My Blog was giving me problems in a number of areas.
The contrast between the background and the text was fairly good, but italics lost some of that contrast. I heard from a few people that their handheld device had real problems in that area. A stronger contrast was therefore desired.
I also felt it was time to change the Blog header. Ray was certainly the reason the Blog was started, but topics now are much broader, and I wanted to include “Who Said I was up for Adoption?” and “The Odessa Chronicles” in the header area.
Finally, through my own inconsistencies, my Posts that related to my “Just Thinking” book were in various Categories! It was my desire to have each of my books dedicated to their own Category, making it so much easier for an interested reader to find out more about the book, and read excerpts, without hunting through unrelated Posts.
The end result is the following Categories:
My books “Just Thinking”, “The Odessa Chronicles” and “Who Said I was up for Adoption?” each have their own Category. The Category will only contain Posts directly related to the specific book.
Dear Diary – will contain Posts that are based on me! They may be addressing my history; my thoughts about different things; my plans for the future … in fact anything that involves my beliefs/my perceptions/my understandings of life and our world.
Just Ray – will contain Posts just about him, and that do not directly relate to my book about him “Who Said I was up for Adoption?”. This will be of interest to people who just want to see pics of Ray and/or read about our adventures with him.
Food for Thought – will contain Posts that are planned to stimulate thought on a broad range of life topics. This is currently my favorite Category (a result of me having to go through many Posts in order to get them organized). I had forgotten how many thought provoking Posts were filed away here!
Dog Writings General – will contain Posts that are dog related, but not necessarily focused on Ray.
Note: The existing Dog Writings General Category contains many Posts that focus on Ray. I am slowly going through them in order to make this (and the Just Ray Category) more effective, but there are over 500 Posts to go through. It is going to take some time before this Category is “clean”!
Music – will usually contain selections of music (with a YouTube link), that make an impact on me for whatever reasons. While most Posts will contain a music link, there will be some that just discuss specific perspectives of music.
Uncategorized – This Category no longer exists.
A New Direction Perhaps? 
Bravo with your changes.
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Thank you Monika. 🙂
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I like your new header. 🙂
Sounds like you did a great job of organizing. My blog could use a upgrade too.
I am not sure what my categories would be, though I think the Anna/Annie/ Anna/Tanya stories could have its very own category!
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Well you could start with “The Odessa Chronicles”, “Humor”, “Zany Fiction” and “Joyroses”. 🙂
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LOL! Thanks for the help! I just posted more “zany fiction” while you and Tippy were being “ferhoodled” 🙂
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We start at one point with our blogs and then they develop and at another point, we realize that we went in a direction that calls for a complete remodeling. I like how you limited the categories for giving a better overview. I really should do that too.
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We can all so easily be comfortable with our Blogs. We don’t see any real issues, and everything is where we want it, but then comes the revelation. The Blog must work for others as well. Of course we can find anything we want given that we created the layout, and we are so familiar with the design/layout that we probably don’t even think about it … so I try to satisfy the following thoughts:
Does the Home page have any appeal to my target audience? (i.e. If a stranger arrived on my Blog, are they likely to stay and look around?)
Are my range of Blogging interests clearly seen? (i.e. That’s where categories are really useful, and so should be displayed prominently.)
Are the categories productive? (i.e. there should be no unrelated Posts there.)
My thoughts are that if I can answer yes to those ideas, then all that is left is for me to be approachable and (hopefully) make sense in my Posts and Comments! 🙂
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Yes, after a while we begin to reflect since with blogging we have walked a path and are not where we started anymore. I had my first layout for more than two years. It was set up by my publisher and I added and changed a lot myself. But the moment came when I thought that it was not fitting at all anymore. The whole scenery was not fitting anymore. Too much on that homepage. Too much information left and right of the small reading area in the center. After I found my current theme, I was fine with the more calm atmosphere, only focused on the message and the reader and nothing distracting anywhere.
Just the categories.. yes, they need an update… lol
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🙂
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Hi Colin. You post about (literally) 30 times more often than I. But for what it’s worth I recommend paying WordPress for Their premium Themes- about $100 a year. You will have a lot more Flexibility and all the ads that appear in the middle of your pages to your readers will go away. As you would say, “just thinking…”. 🙂
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HI Michael. Always nice to hear from you. That’s a good bit of “Just Thinking” which had not crossed my mind. My R & D program just got expanded I think. Thanks for thinking … I think! 🙂
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You’re a natural organizer, Colin. Can’t wait to check out your blog’s new digs. 🙂
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New digs? It’s not going anywhere that I am aware of! It’s just getting a bit of a face-lift, and a lot of background re-organizing. 🙂
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When I started to blog I had no idea what I wanted as far as categories and pages went. After blogging for 9 years with a ton of posts I have a good idea but no ambition to take the time to clean it up. I wish I had read a better tutorial about that (although I may not have understood the impact at the time) in the beginning. I keep wanting to play around with my blog. My theme is 2011 and one of these days it will go the way of the dinosaur! Great job!
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Thanks Kate. If your brain ever needs a different challenge … that would be a good time to play with your Blog! 🙂
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That’s odd… I didn’t think it was possible to remove the ‘uncategorized’ category.
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Perhaps the Category has to have 0 Posts in it before the Trash option shows?
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Hmm… looks like this support page may be out of date then. It says you can’t delete ‘uncategorized’, but you can rename it. It also says you need to have a default category (which is ‘uncategorized’ by default). All very arcane and obscure 🙂
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Interesting given that I clearly did delete Uncategorized! The only “wrinkle” was that when I tried to change the Category names and/or add text, it told me that I did not have access (or similar wording) … but then it went and saved my changes anyway. Sssssh … don’t tell WordPress! 🙂
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Problem solved. I must have renamed the default category to Dog Stories (later to become Dog Writings General), and then created Uncategorized. That would explain why my Dog Writings General category limits my access to it! Make sense? 🙂
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My lips are sealed… I wonder what happens if you try to reblog a post? (When I do that, it ends up as ‘uncategorized’.) Just musing… it’s not as though any of this is earth-shatteringly important 🙂
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I don’t think I have ever re-blogged a Post as such. If I need to revisit an old Post, I will usually either paraphrase for a new Post, or (more likely) introduce the old Post and link to it.
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