You can minimize bounce rates by tailoring landing pages to each keyword and ad that you run. Landing pages should provide the information and services that were promised in the ad copy.”

Source.

If you have Google Analytics you can view your bouce rate by going  Visitors > Visitor Trending > Bounce Rate.

Basically the SMALLER your bouce rate is, the better, becaues that means that  people ‘stick around’ when they get to your site. I like to imagine it like this:

Your website/blog is a big bed. People run into your room and they jump on your bed. Sometimes the bed is not what the person wants and as soon as they jump on the bed, they jump off again. You want to make your bed super comfy so that when people jump onto your bed they fall into it and go to sleep, dreaming about lovely things they see on your website!

Bouce rates are measured as percentages. The percentage that’s good for your site will depend on who your target audience is, and what their typical behaviour is. My bounce rate usually sits at about 65%, what’s yours?

My bounce rate from the last week

You can read more about bounce rates over at wikipedia.

Some tips for improving your bouce rate.

So I did a bit of a random draw, and Carly is the winner of the giveaway!

Congratulations Carly, I really hope you enjoy it.

Luke: “So, I’m pretty proud of the work I did this morning”

Talia: “Uh huh”

Luke: “The scrolling with the jquery is really hard to do”

Talia: silence

Luke: “You don’t really appreciate the work I did, do you?”

Talia: “It’s not that I don’t appreciate it, I just don’t understand how difficult it is, so it’s hard to be truely impressed.”

Luke: “I guess it’s like your cooking. I know that it tastes good, but I don’t really know how amazing it it”

Talia: “Yes! It’s exactly the same. I apprecaite how the site looks good now, but I don’t understand the technicalities of making it. That’s kind of depressing actually. Now I know how little you appreciate the skill involved in cooking some of those masterpieces…”

Luke: “Okay, well if you learn jquery, I’ll learn to cook”

Talia: “Deal”

WHAT HAVE I GOT MYSELF INTO?!

1. Email Collection. I find this to be essential, and loath using any blogging platform that doesn’t have this. Collecting people’s emails is important so that you can reply to the comment they left you- people won’t always check back to your blog to see if you’ve replied when they asked you a question. I know that personally, if I write a comment on someone’s blog, and they reply to me I am much more inclined to comment again!

2. RSS. This is a pretty heated topic in our house. Luke HATES it with a passion (see his post here), and I wouldn’t manage my blog reading without it (read what RSS is here). Either way, you have to be aware that so many people do choose to read blogs via RSS, so it’s important that you 1. have an RSS feed and 2. that it looks good. I recommend using feedburner if you want to ‘pretty up’ your RSS feed.

3. About page. If I read your blog, I want to connect with you, talk with you, and know more about you! It’s pretty simple to make one, even if your blogging platform doesn’t allow it. I always recommend choosing a blogging platform that does though, if you’re interested in good SEO (serach engine optomisation) and things like that.

4. Links that work. I am bad at this- if you update your permalinks, or something moves, or you changed your URL,  or whatever it is, sometimes the links go dead. For good SEO and just as a general curtosey to your readers, it’s good to keep an eye on the links in your posts and update them.

5. A plan. This can be one of two things- it can be an actual ‘schedule’ or posts, or it can be a ‘mission statement’. Just something that you keeps you focused, and on track with your blogging. It’s also a good idea if you have a mission statement to include it in the ‘about page’, because that will give new-commers to your blog a really clear indication of what they’re getting themselves into!

I like to plan out my posts a month in advance. It’s a pretty flexible system, and changes every week, BUT I always have a stream of posts I’ve started, and can finish. This is particularly good if you sometimes have ‘blogger’s block’ (If you’re sufering from this ailment, then I suggest getting FatMumSlim’s eBook- so many great ideas!).

6. Search function. Sometimes I will remember that I saw something written on someone’s blog. The easiest way to find the post they wrote is to use the search function within the blog- that way you don’t have to worry about typing special queries into google- you just type in a key word you remember, and hopefully you’ll get the post you’re after in the results, within the blog! If you’re not sure what I mean, try searching for something in the search bar on my blog- top right corner in the sidebar!

So there’s my list of blog essentials. If you use a blogging platform that doesn’t have some of these functions as basics, I’d love to know why you chose it… perhaps there’s a way around it!