Bloggiesta!

Bloggiesta is this week, and what better time to do some much-needed maintenance around these parts? I've never participated before, despite always wanting to do so. I'll be updating this post along the way with progress, and then will post a culmination at the end of the week.

Bloggiesta Goals:

Update design.  I've been making noises about switching to Wordpress for ages, but I don't have the technical know-how, budget, time, or energy to deal with self-hosting right now--and I don't believe that Wordpress.com is going to be that much better than Blogger.com. So Blogger it is (for now). I do want to tweak my design, though; the current design was done by a designer (who is amazing!), but there are some pieces of it that are hard to edit/update, so I'm going to try a refresh on my own. Cross your fingers and wish me luck.

I got so excited when I wrote this list that I redesigned the blog already. What do you think?

So, my remaining goals for the week:

1. Update my Reviews page with links to current reviews.
2. Make sure all recent reviews have been shared with publisher contacts as appropriate, uploaded to Edelweiss, Netgalley, etc.
3. Get a head start on May galleys. I'm scrambling to stay on top of April (reviews for my Shelf Awareness pieces are due a month before pub date, and all my April book picks pubbed on the same date, so that created a bit of backlog...), and I don't want to repeat this next month or in the months to follow. I need a buffer.
4. Draft and schedule posts and reviews. I've got a backlog of ideas and books read but not yet written about, and I just need to carve out some quiet time to really put my pen to paper. Or... hands to keyboard, as the case may be.
5. Clean up my Feedly and visit others' blogs. My Feedly feeds are a mess, ya'll. And I haven't been getting around to others' blogs nearly as much as I would like to.

Monday, March 23rd (Day 1):

I chanced into the first Twitter chat for Bloggiesta today, with talk about community, conversation, and the people we connect with through blogging. Even if you missed it, there was some interesting discussion happening--worth it to go back and visit some of the questions and answers there!

Based on Leah's Bloggiesta goals, I'm adding "tagging clean-up" to my own to-dos... in updating the blog design, I realized how out of control some of my tags are, and how some basic errors are breaking some of my previously-organized tags. I need an hour and a glass of wine and I'll be set.

In addition to the design updates I've completed, I've been making the rounds checking out other bloggers' recent posts and what other Bloggiesta participants are up to... and per Andi's mini-challenge, I did a significant bit of work on my Feedly categories, cleaned up out-of-date blogs.

Tuesday, March 24th (Day 2):

Tagging clean-up: Done!

Drafts of pre-written reviews (previously run in Shelf Awareness): Done!

Up next: Really buckling down on May galleys, drafting some not-already-written-review-posts, writing my Day In the Life post for the link-up on Friday. And in the in-betweens (maybe with some Gilmore Girls keeping me company), I'm going to get links to recent reviews on my Reviews page, and upload recent reviews to appropriate sharing channels, where missed.

Wednesday, March 25 (Day 3):

I hopped in on a bit of today's Twitter chat about blog design and layout today; there were some great tips there if you missed it (just search Twitter for #bloggiesta and you'll see the history). While popping back and forth on that during my lunch break, I also updated my Reviews tab with links to all of my recent reviews. Because I do this manually, I'm sure I've missed some, but I feel pretty damn good about the solid effort put into this.

Tonight, I'm sitting down with a notebook to list out blog ideas; I keep getting inspired in the shower, while driving, etc., and need to write these things down before I lose them.

How's everyone else's Bloggiesta going so far?