My Top Traffic Sources

After reviewing my stats, I've compiled this list of my top 5 traffic sources with the hopes of helping other bloggers improve their advertising / sharing strategies!

1. Pinterest. 
1. Recently, I've seen other bloggers comment on the fact that they are receiving less traffic from Pinterest. However, I've seen no difference and Pinterest still remains my #1 best traffic source of all time. Although, I must add that I have had other sources beat it out over short-term stretches.
2. Bloglovin.
1. Unless you're new to the blogging game, you know what a huge asset Bloglovin is to the blogging game. It's my personal go-to site for following, reading, and organizing the blogs I love. Whenever I redesign my blog, I'm always sure that my Bloglovin link is easily located with my social media icons due to the fact that it is equally as important (if not more). 
3. Google+
1. Not a lot of bloggers consider Google+ as much of an asset as it is. If you find the right communities of bloggers, you can get a lot of views, comments, and shares. My top two Google+ blogging communities are Share the Blogging Love and Female Geek Bloggers. 
4. Facebook
1. I didn't create the Facebook page for LWC Wonderland until later in the game. Once I finally did, I was so pleased with it. I love being able to schedule my posts and let it ride out. I compensated for the delay by posting all of my old posts on Fridays as Flashback Fridays.
5. Link-Ups and Blog Hops
1. I participate in several Link-Ups and Blog Hops a week. Sometimes I get a lot of hits, other times only one or two. Depends on the crowd and how quickly I get to add my link.

What is your best traffic source? Are there any different ways that your bring extra traffic to your blog?

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Don't Become an Overwhelmed Blogger

About a year ago I fell off the blogging map and didn't return until last October. I've spoken about this once or twice, but I think it's time that I address the issues - and resolutions - behind my disappearance.

So here is my How-To on how to NOT become an overwhelmed blogger.

1. Start with a blogging schedule that works for you. This is different than setting a (realistic) goal of how often you want to be blogging. This is setting a schedule that works with your life and current blogging habits. Start off 2-3 times a week and work up from there every 2 weeks to a month. Blogging is very time consuming, but it doesn't need to be life consuming. I have found that the Google+ calendar works amazing for me.
2. If you find yourself with excess time that you want to put into blogging, be sure to stick with your schedule. Don't post it right away. If you have decided on posting three times a week and have already written your three, schedule your newest post the next week. I cannot emphasize this enough. This could very well be what did me in. I was so inspired when I began blogging that I would post more than once a day and wanted to keep that up once I lost that inspiration. I wore myself out. If I had known to schedule those for later days, I would have had a time when my posts were still being published that I had to become inspired again!
3. Plan for your how-to / listing posts to be published a month or more after you write it. I say this because I guarantee that you'll think of something else that you wish you would've added in that month. This extra buffer time allows for the best post you can get! Also, you probably shouldn't schedule it until you have five if you're going for a "list".
4. Set an action plan for when a post goes up. Have a list of exactly what you want to do when your post goes up on your blog. Tweet, Pinterest, etc. That you you check check them off and won't forget anything! 
5. Write down your ideas. Keep a running list on your phone and your computer of ideas you think of during the day (as well as the pesky ones that wake you up at night). You can pull inspiration out of the tiniest things that happen during your day - the types of things that flutter out of your brain by the time you sit down. I even write down random thoughts I have. Do you realize how many blog posts are grown out of lists of random thought? 

What do you do to keep from becoming overwhelmed by blogging?

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Image Mapping Tutorial

Here's a little disclaimer: I've learned all that I will explain here by trial and error, and simply playing with it. If you know this sort of thing better than me, pleasepleaseplease comment below and share for easier techniques! Always remember to back-up your blog before editing!

I've been doing some work on my sidebar lately, and have decided to venture into the world of image mapping. Using image mapping allows me to have fewer image codes in my layout - my social media icons (from here) are all one clean image. Before cleaning it up, my images weren't completely centered and I wanted to scoot my social media icons to under my picture.

Click to enlarge

So I went to Photoshop and plopped them all into one image. I added a Facebook button, since I've recently made a new Facebook page for LWC Wonderland!

Click to enlarge

Now I need to make my social media icons click-able. This is where image mapping comes in handy! I went to Imgur and loaded my new sidebar photo up there. (Remember to save it as a .png file first!)  In another tap, I opened up an image mapping site and pulled up the exact same file I upladed onto Imgur. I clicked "Start Mapping" and then "Click to continue" on the next page. Finally, I'm on the page where I will map my picture. Right click to get the menu you need, and then click on "Create Rect" or "Create Circle" if you want. I decided on creating a rectangle despite the fact that my icons are circles because it will give me a little bit more "click-able" room.

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A little box will appear. I move it over my first icon and move the corners until it covers the area I desire. You can drag the dialogue box out of the way if you need to.

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Hit save on the dialogue box. Do the same thing for each of your icons. If you do not like how one of your boxes turned out, you can double click it to edit.

Click to englarge

Once you have finished mapping your boxes, right click and select "Get Codes". A large dialogue box will appear. Select the middle tab that says "HTML Code" and scroll all the way to the bottom of your dialogue box using the exterior page's scroll bar. Oh, look, there's all the HTML mumble-jumble.

Click to enlarge...but do you really want to see a larger picture of html?

Open your Blogger layout and either open the gadget where you will be throwing this data or create an HTML/JavaScript gadget. Clear out your previous social media icons and, in my case, your photo and bio.

