Spending your precious time on your blog should be compensated in some way, right? I mean, why put forth all of that effort if no one cares to read what you have to say and just leaves right away?

Notice in the title I used “visitors” and not readers. You first have to convince your blog visitors to stay awhile and actually read your blog before you can call them readers. Makes sense… I hope.

Getting people to stick around and become a reader, which in turn provides comments on your posts, involves a few factors. These factors can include your blog design, the content (what you write) and the style of your writing.

This certainly isn’t the all-inclusive list to go by, but these are some of the main factors you may want to consider if you just can’t seem to get anyone to take notice of your hard work.

I wrote a guest post on HowToSpoter about 3 Tips to a Better Blog where I go more in-depth regarding these three factors and what you can do to turn that sucky blog of yours into a masterpiece worthy of readers.

Be sure to read the post and comment. You’ll see me over there as well replying back.

What have I done to improve this blog?

One of the major updates I made to this blog was installing a new blog theme. Granted, I didn’t think my blog sucked (hopefully not), but it certainly was due for a face-lift, I thought. The new FlexSqueeze Theme is definitely way more modern than what I used to have and allowed me to customize every aspect of the design.

The content on here I think is pretty good, but I’d love to hear what you have to say about. I try to be as personable as possible and provide a relaxed reading environment, something I hope you all enjoy. Of course, there’s always something to learn here, so let me know if I need to clarify/expand on anything. Afterall, I try to write for you, my readers.

I can barely hold my excitement in as I’ve been looking forward to this for quite some time now. For about the last week or so, I’ve been playing around with a new blog theme, completely in the background and undetectable to anyone.

Thanks to the plug-in Theme Test Drive, I’ve been able to install a new theme and customize a good portion of it behind the scenes. You’ve all been seeing the current theme while this was going on.

Missing the old theme already? Here’s a farewell snapshot…

In my excitement to roll out the new theme, I forgot to get the snapshot before enabling the new theme, so I had to find a cached version with the old theme… LOL.

As you may notice with the new theme, there is still a lot that needs to be done, most notably the footer area. I’ll get to that in a minute.

This new theme is a customized version of the FlexSqueeze Wordpress Theme, which is a completely customizable theme that allows you to create your own unique blog theme. I bought this theme on a recommendation from Dennis Edell, and I couldn’t be happier.

This theme had everything I wanted, and then some. The main thing I wanted was better navigation, and if you’ll notice, the page links are now below the header and to the left, rather than above the header and to the right.

The next thing I wanted was a feature area, which is right below the navigation. I can add whatever I want here, and I may be changing some of the offers over time. The newsletter opt-in will most likely be permanent.

You’ll also notice I now only have one sidebar (a big one at that) on the right-hand side. I also have two sub-sidebars below the main sidebar to add additional content.

Within the next week you’ll see changes being made to the sidebar. I already have plans for it, and once I get everything finalized and the way I want it, it shouldn’t change much after that. So, don’t be alarmed if you see random stuff disappear or appear over the course of this week.

At some point, I’ll be adding a custom header to replace the plain, boring one you currently see. It’s okay as-is, but I think I can make something that stands out a little better.

I’ll also be adding additional pages to the blog as well. Not sure when this will happen, but I know for sure that I’ll be adding a Comment Policy, Disclaimer of some kind, a Write For Us page, and a Resources page that contains tools that I use and recommend.

I Need Your Help

As with any new theme installation, etc., there is always the chance for some bugs/errors to occur. I haven’t noticed anything out of the ordinary yet, but if you come across anything, please make me aware of it so that I can get it fixed.

And lastly, as mentioned above, there is a feature section at the footer. I had played around with this, but I couldn’t come to a conclusion as to exactly what I wanted there.

So, I’m asking for you to recommend what I should do with that space.

What should I include in the footer area? Should I remove it altogether? Should I add the newsletter opt-in form there also?

I’m open to any and all suggestions.

I’m very excited about the new theme, and I think it looks more professional than the old one. I look forward to the new changes to come, as I hope you are too.

I appreciate and thank you for sticking with me and helping to make this blog what it is. I couldn’t have done it without all of you!

If you happened to stumble onto my blog last evening and early this morning, you probably noticed that it looked very weird. No, it wasn’t your computer or browser. The design was messed up.

What happened was I trying to fix a simple write error by changing the permission settings for a particular directory. Instead of fixing the simple problem, I inadvertently created a much bigger problem. The main functions of the blog still worked and navigation shouldn’t have been a problem, though.

Without trying to sound too “techie,” the read/write permissions that I screwed up caused my Wordpress theme to not show up. So, you saw my blog, but without the header and other graphics. The layout was also messed up as a result.

I’m just happy everything is working properly again. I have folks from the Warrior Forum and my web tech guru from Niche Power Group to thank for helping me resolve this issue.

This is a good lesson to remember that if you plan on making changes to your blog, no matter how small, to first make a backup of your blog in case something terrible goes wrong. All I can say is… lesson learned!