Trying to get my blog up to date

I started this blog way back in 2011, and blogging was very different then (that's a topic for a whole other blog post!) I started using Blogger because it was free, and although I've been tempted to move to self-hosted over the years, when it comes to it I just can't face it. Back when I started blogging many of the blogs that I read were as delightfully amateurish as mine -blurry photos, brightly patterned backgrounds, buttons and badges scattered all over the place. The focus was on the writing, and no-one paid much attention to how the blog looked on the screen.


Now when I read other blogs, even very new ones, they look so polished with beautiful photography, great dynamic design, beautiful logos with consistent branding across a variety of social media channels. I have begun to realise that my blog has become a little stuck over the past few years. I've been working away on producing content without paying any attention to blogging trends, and I'm a bit worried that I'm being left behind.

So I'm trying to make an effort to bring my blog into 2018. I like my header and logo so I'm going to be keeping those. I like my colour scheme too, so that's going to stay. But I've now taken that header image and managed to create matching logos across all my social media channels, when previously I had a real jumble of different images and logos. I'm hoping that they all look a lot more crisp and professional now.

I've also been paying attention to my pages. I like having my favourite posts on different topics organised into pages. But I had become obsessed with making sure that every single one of my posts on a topic was included, and quite frankly many of them weren't that great. When they were displayed in a big long list it was impossible to know which were the ones worth reading. So I've cut down the number of pages, cut down the number of links on those pages, and had a go with a bit of HTML editing to make them look a bit prettier. It's nowhere near perfect but they look a lot better than they did! You can see an example here - Hama beads.

Next to work on is my media kit. I do have one which is a good start, but it could be a lot more flashy and focus on the things that I can offer. I also want to go back and rework some of my older content, I've written so many posts over the years, and I tend to forget all about the previous one as soon as I've published a new one. I need to get better at re-sharing old content and linking the similar posts together so that they can be easily found.

Finally I need to learn a lot more about Blogger and how I can implement the different features that have been introduced over the years. There is a lot that can be done to make a Blogger blog look better if you are brave enough to try. I'm going to be stalking other Blogger blogs and seeing how they have used the platform to their advantage. Hopefully making some changes will pay off and bring my blog a little more up to date!