I haz skillz (apparently)

If I had a Travel Blog I
would have been busier.

BLMA has been a bit quiet of late and for that I apologise. Its been a busy summer one way or another and between holidays, work and other commitments, gaming and painting have fallen by the wayside a little. However I know this is just a temporary lapse and things will pick up again in coming months, especially as we get nearer to the Winter Painting Challenge in December. So with the summer out of the way, and my day off otherwise unplanned, I decided to spend a little time tidying up the blog.

About once a year I go back through old posts and try to reestablish broken links, reformat old posts and generally have a 'spring clean'. Its an impossible task of course, there is more to do than can be completed by one person in just a day. After all I have written over 1700 posts over the last nine years featuring literally tens of thousands of links and pictures. I'll keep looking but needless to say if you see a broken link please flag it up for me and I'll fix it asap.

This week I have briefly flirted with Google+ Comments again. This is the third time I have tried it out and I have to say I still don't like it. The main downside as the blog owner is that I no longer have a folder with all incoming comments appearing in it. I check out this folder several times a day to read comments, especially when I publish a new post. Its also a convenient and easy way to spot spam comments attached to old posts that would otherwise be missed. Needless to say I have switched back to regular Blogger Comments after just a few days. I'm normally a bit of a Googlephile, but in this case I think this a feature that needs to be massively improved or killed off!

Try the Blogroll for breakfast,
its delicious!

I have also taken some time today to review things like the Pages I have created, the Gadgets (widgets) that appear on the right hand side of the page and lots of little bits like that. Some of these were no longer active, others needed updating or reformatting, but none of the changes I made are earth shattering or time consuming to complete. The aim, simply put, is to make visiting this blog just a little more user friendly and interesting.

Some time ago there was a problem with the side bar being hidden behind posts, but I was able to insert some code in the template to fix this, but I have no real way of knowing if the side bar even gets used by readers any more. I have striped out some little used tabs and updated the few that remain because I think the sidebar is an often overlooked and underutilised feature. Its an easy way to navigate around the site, find old posts or discover great blogs from my extensive and growing Blogroll (500+ and counting!!).

If you have any comments or ideas, or if you find a broken link that needs repairing, please let me know and I'll do my best to act on any feedback received.