Pimp My Blog!

So today we have a very exciting topic. LOL. Two days ago I "pimped out" my blog. And just like on MTV's Pimp My Ride now my blog has mucho bells and whistles.

For those who would like to check them all out here is the rundown. First of all, these two are not really bells and whistles but they are changes. The first of the two is that the subtitle just under my blogs name has been expanded upon with a little more explanation. Second, the number of blog posts that show on the main page has been increased from the default seven to a more "rounded" ten.

The next two changes come as "headers and footers". Above my most recent post are my new additional pages tabs. I have two of them. There is an annoying problem with these though. They don't load properly. When you click on them nothing initially seems to show up on the page. It looks like I created these pages and then left them blank. You have to use your arrow keys and scroll down the page a fair bit and then scroll back up and only then do they load. Below my tenth and last post to show on the main page is a subscription option for potential regular readers. It is not the ideal way to follow the blog though because if you follow that way it doesn't show up as a "number" on my followers list but at least the benefit to this blog is that ideally people who want to do it this way can still read it regularly if they want and ideally, if they are regular readers may become regular commenters too. Also they can, as regular readers, possibly recommend my blog to others. Yay.

Now on to the main "pimping". All of it except one item is to be found on the right hand side column where you find the Facebook Badge at the top, the recent comment feed that I have had there for awhile, my list of followers and my profile information. New to this section is the SocialVibe widget/gadget. Please click on it to help the charity One Laptop Per Child. It will prompt you to do some simple little actions to gain points or such to "micro-give". Next is the poll feature. As I just added it, I am not sure how it will work as far as saving old polls but we will see in less than a week as I set it to expire after the default one week.

The final two features come well below the poll feature under the recent comments, the number of followers and the about me sections. These are the Daily Puppy and Vanity Fair features. The daily puppy shows five (instead of the default -one-) pictures of puppies along with reader comments under them. If you click on the Daily Puppy box at the bottom of feature it will take you to it's site. The Daily Puppy is one of the only ones (if not the only one period) that did not have little ads attached to it. The Vanity Fair feature is the final one (so far - lol) at the very bottom of the right hand side column. Even though I tried out and deleted many other features that came with the little google ads attached, I kept the Vanity Fair one. That's because it is Vanity Fair. The wealthy person's (or wanna-be's) National Enquirer. Another reason I initially considered deleting the Vanity Fair feature is it has unattractive, plain graphics. But I guess "one can't have everything one wants, can one". LOL.

So that is that. Enjoy the new, improved C.A.T.Stuff and don't forget to use the new features (especially SocialVibe and the poll as well as the little boxes under where you make your comments!)

Carmen