Template Faerie

Truly a Matter of Life and Death: Can Blogger Really Delete Your Blog?

2012-08-01T20:45:00.000-04:00

We all wonder. And if you don't, start wondering now. Can Blogger (the platform we all love—or don't) delete your blog—put it to death—without your permission, without warning, without mercy?

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Blogger certainly can delete your blog if you're posting content that violates their content policy—it's only fair. But that can't be the full story. You've probably heard somebody claim that Blogger sometimes deletes perfectly legitimate blogs, and unfortunately this is true.
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Why I Hate Reading Blogs [We Blog Better]

2012-06-06T15:01:00.002-04:00

Yep. You read that right. I hate reading blogs. And now I'm going to tell you why.

Continue reading on We Blog Better »

3 Simple Ways to Transform Your Boring Blogger Blog Design into a Stunner

2012-06-04T17:19:00.001-04:00

As an amateur template designer, I can't help but notice the number of horribly designed blogs on the internet. Ugly blogs just rub me the wrong way, because they're inexcusable. But that's why I love Blogger. It gives people like you and me the tools we need to easily beautify our blogs. Even if you created your first blog ten minutes ago, you can customize it right now—seriously.Read more

My Blogging Boredom Dilemma and Solution

2012-04-18T17:37:00.000-04:00

Hello, bloggers. Did you miss me? In case you haven't noticed, it's been an incredibly long time since I last posted on my blog. And I know bloggers aren't supposed to apologize to the reader for not writing sooner—else they look unprofessional and unblogger-like (oh no!)—but I seem to be breaking the rules all the time, so I don't think one more broken rule will do me any harm. Honestly—which, by the way, I consider to be a useless word, unless being a liar is the norm, but it looks and sounds nice at the beginning of the sentence—honestly, I've constantly felt guilty for not devoting more time to my poor, pathetic blog for the past several months. It was one of those typical waves of frustration that resulted in a long break. But this time, I wasn't sure if I would ever return to my blog. Scary, huh?Read more

So, You Want to Guest Post on My Blog? Forget It!

2011-09-08T22:36:00.000-04:00

Everyone's into guest posting these days. It's great for lazy bloggers. People send you content, and all you have to do is mindlessly hit the publish button. Traffic soars, comments appear out of thin air, and people love you. It's magic.

If so many other bloggers have great success with guest authors—but perhaps not to the degree that I just described—why don't I try it? Couldn't I get the same results? No.

Yes, guest blogging has benefits. But obviously, it's not for everyone. Here's why I'll never accept guest articles... well, probably.Read more

How NOT to Design a Blog

2011-07-08T20:01:00.005-04:00

Have you ever visited a blog with high expectations, only to throw up on your keyboard when you see the shocking combination of colors and fonts cluttered onto a sloppy layout? If so, you're not alone. It happens to me and many others every day. It's a sad fact that a majority of blogs are horribly designed.

How ugly a blog is doesn't necessarily have anything to do with a bad design, because even the most gorgeous templates can be turned into a horrendous horror by a lazy or ignorant blogger. To prove my point, I'm going to take the Atlas template, which I gave away for free in my last post, and I'm going to turn it into an eyesore. This is going to be fun...Read more

Introducing Atlas: A Free Blogger Template

2011-06-27T10:59:00.037-04:00

There was a day, long ago, when I didn't know how to edit a blog template—the main reason being that I was too lazy to learn. But the default Blogger templates were incredibly dull and I didn't want to use them—and by the way, once the Template Designer came into existence, along with new, incredible templates which are used by almost everyone nowadays (I don't mean that as a good thing), people realized how bad the default templates were, gave them the "classic" label, and forgot about them. I don't miss them.

Because of my laziness, I searched for free third-party templates and made a discovery. Not only are most templates sloppy and ugly, but even the code is sloppy and ugly. Ugly templates are ugly, but sloppy code is horrendous. I wouldn't be caught dead using one of those templates on my blog. And so I overcame my laziness and learned to create my own templates.Read more

Blogging is too hard. I give up.

2011-06-02T10:49:00.005-04:00

Fact of the day: I'm a horrible blogger. That's a harsh statement, but I've discovered it's true. Now you know that when I don't respond to comments, post regularly, or answer your email, it's because I'm a horrible blogger. I blog almost every day, during every spare moment, but I don't have a schedule, and no matter how hard I try, I can't post on time. That's why I refrain from saying "I will" on my blog.Read more

Add-on: Easy Tweet Box for Your Blog Posts

2011-05-13T21:38:00.003-04:00

I'm always looking for interesting ways to encourage retweets on my articles, and when I saw Ana's How to Entice Your Readers to Retweet Your Content article on Traffic Generation Cafe, I loved the idea for the tweet box. But, I was disappointed when I discovered that it was a Wordpress plugin, so I set to work on figuring out how the same could be done with Blogger. If you're a Wordpress user, head over to Ana's blog—but if you use Blogger, here's how you can add a tweet box to your blog.

