While I was writing this blog post I noticed a notification reminding me of my blogs first anniversary:
It’s been an interesting year that started with wanting to write.
Blogging leads to all kinds of things
In some ways, not much happened. I didn’t get 2000 hits within my first week of blogging. But for someone who just wants to write that kind of stuff misses the point by several lightyears. Althoug it’s nice to know that your efforts don’t go entirely unnoticed.
What did happen? I regained my taste for writing regularly. It’s easy to get caught up in doing whatever needs doing. Blogging reminded me of my preferred way to make sense of the world around me. Eleven months on, with a bit of help, I turned content into my job. It’s been a month now and I’m loving it.
Content isn’t king. But blogging is the key to a lot of good stuff.
Content is the key to blogging…
What else would you share? Whether it’s astronomy or a video of your children, it’s content.
On Twitter I started having a very specific opinion about the information I read in other people’s articles. But why stick to commenting if you end up writing an entire blog post in one go?
By now I’m edging my way towards 100 posts on this blog. That’s a lot of content 🙂
Blogging summer task: mobile theme
I’d like to see more blogs that I can read easily on a smartphone. My blog looks (I think) pretty neat and clean on a phone – apart from the “Heading 1” bit (which looks much bigger on a phone than on a laptop). Have you checked your blog?
(If you do notice anything odd about my blog on a phone, let me know so I can panic).
Blogs – some of them serious-looking blogs too, sometimes just have part of the screen chopped off. Or half of an infographic. This happens only on my smartphone, mind – it doesn’t seem to load the rest of the page.
Avoid this or other issues with your own WordPress (.com)blog. Take a moment to check if you’ve enabled a mobile theme on your blog.
Check your dashboard!
- Go to Appearance – Mobile.
- Then choose “Enable mobile theme” (just say yes).
- Set your mobile theme to show excerpts in stead of full posts.
- Anything else you’d like from the Mobile theme menu.
That’s it – you’re now officially mobile-enabled. That’s one more easy summer task for your blog. Done.
Bonus blogging tip for self-hosted WordPress bloggers
A smartphone screen still isn’t big enough to clutter it up with a floating tool bar.If you have the kind that floats over your blog text, see if you can’t disable it for mobile devices under the size of a decent tablet. If you chuck it out, let me know in a comment 😉
P.S.: if I were 5 to 10 years older I wouldn’t be able to read the text. A hint to the wise pro bloggers?
More summer tasks are in this blog post. Enjoy your blog – and summer!
This post was scheduled for publication on August 2. I’m not sure what happened.
Content Rambler 
I got an anniversary thing recently too! It surprised me as I haven’t received one, or any mention, before. I started in 2011.
I’d love to enjoy my summer, but it’s mid winter here in Melbourne Australia 😦
The anniversary notification must be new then – I haven’t been around on WP long enough to know any better 🙂
Surely the worst (or bigger part) of winter must be over by now? But really, I’m not looking forward to some aspects of winter myself… the good bits are my son’s birthday, Sinterklaas, Christmas and the like. Fortunately with a (by then) 4-year-old, snow equals fun. So we’ll manage winter when it gets here I guess.
Enjoy the enjoyable bits of winter over in Melbourne – knowing it will pass 😉