Use my New Mobile Site Like This Please

As you probably know, Google recently implemented a new rule that penalizes websites that are not optimized for mobile (for more info, read Casie’s post here.)

It wasn’t that I missed the deadline, I was early actually. It’s that on your phone, KeriBlog.com now looks like this.

From a colourful fun land to bland grey box time.

What do I always say – a sidebar is the essence of a blog – and now it’s gone. Despite this blog’s content being bright and cheerful, it looks opposite. Go search for something and get depressed too. And because mobile is quickly overtaking laptop, this paragraph was typed with my head hanging all low and sad.

It’s because I never once set a featured image for a post, all 2,000 posts, so no way can I fix this.

So please scroll to the bottom of my blog
and choose “Switch to Desktop Version”

Then instead of looking like the “Before” picture, it will look like this:

Original post: Learned how to Weld

 

 

 

70% of The Weekend I Looked Like This

While looking at this:

Non-nerds – you’re looking at a brand-new, pristine WordPress site. I’m going to port KeriBlog over when I’m finished building it. Comments will work again, one analytics log-in instead of 5, ONE SIDEBAR oh guys, so happy.

The red AI – that’s After the Deadline: an artificial intelligence based spell, style, and grammar checker.  Check the * box to be warned when your writing is too passive. Seriously.  While in Washington in January, I met one of the developers who wrote it; he was funny.

And I’m repeating myself, but AI and mind control and thought-power, it’s coming. It’s closer than you think. This huge shift of the last 5 years when the world got online, it’s nothing compared to what’s around the corner.

The other 30% of this weekend I looked like this.

Friday night.

People-watching with a beer on a street is one of my favourite things.

Saturday night.

#SundayCleaning

Found this awesome FinalCut filter.

This week’s flowers.

They smell like cloves. If your home smells like fresh flowers, that’s classy.

Here’s to a great start to your week, go kill it!

See you online.

 

 

Widgets and Night Walks

As a blogger, the most common question I’m asked is: what do you blog about? If my answer takes longer than 3 seconds, their eyes glaze over.

Now look right at my sidebar and scroll down to see “Categories”. Say that in 3 seconds.

Click here: remember this? The start of my network? It was too much, WAY too much. Managing one site is enough, and I couldn’t pull off 8. My interests remain the same, but publishing and maintaining them proved impossible.

So now what?

I sat down quietly with a pen and paper, and narrowed it down to 5 topics / categories:

3/5 of those topics have companies who see the value in social media, and invest real money, not gift cards or swagg. Good.

So I’ve been hunched over my laptop, re-designing the backend of KeriBlog.

This is a big deal. Above are my Widgets, what you know as my sidebar, look right. There is no easy method to move them from one site to another. What you see on the side is hours of build time. Manage 8 sidebars? OMFG.

If I do this correctly, I will be able to use the same one across all the sub-sites, and that’s huge.  I did not do this correctly when testing on KeriOnCars though, see, sidebar vanished.

I’m trying to be better at remembering to push away from my computer regularly, not to sit there in the shape of a C for hours on end. So easy to do, isn’t it.

Ice cream stop.

It was quiet last night, didn’t see anything that exciting on the street.

Then back home to hunch.  Found this, exciting!

That’s my sidebar above. Blog friends: your sidebar is in your wp_options file.

If you have any advice theming categories on WordPress, please let me know.