Have you ever looked at someone’s blog and wondered just how they got a certain box or button on their blog?

I have, many times.  Sometimes I will write that person and ask them just how they managed to get that box or button there.

Maybe it is a plug in or a piece of code that they used to put that box or button on their blog and it is really simple to put that same box or button on my blog.

I have been looking at two boxes that are located at the bottom many blogs that I visit for a long time.  I think every time I see one of these boxes “I would like to have something like that on my blog”.

I never got around to writing an email and asking the question though.

Then recently I decided that I would pursue finding out how to put these boxes on my blog.  I ended up researching it and found the solutions.  The following boxes are the ones that I wanted on my blog.

So, if you have ever wondered just how other bloggers got the above boxes on their websites, watch the video below.  I will show you how to put these two boxes on your blog.

The two websites I mentioned in the video are these.

Twitter developers site URL (you will need to be logged into your Twitter account:
https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new

New2WP Author Box URL:
http://new2wp.com/noob/wordpress-plugin-new2wp-author-box-version-1-0/

Well, there you have it. Now you can go and put these boxes on your blog if you want.

I love comments so let me know what you think about these two boxes.  Do you have a better plugin than I used or is there another way of getting these boxes on a blog post and you would like to share your way.

I look forward to hearing from you.

I first learned about Bog Hopping when I took Alex Jeffreys course “Forward To Marketing”.

Sally Neill did most of Alex’s tutorials and Sally is the Blog Hopping Queen. It was great learning from a PRO.

 What Is Blog Hopping?

Blog hopping is basically visiting other peoples blogs, reading posts and leaving comments on those posts.

The comments need to have some thought put into them.  They should add value to the post that they accompany.

Poor Comments

• “This is a great post”
• “You are doing a great job, keep it up”
• “I always learn from all of you posts. Keep up the good work”
• “Your blog is one of the best there is.  I will bookmark it”

These types of comments are not constructive and do not add value to any post that they accompany. Comments like the ones I have listed above are considered spam by most bloggers and will most likely never appear in the list of comments.

Good Comments

I went through my comments and randomly chose several that were good.  The length really does not have a lot to do with the quality of the comment.  A couple of these are longer and the others are shorter.  They are all relevant to the post that I took them off of and add value to that post.

There are many more good comments out there that I could have chosen.  These were just the first few I came across.

If you are not sure just how to write a good comment go and read comments on my blog or any of the blogs commenting on my blog and you will find many great examples of really good comments.

Why Should Anyone Blog Hop?

Blog hopping is a great way promote your own blog and get traffic to it.  When you go and comment on someone else’s blog several things will happen.

You Get A Link Back To Your Blog

If the blog you comment on is a “do follow” blog then you will get a back link back to your blog.

Just a quick comment on “do follow” blogs. It is great to go to ”do follow” blogs because you get a backlink but, I never look to see if the blog that I am commenting on is ”do follow“.  Commenting on ”nofollow” blogs is beneficial as well because it still gets your blog good exposure.

I would recommend that you make your blog a ”do follow” blog to give your commenters a gift for commenting on your blog.

You Will Receive Comments On Your Blog

When you comment on someone else’s blog that blogger will most always reciprocate.  They will come to your blog and comment.

These comments will build a reputation for your blog. The comments also add content to your blog.  If you write a post and get 20 to 30 comments on the post, the comments will double or triple your content.  The comment content is coming from external sources which means that your blog is getting the attention of other people.

Search engines and Alexa love new content that is original.  The more comments you get the better your site will do in the search engines and on Alexa.

How To Get Started Blog Hopping

When I started blog hopping I knew very little about it.  I had listened to Sally’s tutorial on it and thought it was a great idea.  I am sure she gave us all the information that we needed but everything was new and I was overwhelmed with information.

I started out blog hopping just like everyone else, just doing it.

Where Can You Find Blogs To Comment On

Go to a blog in your niche that has lots of comments and start clicking on the links for the blogs of other commenters.  This will take you to new blogs that you can comment on.  Then click on some of the links in that blog and you will go to another blog.  The process is endless and you will find hundreds of blogs

Go to a Blog directory for your niche.  There will be lots of blogs that you can comment on.

How To Learn How To Write Comments

I went multiple blogs and just read comments when I first started.  By doing this you get to know the blogger and their commenters as well as learn how to write a comment by observing how others are doing it.

