Here’s an interesting follow-up to my post last week in which I talked about the new story feature on the Jetpack app. As an experiment, I tried it out and this is what happened:
My experimental story has gotten more views and likes than any other post so far this month. Isn’t that weird? Does anyone know if Jetpack stories boost blog performance?
I just posted another story, to see if that’s the case. After this, I promise I’ll stop talking about Jetpack!
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I’ve noticed a few new things on the WordPress editor, have you? First, let me say that I have fully transitioned to the block editor and I like it. A lot of what they’ve done makes sense to me. I thought it was going to be like the editor I use at work for our email marketing platform (Constant Contact), but I was totally wrong!
As for the new things, I feel like WordPress just sneaks these things in on us, however I admit I don’t study the features at night. It’s the same way with Canva. Things change all the time over there, but I love Canva so much that I like to see new things.
Recently I got frustrated that it wasn’t as easy to resize images until I discovered this little icon in the upper right corner (see below). I don’t know what you call it, but it opens up the sidebar so you can edit.
I’ve made a mess of my resuable blocks—my fault, but while trying to sort it out, I noticed that the Resuables feature also has a new icon.
Do you have the WordPress app on your phone? I use it all the time, never to write posts, but to check stats and reply to comments when I’m out and about. I’ve also used the widget for a quick look at stats, but I recently noticed that it was really slow to update. Weird. It used to be great. Then I got a notification to download the Jetpack app because it will be taking over these features on March 8. Now I use that and it’s great.
One of the new things on the Jetpack app is the ability to post a story. Well I guess it was just a matter of time. You may have seen a random post from me go out on Thursday night because I was playing around with the story feature. I deleted it because I thought it might work like Instagram, but it created an actual post. I’m going to post a story right after this post, so you can see what I mean.
So just a few techy observations. Have you noticed these changes and features? Leave a comment!
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Here’s a mishmash of my current blogging experiences:
In my last post about blogging, I announced that I was tentatively happy because my spam comment problem seemed to be resolved. You may remember that my blog had been inundated with spam and it was even spamming email accounts connected to blogs that follow me. That was horrible. To fix it, I turned off pingbacks and trackbacks and closed comments after 30 days. IT’S WORKING! What a relief. Now I don’t have to spend time deleting spam. If you are having problems with spam comments, I highly recommend you turn off pingbacks and trackbacks and close comments after 30 days.
Have you noticed that the fonts have changed in draft mode? It doesn’t affect the final post so not really a big deal, but you know…change.
How’s everyone doing with the block editor? Are you using all the features? Have you converted your old posts from the Classic format? I’m doing pretty well and don’t find it hard to use, but I don’t use nearly all the features. I do like using the “Resuable” blocks when I write a post, though, and forced myself to learn how to create them. It saves a lot of time. As for converting from the Classic format, I have had mixed results. I’m not on a mission to change them all, but if I’m linking to an old post, I like to update it.
Did you notice that the Reader layout is different? At first, I thought, “Whoa, WordPress, enough with the changes” but I actually think it’s an improvement. IMO it’s easier to get an idea about the post and honestly, everything looks more attractive.
Now here’s something that I wish would happen. When I link my blog to something else, I have to manually set the link to open in a new tab. I would love that to be a default setting. Does anyone else think about this?
That’s about it for me. What are some of your recent blogging observations? I hope you’re having a good Saturday!
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Last week I wrote this post about the problems I’d been having with spam. Followers had been receiving a lot of spam emails, as replies to comments on my blog. I was horrified. What a bad way to promote your blog! The weird thing was that I did not receive notifications through my blog about the spam emails. I want to thank those who reached out to me to tell me about the problem because I never would have known!
The problem started back in March and I wrote another post about all the spam comments on my blog. Akismet was doing their job catching them and rerouting them to my spam folder but they had become a nuisance to delete because the comments were coming in fast and furious. A couple people told me that the spam folders emptied automatically, so I let it go for a bit. Not true for my free blog because next time I checked, I had about 35,000 spam comments and it took me a couple hours to delete them all.