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Then, paste the first two lines of code. You will then replace the image map link with your Imgur link (but only the code between src and png. Mine looked like this:

<img id="Image-Maps-Com-image-maps-2014-10-10-164234" src="//i.imgur.com/qUVQw3G.png" border="0" width="390" height="1315" orgWidth="390" orgHeight="1315" usemap="#image-maps-2014-10-10-164234" alt="" />

<map name="image-maps-2014-10-10-164234" id="ImageMapsCom-image-maps-2014-10-10-164234">

Get your Imgur code out of this box:
 

Click to enlarge

Now, here is where it starts to get tricky. Type:

<area shape="rect" coords=

After this, copy and paste the set of coordinates found in the third line of code on the image mapping site into your gadget. Then hit space and type href= and, in quotation marks, the link to your first social media site (starting with http://) according to your icons. For me this will be Twitter. Then you will type:

alt="YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA SITE" title="YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA SITE" />

The last part is what message will show when the icon is moused over, so it doesn't necessarily need to be the name of your social media site. Here is what mine looked like:

<area shape="rect" coords="0,581,68,650" href="http://www.twitter.com/bethdotlove" alt="Twitter" title="Twitter" />

Do this for all of your other links except e-mail. When you reach your email icon, you plug in your coordinates the same as before but after you type href=,then type:

"mailto:YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS HERE" alt="Email" title="Email" />.

And since you always finish what you start with HTML, add
to the end. Now save and check it out! Hope this helps you in your formatting adventures!

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Create a Pretty New Page From Search Labels

This isn't so much of a step-by-step tutorial as a gathering of all the appropriate links to the tutorials. I have been searching and Googling and clicking on Pins and links. I want to create a new page on my blog that shows all of my DIY posts in one perfect spot. However, I only want to have summary of the post there. Yeah, I know, I'm pretty picky.

I  already knew that I could create a new page on my blog with the search for the specific label. In case you haven't reached that level of blog-platform-DIY-what-the-heck-am-I-doing, I'll give a quick synopses here:

• Bring up your blog and search/click on the label you would like to show up on your new page. 
• Copy the link of the page you've been brought to.
• Go to the far right of your tabs and click the edit icon.
• A pop-up will appear that says "Configure Page List".
• Click "Add External Link".
• Fill out everything (and make sure you don't have two http://).
• Arrange it where you want, if necessary. Sometimes I have to save and go back into this menu before I can do this, though.

Now I have a new page with my DIY posts. But they're the full posts and there's that ugly "Showing all posts..." deal up at the top. No, thank you. Let's make this prettier!

Xomisse's post is step two in my ultimate page of perfection. This post will explain how to have your posts show up as summaries with an image when a label is searched. Making these changes will not only make your new page look better, but will also apply this to when labels are actually searched. Please, remember to back up your blog before editing html.

Be sure to read the whole post if you see that your images are skewed or stretched. She doesn't exactly tell you how to fix it, but she puts you to the right place. I had a lot of issues making mine look okay since I had some photos that were horizontal and some were vertical. I decided to give preference to my vertical pictures due to the fact that I'm going to make those my thumbnail from this point on. Little tip I've learned: Vertical pictures with text do best on Pinterest. So forgive any funky looking pictures...I plan on fixing that at a later date. If anyone has any suggestions on fixing this, please comment or email me!

I had some issues with the coding, too.  I did NOT have to put the second code in twice, even though I had the data.post blahblahblah thing twice. Also, I changed the second code to:

<b:if cond='data:blog.canonicalUrl == data:blog.homepageUrl'> <br/> <data:post.body/>
<b:else/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != "item"'>
<div expr:id='"summary" data:post.id'><data:post.body/></div>
<script type='text/javascript'>createSummaryAndThumb("summary<data:post.id/>");
</script> <span class='jump-link' style='float:right;padding-top:20px;'><a expr:href='data:post.url'> read more "<data:post.title/>"</a></span>

</b:if>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'><data:post.body/></b:if>
</b:if>

The code I personally plugged in for the photo dimension size is:

summary_noimg = 350;
summary_img = 600;
img_thumb_height = 275;
img_thumb_width = 200;

Now we'll move to getting rid of the gray bar on the top of this page.  I went to this post and everything went perfectly with there directions.

I began clicking around on my blog after this to look at how everything was affected, and I found out that my About Me and Grab a Button pages became all funky. Damn it. My solution for this was to make some posts with the same information (dated two years ago) and link those the same way I linked my DIY labels page. My only issues are that this will kind of mess with my stats on the views of my pages and that the date of October 1, 2012 is showing up on my pages. I haven't found a way to hide the date on specific posts yet, but it's my solution for now.

Later on, I realized that this made all of my posts that didn't show up on the first page appear in summary form. For me, this was a plus!

And that's it! If you have any questions or further suggestions, I would love to hear them!

Don't forget that you can donate to the Extra Life fundraiser for Children's Miracle Network until October 26th at 8 am!

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Let Me Have My Moment

I'm about to do something that's going to make me look only slightly self-centered. I'm going to call it advertising my product to make me feel better about doing it.

I did this!:

This lovely lady, Brittany, has recently decided to get back into blogging. When I heard this I decided I wanted to make her a button or some social media icons to celebrate. Well, I got a little carried away and ended up designing an entire layout! She's a cosmetologist, massage student, crocheter, and DIYer.  She also has some adorable pet rats! And believe me, I never thought I would say that.  She only has a couple of posts currently up, but they contain some adorable crochet patterns! Please show her some love!

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