Other Advantages To Blog Hopping

I have never learned so much as when I started blog hopping.  I learn something from every post I go to.  I actually have to limit my time on posts when I am blog hopping because I find myself so immersed in each post that it can take me an hour just to read a post and write a comment by the time I have tried everything taught in the post.  I have started marking posts and going back later to try out what is being taught.

DO NOT FORGET

• Reply to every comment on your blog post.
• Reciprocate — go to the blog of each commenter and comment on one of their posts.
• Give your fellow bloggers a token when they comment by making your blog a “do follow“ blog.

Results Of Blog Hopping

• Your blog will attract lots of attention.
• The search engines will like your blog.
• Your Alexa ranking will get better and better.
• You will start getting more and more traffic to your blog.

If Traffic Is What You Want — Blog Hopping Is The Way To Get It

If you are one of those people that just goes around leaving spammy comments on blogs trying to get traffic to your blog, stop leaving those comments and learn to blog hop.  You will be pleasantly pleased with the results.

Let Me Know What You Think

Do you blog hop? Do you think that blog hopping gets results? Would you recommend blog hopping to someone new to blogging or someone who has a blog that they are trying to get traffic to?  Leave me a comment and give your opinion of Blog Hopping.

If you are new to blogging and would like to take a course that teaches you everything about Blogging check out Sally Neill’s own course Learn With Sally. It bsp;is one of the best courses I have ever seen or participated in.

Have you heard of SOPA or PIPA?

Do you even know what these two acronyms stand for?

I watch the news most everyday and my husband reads the paper everyday.  We had not heard anything about SOPA or PIPA.

The first I heard of SOPA or PIPA was when I went to Craigslist.org to post a couple of things that I wanted to sell.

After doing some research I am finding that most people who know anything about SOPA or PIPA are wondering if the US Congress is declaring war on the Internet.

So just what is SOPA or PIPA?

SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act  (it is also called E-PARASITE Act, which is short for “Enforcing and Protecting American Rights Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation”) and is a bill before the US House Of Representatives.  PIPA is a US Senate Bill and stands for Protect IP Act.

Other Countries Have Proposed Similar Legislation

Other counties have tried to pass “Three Strikes and Your Out” laws that would remove sites from the internet after the sites repeatedly violated copyright laws.

These two Bills are the United State Congress’s version of those laws.  The U.S. Bills will be much worse than anything proposed by other countries if passed into law.

SOPA is the House of Representatives version of the Senate’s bill, PIPA.

How Does This Affect Internet Users And Blog Owners

I have read a lot of information on these Bills and I read both of the Bills.  I will be honest with you and say that I am not very good at reading Bills filled with legal mumble jumble but, between reading the Bills and other website’s opinions, I have come to a couple of conclusions that I will share with you.  You are then welcome to read the Bills for yourself and make your own opinion.

As I understand it these Bills heavily target what are referred to as “rogue” or “pirate” sites.   “Rogue” sites are sites that an individual, company or corporation perceives as infringing on copyrights or trademarks.

You may not think this will affect you much. My first thought was that I do not go to sites that do this type of business.  Then I got to looking into it more and what I found was quite interesting.

Rogue Site Lists

Monster Cable has a list of over 1200 websites that they perceive as “rogue” sites.  Among the sites that Monster Cable list as “rogue” sites are eBay.com, Craigslist.org, Aol-shopping.com, buy.com, Costco.com, losangeles.backpage.com and other cities on backpage, Facebook.com, macy.com, Sears.com and sell.com.  These are just a few of them.  I just scanned over the list and picked some that I recognized.

Group M has a list that is over 2000 websites long. I do not recognize as many sites on this list as I am not into a lot of music and movies but, I am sure my kids would recognize a lot of them.  There are sites like Complex.com a popular lifestyle magazine for men ages 18 to 34, archive.org which is the internet archives, soundcloud.com a site for musicians to promote their own music, bittorrent.com which is Bitt Torrent’s corporate page and Vimeo which is popular web video site similar to YouTube. These are just a few of the sites on this list.

These are the list of “rogue” sites from only two companies.  With one to two thousand websites per list you can only imagine how many sites have been declared as ”rogue” sites by someone. The question is whether these sites are really ”rogue” sites or if they are just sites that these companies do not like. Either way if SOPA and PIPA pass all of these sites could be blacklisted.

