Happy Memorial day!

1. Please let me comment with my name and URL (if this means you have to turn on the word validation that’s okay with me). If I have to sign into Blogger or a commenting system in order to leave you a comment I probably won’t/can’t. This is especially annoying on blogs that I really enjoy. I want to leave you a comment or praise for your post, especially since I took the time to read it.

2. Don’t mention any of these phrases when you leave me a comment, “Visit my blog” or “Follow me back” or “I’m having a giveaway, you should come enter it over at my blog”, or anything like them. I’ll let you get away with it once but if you do it twice I probably won’t publish your second comment. To me the point of commenting is to have dialog and make friendships, not to self promote. I have the commentluv plugin so you can leave your link there. I will visit you, you don’t have to tell me to. :)

3. Please, please put a search bar on your sidebar. I find this most annoying on blogs I discover through Pinterest. Sometimes people don’t pin the original post and I want to search your blog to find it but I can’t do that very well without a search bar.

4. I don’t enjoy music that plays automatically when I visit your blog. I’m usually playing my own music and having your music play on top of mine is annoying. If you must have this, please put it in an obvious place with a stop or pause or mute button so I can stop the insanity! This applies to talking ads too. And I don’t care for pop-up adds or boxes that I have to X before I can read your blog.

5. Your blog doesn’t look good. This one I have to admit I’m bias, since I am a graphic (and blog) designer. But if your blog has a very poor design I’m most likely not going to leave you a comment or follow you. A poor design tells me that you don’t care about your blog very much. The design doesn’t have to be perfect of course (I do follow blogs that I haven’t designed myself) but it shouldn’t hurt my eyes to look at.

Do you have any blogging pet peeves? If so I would love it if you would share them with me.

All the content will line up vertically and shrink to fit. For blogs, the sidebar elements will align under the post content. We don’t offer perfection but if you want your site to be more easily viewed on mobile devices, this may be a good option for you to consider.

Is your WP site mobile responsive?

Anna and Sean’s wedding photographed by Ryan Ray Photography is no exception. It was totally gorgeous!

Looking at these exceptional photos from such a beautiful event, I can’t help but admire everyone involved.

In her own words, “The purpose of The Nathan Chris Baker Foundation is to provide financial, physical, and emotional support to individuals, families, and communities in need. This support will focus on academic and athletic opportunities that promote and develop the strength, confidence, and abilities they need to Go Out and Be Great. We want to encourage others to ‘Do something that leaves a mark on someone else’s life’”.

The Nathan Chris Baker Foundation- Web design

The Nathan Chris Baker Foundation- FB cover

Katie’s kind words in regards to working with us, “A huge thank you to Ashley and Dream Up Studios for helping us with our website re-design and our facebook cover photo. I entered the process feeling very overwhelmed and stressed. Ashley was so easy to work with and instantly put me at ease in the process. She answered a million questions for me with patience and was always very quick to respond to my emails! We love our new website and the design. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Go Out. Be Great.”

1. A photo of your beautiful face. This tells people you are human, that you have a soul. People like to put faces to names and to blogs. This is especially important if you don’t include pictures of yourself in your posts. It helps your readers connect to you. I use a silly one my friend took on her phone. You might want to use a professional one.

2. A subscribe box. Some people like to get an email every time you write a new post. I say why deny these people their desire?! You can get a subscribe box for free from feedburner.com.

3. Social media icons. These are fun to have on your blog sidebar so that your readers can connect with you beyond your blog. They can read your tweets and stay up to date on your life through Facebook.

4. Categories buttons. You’ll want to have a way for viewers to browse your blog posts based on what they are interested in. Having category buttons makes that supper easy. Readers can click on the category that interests them and read everything you’ve posted on the subject. Having a way for people to browse by category increases your page views because people will read more when they don’t have to sort through the weeds to get to what they want.

5. A search bar. If someone is looking for something super specific they will head straight to the search bar. If you don’t have a search bar they will leave. We don’t want people to leave so let’s add a search bar.

Do you agree with my list? Anything I missed?

Enjoy!

Here is what it looked like before and what it looks like now:

Before

After

Here is what Lauren said about the update, “I’m so pleased with how it turned out and now it feels very representative of my evolving style.”

What do you like to eat before you start a diet?

I’ve been feeling white on grey lately and when I saw this canvas print I was in love! It helps that this saying from “Where the Wild Things Are” has a special meaning to me (does it to you?). Here are a few more pretty prints.

And of course the inspiration for them all, Maurice Sendak. His work was truly admirable!

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