5 Awesome Bloggers and Blogs You Should Know About

2011-05-04T20:35:00.002-04:00

There are many—too many, in my opinion—blogs about blogging. But today I've sorted out a few that are actually worth reading. It's always a good idea to get more than one view on a topic. That's right—you're not forever imprisoned at Template Faerie. I won't be mad at you if you subscribe to another blogging blog. After all, these are awesome blogs, which is why I'm recommending them.Read more

Why Criticism is Important for Your Blog's Health

2011-04-23T16:27:00.103-04:00

If you had a choice between getting criticism or compliments on your blog, you would probably choose the compliments, right? It's easy to see why this is the case for most people. Criticism is often discouraging, and discouragement is the last thing you need when you're working hard to turn your blog into success. But if you always avoid criticism, you'll probably never see the things that are working against your productivity. Learning what other people would do differently is the best way to get ideas on how to improve your blog, and today I'm going to tell you about a few ways you can easily do this.Read more

There's No Such Thing as Competition in the Blogoshere

2011-04-18T18:25:00.000-04:00

If you remember the day when you created your first blog, you probably remember it as being easy. If you remember the months afterward, you probably remember them as being strenuous, monotonous, and maybe even discouraging. You might have watched the other bloggers, who published content daily—maybe even twice daily, like they had a content machine. How was it so easy for them? Why wasn't it easy for you? How would you ever get noticed when you were constantly being lost in the crowd by your competitors? That's a question I asked myself many times when I created Template Faerie, and that's what my guest post on Blog Engage is about.Read more

The Blog Engage 500 USD Guest Blogging Contest

2011-04-17T19:13:00.002-04:00

For those of you who don't know, Blog Engage is a community for bloggers to share their content, discover new blogs, and of course, engage with bloggers. I've been a member for several months, and I think it's the best of blogging communities, because of the abundance of real content and amazing bloggers, rather than the spam that you will find in most other communities.Read more

Designing a Blog isn't Rocket Science

2011-04-09T11:31:00.003-04:00

It's true. With Blogger's Template Designer, you don't have to know HTML or CSS, you don't need any Photoshop skills, and you don't need a heap of books that give you step-by-step instructions. All it takes is you, your eyeballs, and a computer. A keyboard and mouse is helpful in most cases. To show you how easy it is, I'm going to give you six examples of default templates I improved using nothing but the Template Designer. Best of all, I'm giving away all six of these templates for you to use on your blog!Read more

Why You Shouldn't Use Disqus Comments

2011-03-26T12:11:00.003-04:00

Several months ago, I decided I had had enough of the default Blogger commenting system. I looked around for an alternative and finally settled on Disqus. While it was an improvement over what I was using, I think it was a bad choice for my blog, and I discourage other bloggers from using it. Today I'm going to give you a few reasons why you shouldn't use Disqus. Whether you're thinking about using it, you're already using it, or are just looking for something to be grumpy about, this article is for you.Read more

Your Blog is Unique, Just like all the Others

2011-03-17T20:36:00.004-04:00

You have a blog. You think it's great. After all, you put so much work into writing content regularly and promoting it on social networks, so it must be great. It probably isn't. Of the millions of blogs on the internet, there are very few great blogs. The rest are boring. Of course, that's just an opinion, but I think you probably don't regularly read a hundred blogs, simply because you don't know of that many blogs worth reading—and even if you did, a hundred is only a small fraction of the blogs on the internet.

The problem is that many blogs are about the same thing, and therefore, say just about the same thing. Unless there's something amazing that catches my eye, or unless I have a really good reason for being there, I'll close the page. I'm tired of hearing the same thing over and over again.Read more

Is Blogger Really a Piece of Junk?

2011-03-06T11:24:00.002-05:00

When you see that most of the successful bloggers are using Wordpress, most of them telling other bloggers to use nothing but the wonderful Wordpress, saying that Wordpress beats all other blogging platforms, and saying that you can't be a pro without using Wordpress, doesn't that say something about Blogger? In fact, most blogging blogs are aimed only toward Wordpress users. So, are other platforms too lousy to even mention?

Blogger has made some big improvements over the last few years, but despite that, all I hear is criticism. Is it true that Blogger isn't for the "serious" people? That it looks cheap and amateurish? Do you get what you pay for?Read more

Don't Know What to Tweet About? These 3 Tips are for You!