It seems to be the opinion of many people that with the passing of SOPA or PIPA any individual, company or corporation would be able to identify a so called “rogue” site and have it removed from the internet with out any court order, there by eliminating their competition.

None U.S. Websites

If you live outside the U.S. your sites are not completely safe as these Bills have far reaching repercussions for the internet.  If your site is identified as a “rogue”site then it will be banned in the U.S.  Which will mean that no one living in the United States will be able to visit your site any more.

When will the votes be?

On Tuesday 24th January 2012, the US Senate will vote on their internet censorship bill.

What Can Be Done?

If you live in the U.S. you need to contact you Senator and Representative.  Tell them how you would like them to vote on these Bills.

If you live outside the U.S. you can tell anyone you know in the U.S. about these Bills so they can take action.

Promote this post or any other post about Internet Censorship on all of the Social Media so more people will become informed.

Websites To Go Dark In Protest

There is also a growing movement to go dark on January 18, 2012 (I also read somewhere that sites might go dark on January 23rd as well) between 8am and 8pm in protest against this these Bills.

There are several plugins you can use on your site if you would like to participate in this internet wide blackout.  These plugins will put a page up on your site explaining what the Bills are and why your site is blacked out.  I personally have not decided it I will participate in the blackout or not.

To find the plugins just search wordpress plugins in your admin area of you blog for SOPA and about 7 or 8 will popup.

What Do You Think?

Leave me a comment on your thoughts about these Bills.

If you read this soon enough are you considering going dark?

I would love to hear others opinion on this subject.

Do You BackUp Your Blog?

Do you really back up your blog like you should?  That is the question that I ask myself all of the time. Many times my answer is “NO“.

I have done a couple of other posts on this topic in the past.

I did Oh My @$#%^&%#, I Just Deleted My Entire Blog!!! when I managed to delete my entire blog with only one click of the mouse.  I wanted to cry and was my blog backed up? “NO” I told in this post how to back up a blog in two different ways.

Another post was How To Restore A WordPress Blog From A Backup!.  In this post I told how to restore you blog from a backup.

I wrote these post about 6 or 7 months ago and today- Is my blog backed up like it should be?  Well, I would have to say “kind of“.

My Latest Scare!

I actually had another scare just before Christmas 2011, probably 4 or 5 weeks ago.  I was writing a post in the morning before I went to work.  I had to run out the door because I had waited to long to leave and was going to be late.  I clicked on “Save Draft” and expected the same thing to happen that always happens and that is Word Press saves my draft and I get returned to the same page I was working on.  At that point I would click to close WordPress and run out the door.

Unfortunately, that is not at all what happened.  I got taken to a page that said “an error had occurred and I had probably lost everything”.  I had to leave so I closed down WordPress and ran out the door with a sick feeling in my stomach.

On the way to work I called my friend Cheryl (If you have read some of my other posts you have heard me mention her before.  She is the friend that is extremely techie and I call if I need something hacked or fixed.)

Cheryl is always online so I asked her to look at my blog and tell me my content was all still there.  She told me that there was NO CONTENT on my blog at all.  I could not beleive it.  So the question is: Was my blog backed up like it should of been at that time.  ”NO” Guess I am really bad at learning.

Luckily for me Cheryl was able to fix my blog for me.  My data base had an error in it which was a 2 second fix (for Cheryl).

It Happens To Other People Also, Not Just Me!

About a week later this same thing happened to two other blogs that I know of.  One of them the service provider had to go in and fix. All of these blogs had errors in the data base.

We all had the same hosting service.  I do not know if it had anything to do with the service provider or not.

Something Can Happen To Your Blog At Any Time!

What I do know is something can happen at anytime and your blog can be gone with just a click of the mouse.  If you do not have your blog backed up then you have no way of saving all of your hard work.

So the question I have for you today:

Is your blog backed up adequately right now as you read this post?

If your answer is “NO” then you need to go and back you blog up as soon as you can.

It is always easier to learn from other peoples mistakes (mine) then to experience it yourself.

Leave me a comment and let me know how you back up your blog or if you do.

I don’t know a better way to end one year and start another than to have the privilege of being nominated as the recipient of the “Sunshine Award” by three fellow bloggers.

During the last few days of 2011  Adrienne Smith, Barry Wells and Randy Smith nominated me to be the recipient of the “Sunshine Award”.