I tried to stay upbeat about it and made this video making fun of the insulting comments (some were pretty amusing), but the volume of spam bothered me! I contacted the Happiness Engineers at WordPress and they suggested I change my password, enable two-step authentication and consider closing my comments. I did the first two (did not want to close comments!) and for a while, the spam was under control…until recently.
Back to the Happiness Engineers who directed me to my blog’s Discussion settings, but they did not tell me what to do. So I made some decisions on my own: I turned off pingbacks and trackbacks and reluctantly closed comments after 30 days.
Since then I’ve received ZERO spam comments on my blog. I have not heard from any of you about spam emails. I hope they have also stopped. Please let me know if you are still receiving them. If you are having the same problems on your blog, I strongly recommend turning off pingbacks and trackbacks.
Now I am finished talking about spam and will resume reading. I hope you are all having a nice September Saturday!
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I’ve recently discovered that followers are receiving emails with spam comments replying to comments they made on my blog. Arrrrrggggghhh! As much as I hate to close comments, I’ve been forced to do it on a couple posts. I’ve notified WordPress and they replied with the suggestion that I tweak the discussion settings on my blog.
I made some changes, including closing comments after 30 days and will no longer allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This recent article made some good arguments for turning them off.
So I apologize if you are receiving these emails. What a nusiance for you! I hope you’ll be patient with me as I figure things out.
If you are receiving these emails please contact me at bvitelli2009@gmail.com and tell me which post so I can work to shut it down from my end.
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Please forgive me! I promised I would not talk about my spam comments any more, but I have a few tips that might help other bloggers who are struggling with this same problem. A special shout-out to Hugh’s Views & News for offering moral support and tips. He’s an expert blogger and very willing to help so be sure to pay him a visit!
First of all, to clarify, these comments never make it into my comments. That would be a disaster! They go right to spam, but I can barely keep up with deleting my spam folder. Why do I bother? I let it go for a while, but I’m uncomfortable with all those questionable sites and links connected in any way to my blog. I just finished deleting 40,000 comments. It took me a week. I got 1200 more overnight so there was more work for me this morning!
Here are some tips that can help keep your blog secure:
Some bloggers close comments after a certain period of time or don’t allow comments at all. I’ll never do that. I mean, comments are the heart of the blogging community!
So I hope these tips are helpful to you. Maybe you think these steps aren’t necessary because it’s just your personal blog, but I’m not going to take any chances.
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Anyone who’s been blogging for a while knows that it’s not only necessary, but good to take blogging breaks. Some people plan them. Other times, life off the blog demands attention. And sometimes you burn out. There’s a certain tension and urgency that crackles through the blogging world and all social media. That can be exciting when you’re up and you have time. I love connecting with other people. But the same things that are exciting can also be overwhelming if you never take a break. There’s also the feeling that if you stop engaging, people will stop visiting and reading your posts when you do come back, that they’ll forget about you. How fragile is the blogger’s ego!
If you follow my blog regularly, you know that I recently finished a long book. I felt driven to finish it in a reasonable period of time. I mean, that thing could have taken me more than a month to read! I tried to stay engaged on WordPress while I was reading it. And in the beginning, I felt a nagging pressure to do that, to read other blogs, comment, share, and think of content to post. Those are things I love to do, when I’m not busy. But something funny happens when you stay off the blog for a few days: priorities shift. I didn’t read nonstop. I can’t sit still in a chair for hours on end. But I spent more time doing the things I needed to do outside of WordPress. Plus I read and I just chilled…
Then I finished the book and guess what? I didn’t want to do anything for a few more days! And then I had to get back into writing a review. It all took time and I felt no desire to rush. Part of me considered the idea of stopping entirely. I’m not going to do that, but these feelings make me realize how important breaks are. I may just try to schedule a few during the year.