2011-02-28T14:55:00.002-05:00

Though I haven't been using Twitter for very long, I've realized that it can be extremely effective in attracting readers to my blog and meeting like-minded people. But, like me, you might have discovered that using it only for self-promotion will never be effective for anything. This problem is frequently discussed on other blogs, so I won't bother discussing it now. One thing that isn't talked about often is finding the things worth tweeting about, and in today's post, I'm going to give you a few tips that will help you find new and interesting articles and blogs to tweet about, which will lead to an increased number of followers.Read more

Why I Chose to Use Blogger

2011-02-22T19:47:00.002-05:00

I was originally going to call this post "Why Blogger is Best". But I have since realized that not only would that be an extremely controversial topic (not that that's a bad thing), but also that Blogger really isn't the best. "So," you may ask, "are you finally realizing that Wordpress is the better platform?" No, because Wordpress isn't better. I'm only saying that all the people who say Blogger is best—and the people saying Wordpress is best too—are wrong. They are only giving their opinions.

So, if you're trying to decide which blogging platform to use, I'm not going to tell you which one I think is best, because that won't be any use to you. Instead, here are four of my best reasons why I chose to use Blogger over any other option.Read more

If Content isn't King, What Is?

2011-02-17T15:01:00.003-05:00

When I was very new to blogging, I read and believed that content was king. I thought as long as I wrote good content, it would be recognized, my blog would get good amounts of traffic, and it would be as popular as I dreamed it could be. This, however, from my own experience, and from research I've done, has been shown to be untrue. If you create a blog, people won't come just because the content is good and that it exists. It doesn't work that way in the blogosphere—at least, not unless you're really lucky, and somebody comes across your blog and advertises it for you. But even then, content isn't king. That's mostly chance, and not much work on your part.

If you haven't heard somebody say it before, I'm sure you'll hear it soon enough. From what I've seen on the internet, people who say "content is king" tend to believe that you should put all your effort (or most of it) into content. It is true that good content gives someone a reason to read your blog, and it keeps them coming back. But how do you expect the reader to find the content in the first place? Good content alone won't do that.Read more

5 Reasons Why Only Some Bloggers Succeed

2011-01-26T08:03:00.003-05:00

I want my blog to succeed and I'm sure you want the same for yours. You might put a lot of time into your content and promotion, but despite your effort, sometimes it seems like your blog gets drowned in all the others. Then you see the bloggers who have managed to survive. They are the ones that we always talk about, the ones that inspire us, and the ones that we hope to be like someday. What if one day it wasn't just a dream? What if one day your blog succeeded? Is it possible?Read more

You're a Human, so Write like One

2011-01-18T15:42:00.007-05:00

In my blogging experience, I've learned that my voice is my most important tool. A voice in writing is like your personality, and what makes it so important is that each blogger has a unique voice. You don't have to try to be different—all you must do is be you, and you'll be different. In comments, your voice shows that you really care about your reader's feedback. On Twitter, it helps you to engage with other tweeters and attract more followers. On your blog, your readers can almost hear you talking to them. This, I hope, is what your voice can do. But the truth is, many bloggers fail to use their voice in writing. The result is that the reader doesn't feel like a human wrote what they're reading. It's boring to read.Read more

5 Reasons Why I Won't Read Your Blog

2011-01-10T16:59:00.003-05:00

If you're like me, you visit a lot of blogs. And like me, you might pass up a lot of blogs too. Maybe it's the topic that doesn't interest me, but many times, there are problems with the blog or its content that discourage me from reading—problems that the blogger may or may not be aware of, but can be and should be addressed. Have you ever considered that you might be one of these bloggers? Today I'm going to discuss five common problems which give me five reasons why I won't read your blog.Read more

Review of JotForm.com: A WYSIWYG Form Builder

2011-01-04T06:27:00.001-05:00

I have long been in search for a good contact form for my blog. Being a fan of customization, I wanted something I could easily edit, but would also look professional and upload files without limiting submissions and costing money. A simple search in Google told me I was dreaming of something that didn't exist. So I had to resort to finding the best I could get, a task which took many pages of many searches, reading multiple form builder reviews, and experimentation. It all led me to JotForm.Read more

3 Things I Think Blogger Should Change

2010-12-30T10:29:00.006-05:00

Why is it out of all the applications I use and websites I visit, I can always find something to complain about? Could it be true that all these things are never done as well as they should be, or am I just being too critical? I tend to think it's the latter, but who said criticism was a bad thing? Without it, nothing would improve. Today is the rare occasion of when I complain about Blogger. I like Blogger, not only because it got me into blogging such-and-such many years ago, but because it makes blogging easy while not limiting me too much. But Blogger has it's flaws.Read more