I want to thank Adrienne, Barry and Randy for this great honor.  I met all three of these people at the very beginning of my blogging journey and feel very honored to be nominated by each of them.

Now as my first post in the New Year I have the privilege of nominating 10 to 12 of my fellow bloggers for this award.

What is the Sunshine Award?

When I found out that I had been nominated for this award I really had no idea what it was.  After reading Adrienne’s post I had a pretty good idea as she does a great job of explaining it.  I also Googled it to see what I would come up with.

Like Adrienne I found there are a large number of awards with the name “Sunshine Award”.  This “Sunshine Award” is for bloggers.  I did go and look at several other blogs which were also nominated for the ”Sunshine Award”, just to see what others had posted about it.

So just what is this ”Sunshine Award”?  What I did find out in my search was that this award is for “bloggers whose positivity and creativity inspire others in the blogosphere.”  What could be better than to get an award like that.

Rules of the Sunshine Award

Yes, there are rules that come with this award.  Along with honor comes obligation but, the rules are very simple and easy to carry out.

Rule #1:  Thank the person(s) who gave you the award.

Rule #2:  Answer 10 questions

Rule #3:  Pass the award on to 10-12ish deserving bloggers

10 Questions to Answer

1.  Favorite color – Red or a variation of red because it is a bright, warm color.

2.  Favorite animal – Horses because they are such magnificent animals, have great personalities and having a relationship with one is a life changing experience.

3.  Favorite number – 7 because it is the number of days in the week.

4.  Favorite drink – Iced Caramel Macchiato - I love coffee.

5.  Facebook or Twitter – Facebook because there is more interaction with people there.

6.  My passion – Helping people, meeting new people and traveling.

7.  Giving or receiving gifts – I would have to definitively say Giving.  I love to give.

8.  Favorite day – Sunday because I can rest and enjoy going to Church.

9.  Favorite flower – Rose – they smell so good and are so beautiful

10.  Favorite food – I love going to the Mongolian Barbecue.

Nominate my 10 to 12 bloggers for this great award.

Just as a disclaimer this list is in no particular order and I am sure there are many more blogs out there that I could have nominated.

All of these are all great people to get to know.  They are all very willing to help you with any problem and they all have fabulous blogs that are well worth checking out.

1. Adrienne Smith of AdrienneSmith -Adrienne nominated me but I am going to nominate her back.  When I started blogging I was extremely impressed with her blog.  Her desire to help other people just radiates out of her blog.  She is a fabulous blogger and comments on more blogs than I can count.  I think Barry said once that most every blog he goes to he finds a comment from Adrienne.  I would have to agree with Barry.

2. Barry Wells of Barry-Wells -Barry also nominated me but I am going to nominate him back as well.  I think Barry’s blog was the first one that I commented on.  I was so nervous to write that comment.  One of my fears is writing things down for others to read.  He was so kind and helpful.  I think he not only helped me out in his reply to my comment but also sent me an email suggesting places I could go to learn more about blogging.

3. Sally Neill of SallyNeill – I first met Sally during the time that I was using Alex Jeffreys course.  Sally did all of the videos for him and she did a superb job of it.  I learned how to start blogging and what blog hopping was from Sally.  Then was the scary part, I had to go out and do what she told me to do.  I did it though and it worked.  I am still following Sally.  I am now participating in her course “Learn With Sally” which is stuffed full of how to’s for even the experienced blogger.

4. Cheryl Marble of Coffee With Cheryl - Cheryl and I have been friends for several years now.  We met online when we both participated in a training together.  Interestingly, the training was being offered by a scammer.  Needless to say we figured out what was going on before he scammed us.  Like the old saying “something good always comes out of everything.” I left that training with several very good friends.  Cheryl and I got into blogging at about the same time but ended up in different niches.  Cheryl has a blog in the “moms” niche.  Cheryl is a whiz at the techie stuff and is who I always call when ever I need something hacked (lol).

5. Randy Smith of Randy Smith.  Randy also nominated me for this award but I have to nominate him back.  When I was very new to blogging Randy called me from John Thornhill’s office about an offer John had.  I did not want to participate in that offer right then but Randy talked to me for nearly an hour answering many of my questions.  Randy also has a meet up once a month in the UK where any internet marketer can come, network and learn from others.  Randy has been very helpful to me and I love his blog.

