It's Spring!! It's Spring!! After a particularly trying Canadian winter I'm more than ready for this season of renewal and since Mother Nature still hasn't gotten the spring memo for my neck-of-the-woods I'm expending my new found energy on a much needed blog cleaning.
Truth be told, I really enjoy this creative process and so I thought I would share some of my enthusiasm.
First off, I'm really not talking about the little maintenance tasks that you should be doing all year round. Ensuring that your links are still working & your pictures are still posting are best dealt with on a regular basis otherwise they become a bit of a slog. If you have fallen behind, and who doesn't on occasion, you may want to take some time to get those in order before proceeding.
Now on to de-cluttering!
The older I get the more I value a well curated space be. Since this appreciation for restrained elegance is constantly at war with my natural magpie tendencies I have to compromise. I find it helps to take a step back and try to look at my blogs with fresh eyes all the while mumbling "... less is more ... less is more".
No matter how cool they are, if those gadgets & widgets are no longer highly functional & ascetically pleasing it's time to chuck them out.
Screen real estate is valuable; use it wisely while leaving room for your cherished content to breathe.
Expand your horizons
There isn't a better time of year to make some changes and try something new. This year I literally expanded the horizons of both my blogs by increasing the page width and then upping the font sizes. I'm loving the extra room afforded by the popularity of high screen resolutions and the larger fonts are a pleasure to my aging eyes.
I've also cut down on the length of individual posts displayed on the Home page. Though I'm not ready to limit this to the trendy "small photos with teaser text", I think it strikes a nice balance between an old-style blog and a densely populated magazine-style.
All year round, I'm truly inspired by the many fabulous bloggers (see a sample in my Blogroll) who make trend spotting a delight and help me to discover my own version of blogging freshness.
Now that I'm out of hibernation, I'm motivated to polish pixels and banish the virtual dust bunnies.
It's wonderful to reap the rewards of renewal!
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Spring Clean Your Blogs: Reap the Rewards of Renewal by Tatiana Dokuchic on 2014-03-28
Embrace the joys of polishing pixels and banishing virtual dust bunnies.
Embrace the joys of polishing pixels and banishing virtual dust bunnies.
Images: Tatiana Dokuchic; Unknown
Find Tatiana Dokuchic on Google+
You must have read my mind Tatiana! That is exactly what I am doing right now with my blog but it is quite a tedious task. It has gone through three major changes in less than a year as in a name change, migration change and a re-branding with a whole new blog design. I just finished re-naming any images watermarked with the old blog name, making sure SEO is happy and getting ready to create a gallery of the posts. I so agree with you that 'less is more' I much prefer the streamlined clean looking blog compared to the one that is cluttered with all kinds of distractions. Yours is lovely by the way. It resonates like it is work of art both in the photography and the text!
ReplyDeleteI've been following your blogging adventures for quite a while now, Thea and there certainly have been a lot of changes. I think that the results are great & well worth all your hard work.
DeleteThank you for your kind words; like you, my blog is truly a labour of love.
I love this! only a year in I am already wanting to give my blog a refresh, clean things up - and most of that is due to the inspiration of others and all the fabulous blogs out there!:) thanks for the great post and extra inspiration:)
ReplyDeleteThanks for dropping by, Heather. I loved checking out your blog; you've been really busy in your first year!
DeleteI'm always tweaking my blog as well. As you say, there is so much inspiration out there & it's always exciting to translate that into something unique to yourself.
It must be something about this time of year that brings out the nesting (online or offline) in us. I did an online spring cleaning this past weekend. Getting rid of e-clutter was so liberating. Thanks for the great inspiration.
ReplyDeleteI agree, Cynthia. The spring sun seems to shine a light on all the dust & clutter that accumulated over the winter. Funny how it works on virtual clutter as well and it really is liberating to remove it. Enjoy your fresh space!
DeleteThanks for the tips. I really like the idea of expanding the size and increasing the font - it's something I'll be thinking about.
ReplyDeleteI highly recommend it, Dani. I found that even an expansion of 100px made a big difference in the look & feel of my blogs.
DeleteI use to worry about leaving some of my visitors behind but according to the latest statistics 99% of visitors have a screen resolution of 1024x768 or better while 93% have a screen resolution of 1280x800 or better.
See Browser Display Statistics at: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp
Just something to add to your thoughts :)
I like this because I can read it better on my notebook easier than other blogs.
ReplyDeleteGood to know, Beryl. Thanks!
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