So the question is, do you plan your breaks or do they just happen? Do you plan your comebacks or do they just happen too? Have you felt the same tension and then lack of motivation over time? Leave a comment!
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Last week I learned how to generate free QR codes for work and it’s easy and kind of fun to do, so I thought I’d share what I learned here. First of all, do you know what QR means? I had never thought about it much, but it stands for Quick Response.
We’re going to use a QR code for print materials and I’m still figuring out how it would be useful in the digital world for bloggers versus just using a link, although the code definitely works online. This article from Wasp Barcode Technologies talks about using QR codes for print and something like that on Facebook, Snapchat and Spotify. For authors who use print materials, even a business card, it’s a simpler way to direct people to your work. Anyone with a phone can use the camera function that recognizes the codes and takes you directly to your site.
Paid versions let you track stats and customize your code even more. I think the free one I made looks pretty good and although I love tracking stats, I don’t think I would upgrade to be able to access them.
It’s a wild idea, but I’m thinking of having a t-shirt made with my blog’s QR code on the back!
Anyway, here’s the link to the QR code generator I used. It’s called QR Code Monkey.
And here’s the QR code I made for Book Club Mom. See? You can even upload your logo onto the code. Isn’t that fun?
Have you used QR codes for any of your work or for your blog? What types of things have you done? Leave a comment and let me know!
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One of the things I’ve found frustrating about Facebook pages is that the news feed feature disappeared one day without explanation and the pages I liked through my pages wound up on my personal news feed. That feed is now a mess. I barely look at it and never interact because it’s just too complicated to switch back and forth between my personal account and my pages.
I recently got a tip (thank you A!) that if you change your pages to business pages, you can access the news feed so I jumped on Facebook to check it out. At first, after I switched them to business pages, I had trouble seeing the news feed, then I found a hack that instructed me to add /news_feed to the URL. Voila! It was back, or so I thought. When I went through my feed, I only found posts from a few pages I liked, but most of the feed looked like paid posts.
I hopped over to my Books to Pen page, did the hack and got an official welcome to the Facebook News Feed. Yay! I followed the steps that prompted me to follow pages I’d already liked and off I went, tapping Follow for each. About halfway through, I was bounced out of Facebook and had to log back in. When I got back on the Books to Pen page, I had a new button for News Feed and a pretty healthy feed, although I have no idea if all the pages I like will actually show up, since I wasn’t able to follow all of them. The same thing happened for my dad’s page.
Today I went on Facebook to look at my pages’ news feeds and the buttons were gone. So I typed in the hack and got a message that the link was broken. Boo!
Well I fiddled around, jumping back and forth between my pages and using the hack and I eventually got the news feed button back for two of my three pages and I can access the third feed if I add news_feed to the URL.
I don’t know. Does Facebook even like us? And do they want us to interact with other FB folks?
Have you tried accessing the news feed for your pages? Leave a comment below.
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Like everyone else, despite the tough year we’ve all had, I learned a lot of new things in 2020. Today I’m sharing two great tools that are great for blogging.
You’ll feel like a graphic artist once you get familiar with how Canva works. It’s a graphic design platform with thousands of templates to use on your blog (like my new banner and this blog’s graphic) on social media and for other print items. The free version has loads of options. I had to learn how to use it for work and I’ve started using it more for my blog. What I like best about it is that the images you create are custom-sized for posts on a blog, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. so you don’t have to worry if you have the dimensions right. And I also like how they suggest color schemes based on any images you upload. Really great!
I learned about Linktree from my boss. You know how on Instagram you can only have one link in your profile and that any URLs you include in a post are not actually linked to anything? And on Twitter, even though you can include live links in your tweets, you can only have one link in your bio. Kind of frustrating. Well Linktree lets you put all your links in on one link – it’s clean and easy and the free version is all that I need. Thanks, Boss!
I hope these are helpful tips for you, too. What new things did you learn this year about blogging and social media?
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Book Club Mom 
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