6. Ileane Smith of BasicBlogTips - I went to Ileane’s blog very early on in my blogging experience also.  I have learned so much from this blog.  I extremely impressed the first time I ever visited her blog. She had written a post on how to put certain pictures in the row of 5 pictures at the top of the Facebook page.  I did not know how to do this and have gone back to that post several times to relearn it.  Ileane also has many guest bloggers who are all very interesting.  I learn something every time I go to Ileane’s blog.

7. Linda Bond of Build Online Businesses Now – Linda is another one that I met along the way blog hopping.  Linda participated in Alex Jeffreys course the same time as I did but, I really did not meet her until I started blog hopping.  Linda always has interesting posts and does not hesitate to say what she thinks.  I like that quality in her.  I have enjoyed Linda’s blog and learn something when ever I visit her blog.

8. Dawn Kay of Dawn Kay’s Blog – Dawn is a fabulous person.  I first met Dawn blog hopping and was so impressed with her skills in transcription.  Most recently I have become better aquinted with Dawn in Sally’s course “Learn With Sally”.  Dawn helps Sally out with the help desk for ”Learn With Sally” so I have talked to her several times when asking for help.  She is always right there to help me and makes sure I understand everything.

9. Kathy Dobson of Kathy Dobson’s Blog -I met Kathy blog hopping also.  I have enjoyed watching Kathy do her challenges.  I don’t think I have participated in any but have watched just how she does them and am learning.  I also so enjoyed learning about Kathy’s Niche Business she has online.  I think I just learn something every time I visit.

10. Ian Ieba of Ian Ieba Blog – I used to be about the same spot as Ian in John Thornhill’s Master Class until I lagged behind because I could not figure out what to do my eBook on.  (I now know what it is on I just have to complete it).  I saw Ian in the Master Class forum as well as blogging.  I have learned a lot from Ian about PLR and have come to realize that this guy is a PLR expert.

11. Mouh Azizoun of Effortless Ebook Writing Blog – I met Mouh blog hopping and very quickly realized that his was a blog I wanted to visit regularly.  He always has posts about great little gadgets to use while blogging.  Most of these gadgets are free.  I always come away from his blog with something useful.  Mouh is not at his blog right now as he has moved to another country and is getting settled in.

There you have it, 11 people nominated for the “Sunshine Award”.  I think all of these blogs fit the criterial for this award, “bloggers whose positivity and creativity inspire others in the blogosphere.”  I am always inspired when I visit these blogs.

As always I love comments.  Leave me a commentand let me know what you are thinking.

I wish you all a Very Happy and Prosperous New Year.

I look forward to seeing everyone in 2012.

Have you set your goals for 2012 yet?

“Goals. There’s no telling what you can do when you get inspired by them. There’s no telling what you can do when you believe in them. And there’s no telling what will happen when you act upon them.” ~ Jim Rohn

Like anywhere else your success on the internet is dependent on setting goals and then acting on those goals.

Types of Goals

Having both long term and short term goals is important.

Long Term Goals

These are large goals that will take most of the year or maybe several years to reach.  These goals are difficult to achieve by themselves and need to be broken down in to smaller parts that are achievable.

Short term goals

These goals can be completed in a short period of time.  Several short term goals will go together toward the achievement of a long term goal.

Daily Activities

Daily activities are things that you will do on a daily basis to reach your goals.  These are not necessarily goals themselves but stepping stones to goals.   It is necessary to do a small number of things on a daily basis in order to achieve your larger goals.

“Your goals are the road maps that guide you and show you what is possible for your life.” ~ Les Brown

Setting Goals

Write your goals down

“Goals that are not written down are just wishes. “~ Unknown

“The secret to productive goal setting is in establishing clearly defined goals, writing them down and then focusing on them several times a day with words, pictures and emotions as if we’ve already achieved them.” ~ Denis Waitley

Review goals on daily basis

Post your written goals where you will see them everyday.  This is a great reminder of what your goals are and when they are scheduled to be completed.

Set Deadlines

“A goal is a dream with a deadline.”~ Napoleon Hill

“Goals give you more than a reason to get up in the morning; they are an incentive to keep you going all day. Goals tend to tap the deeper resources and draw the best out of life.” ~ Harvey Mackay

Master Mind Group

A Master Mind Group is a group of people who meet every week or every other week.  During these meetings the members of the group will share what their goals are until the next meeting and what goals they accomplished since the last meeting.  This is a great way to stay accountable and learn from other people.

