It Is Finished…
No, not that ‘it is finished…’ Some of you may recall may back in the fall I set out on a mission to run through all the blogs both here on Mephistos and all the other blogs I host. The effort was to fix some of those little grammatical errors that are so easily missed when running through the process of posting, even with proof reading. I was using the After the Deadline tool that does a decent job of catching grammar issues (or at least pointing out potential problems), catching a lot of spelling errors, and certainly helps with all those typographical errors and really helps with those stop, go, stop, go though process mix-ups. I am not sure the start date, but want to suggest late September or early October. Over five hundred posts (counting all the blogs) later and the grammar/spelling check is complete.
I am sure there is some question as the why bother with the old post. However, you would be really surprised and just how often the odd post of the past will suddenly get a few views and even more surprised at how often something will hit a small viral like spike of views. Regardless of that, I feel much better knowing it is done. I would like to think at some point the blogs here and elsewhere will be a small part of what/who I am to others.
While having this dramatic effort in process, there were a few other goals that were completed as well. First, there was a major realization that category organization originally set up and ad hoc adjusted as needed was less than adequate for the various subject the blog has grown to cover. So, a complete revamp of the categories and that of course resulting in a re-categorization for almost all the blogs in some way or another, even it was just as simple as using the included child categories.
Similar to the category updates, none of my blogs had tags on them. Part of this was the relative new usage of tags at the time I started blogging and once I blogged a few times it was such a chore to fix the problem. However, I was beginning to realize that I was really doing a disservice to the readers and especially the ability to find related topics on my site. Above and beyond that, I was losing a big part of potential SEO and the potential traffic that could generate.
Two other minor issues were addressed. One was the fixing of embedded videos, which had used an unneeded plugin to do that in the past, which only added additional bloat to my blogs. Second was the fixing of some of the photo galleries. The plugin that drives that had changed and I was using a component that originally was free but had more recently required a license that I was not willing to purchase or give the free advertising it required otherwise.
Having finished all of that, I will also point out that yesterday (before actually finishing) I put the new row of icons for following and subscribing in the menus. You should see over there to the upper right, though it looks just like the image above as well). Something I had been meaning to work on for a little while now and someone pointed out how hard those were to find sometimes. I agreed and do feel it is important to address your customer’s insight on such matters. To that end, there is now an RSS post feed button to subscribe, the same for comments, a follow me or the blog on Twitter, Facebook, NetworkedBlogs, and StumbleUpon. Additionally there is a login button (which will allow you to register if you are NOT a member – and you should be by the way).
Still more to do, so I guess it really is not finished after all, but is not that always the case? Next up, the easy one. Getting the subscribe/follow icons on the other blogs. Up next after that, especially here, is the changing out the code for the sponsorship. I want to continue with something similar but allow individual smaller businesses to purchase those 125×125 blocks for their message. Â And there is that thing I want to do with copyright registration…