Act On Your Goals

You may never know what results come of your action, but if you do nothing there will be no result. ~ Gandhi

Having goals is great but they are not good if no action is taken.  Once you have set your goals be sure to start working toward your goals.  It does not do any good to set goals if no action is taken.

My Goals

The following are my goals so far.  I am still working on them so this is not necessarily the final version.  My final version will most likely be more in depth also.  I just wanted to put down some examples of goals.

“Never tell me the sky’s the limit when there are footprints on the moon.” ~ Unknown

Your Goals

Tell me, what are your goals for 2012?  Do you have any goals?  Leave me a comment and tell me what your goals are.  If you do not set goals let me know why.

I look forward to hearing from you.

With Christmas just a few days away I decided to make this post my Christmas Card to all of you from all of my family.

This past year has been an interesting one.  I started my blog and have learned so much thanks to many great people that I have met online.

Off line it has been a good year also.

I started out the year visiting with a brand new grand-baby.  It was great fun to hold her and help take care of her for a few days.  We moved my daughter and her family to their new home after which we spent a week camping with my children in southern Idaho during June.  We also got to go camping several other times during the summer.  We also enjoyed several visits from friends and family during the summer.

Christmas has always been about spending time with family for me.  I always enjoy getting together with all of my children and grandchildren.  It is so much fun seeing everyone and being together again for a short period of time.

I hope that you all have a very blessed Christmas and enjoy your time with friends and family.

At the time I thought that it was a good idea but really did not see that I was having much of a problem on my blog. Every now and then I would get someone leaving a comment and they did not have a gravatar or the page they linked to was a sales page.

Over time however as more and more people have started to come to my blog I have an idea of why Adrienne wrote her post on comment rules.

I think as bloggers we all love comments on our posts. It is great to see what other people think about what we write even if we disagree. I know personally I love comments of any sort, well almost.

If you do not have a blog or website and just stumbled onto my blog from a search engine, this post is really is not aimed at you.  I would love to have your comment.

Sooooooo I love comments but…..

Here are My Pet Peeves…..

I would like to see comments have a gravatar.

The gravatar is the little picture that accompanies your comment.

Most people have a picture of themselves however I am not opposed to people who have other gravatars either.

I just really do not like seeing those weird looking creators that I choose to be your gravatar if you do not have one.

If you do not have a gravatar one is very easy to get at Gravatar.com.  It is free. Just go to their website and sign up for an account.  Make sure you use the email address that you intend to use when you leave a comment.

I go to everyones blog or website and look at it before I approve a comment.

When ever someone comments on my blog I go and leave a comment back on the commenters blog.

I know that some bloggers will link to a product that they are selling sometimes and this does not bother me.  I can go to their blog and leave a comment there.  Most of the time these are frequent commenters on my blog so I know them and know they have a blog that I can comment on.

I do not like it thought when someone comments for the first time and leaves a link to a sales page.  Especially if that is all they appear to have. If you are going to comment on blogs at least have a blog that I can comment on.

If you are a spammer I am sure you are not reading this post so this is kind of fruitless to say, but I am going to say it anyway.

Leaving a generic comment that could go on any post no matter what the post was about, anything from cooking to internet marketing, is an automatic delete for me.

I figure that these are probably bots posting to as many different posts as they can.

To my Blogging Buddies and any new Blogging Buddies that I do not know yet, I Love Your Comments.

I always look forward to hearing what everyone has to say about my posts.

Please leave me a comment.  Do you agree or disagree with My Pet Peeves?  I would love to hear your opinion.

What is the 7 Links Challenge?

The following gives you all the information on the 7 Links Challenge. (The information is taken from http://www.tripbase.com/blog/my-7-links-the-rules/)

So after careful thought and pondering I have come up with my 7 Links.

Here they are –

Most Beautiful Post

I think my most beautiful post would have to be Veterans Day – A Day To Honor Those Who Served.

I don’t know that it was a beautiful post visually so much, but because of the topic.

In this post I wanted to honor all veterns but I dedicated the post to my father.

My father, who is gone now, waited over 50 years to receive his official discharge from the military alowing him to be recognized as a veteran.

I think this post was beautiful because I honored those who had fought to give us the life we have to day.

Most Popular Post

My most popular post by far was My Blog Has Been Hijacked!!.

I had the most comments on this post.  Some of this is thanks to Barry Wells who set out to get 100 comments on this post.  He felt that this is something that everyone should be aware of.

I have 76 comments at this time.  I didn’t make it to 100 but thought that I was doing really good to get 76 at that time since my blog was less than 2 months old.

This a post about someone stealing all the content our of my blog and putting it on there blog.  It was really the only current content on their blog.

Most Controversial Post

This is a tough catagory for me. I tend not to be controversial but I finally picked the post I did called A Fish Story!

This was a post on staying focused and moving forward so you actually make progress towards a goal instead of spending all of your time preparing to move forward.

I used a fishing trip and my son as an example.  He spent the whole fishing trip preparing his line so he could fish.  Needless to say he never caught a fish due to the fact that he never got done preparing his hook and line for fishing.

There really was nothing controversial about the point I was trying to get across, but fishing seemed to be a point of controversy.  Most people who commented on the post not only commented on the point I was making but also commented on the fishing.  There was a wide range of thought on fishing.  Some people loved it and wished they could go more often while others said they would never go fishing.  It was just not something that they would ever do or want to do.

Most Helpful Post

I think the most helpful post would have to be How To Restore A WordPress Blog From A Backup!  I had written a post about backing up a blog after I managed to delete my entire blog.

I think there are a lot of blogs out there on how to backup a blog or website but I found that most people I talked to did not know how to use the backup and in many instantses did not even have everything they needed to restore their entire blog.

I decided to do this blog on how to retore a backup and I did this post as a video where I went through all of the steps to restore a blog from a backup.

A Post Whose Success Surprised You

I would have to say without a doubt this would be Oh My @$#%^&%#, I Just Deleted My Entire Blog!!!

I had only just started blogging and my blog as part of a course I was taking from Alex Jeffries.  I had been on the internet for a while and knew how to put up blogs and websites.  I had done some other things but had never blogged before so it was really new to me.  I had written several posts, some of which are still on this blog, which were not very good but they were posts.

One night, late, I was working on my blog.  I am not even sure what I was doing now but it was not writing a post.  I decided to delete another wordpress application on the same domain name.  Not wanting to take a lot of time doing this delete I went into Fantastico and with one click of the mouse I had deleted the wrong wordpress application and my entire blog.  This only took 1 second to accomplish and I no longer had a blog.

I literally wanted to cry.  I called a friend on the east coast to tell her and since it was between 1 and 2 in the morning she thought that someone had died.  It was only my blog.  I was so upset.

I set out to make a new blog and started www.deeannrice.com at that time.

Oh My @$#%^&%#, I Just Deleted My Entire Blog!!!  was the first post on my new blog.  I had been out of sight on the internet for 2 to 3 weeks and had only written a handful of posts previous to this.

So when this post got 38 comments I was truely amazed.

A Post That Didn’t Get The Attention It Deserved

This is really hard.  I don’t know that I have written any posts that didn’t get the attention they deserved.  There are several that did not do as well as others but I am not sure they really deserved more attention.

I guess if I had to pick one it would have to be Christian Hollingsworth – YouDoFollow Blog Directory.

This post did not have the lowest number of comments.  In fact there are quite a number of posts that did not do as well as this one, but I wanted to get a lot of traffic to this post in order to help out Christian.

I really believed that Christian had a great idea with his new Blog Directory.

So I think I would have to say that this post did not get the attention it deserved.

Post I Am Most Proud Of

My post that I did for Thanksgiving is the post that I am most proud of.

I really enjoyed writing that post and making all of the collages for it.

I love going to that post and just looking at that post.  I can see all of my friends and family looking back at me.  It reminds me how blessed I am to have such good friends, family and blogging buddies.

Well there it is, my 7 Links.

I really enjoyed going back and looking at all of my posts again. This made me really think about what I had written, why I had written it and how my posts were received.
I would like to nominate the following people to do the 7 Links Challenge.

Cheryl Marble — Coffee With Cheryl
Ileane Smith — BasicBlogTips
Monique Caraballo – Razing Mayhem
Kerry Davies – Life, as I Know It
Dawn Kay — DawnKaysBlog

As always I love hearing from you, so leave me a comment and let me know what you think of my picks.