Taking Part in Bloggers’ Communities
There used to be a few bloggers’ communities that I joined when I started blogging. I remember the first community that I actively engaged in was MyBlogLog but sad to say, this community was terminated (by Yahoo) in the spring of last year. I met quite a number of bloggers on the said site and most of my first commenters came from there. It was easy to find blogs and blogger friends then. I also joined Blog Catalog and Entrecard and met some bloggers from those communities. I still visit and find interesting blogs there from time to time.
I found new bloggers’ communities lately but I have been skeptical about joining. Some sites seem to be convincing but I don’t particularly like the one that’s offering to query my latest posts for other members to read but my post links are prefixed with their site’s address. It will come out that the post is not from my site but from their own. Ridiculous. There were two sites I discovered having this kind of linking strategy. I’ve become a bit apprenhensive about joining blog communites since I learned about it.
Anyhow, I’m now back to getting active in more communities and recently I joined Fuel My Blog after learning how easy it is to visit other blogs from there. Perhaps you can fuel my blog by voting and giving it a thumbs up, too.
A blog is just out of place if it doesn’t belong to any communities. Through FuelMyBlog, I wish to discover more blogs and bloggers around the world-wide web.
Dressing Up Lemback Blog
It’s about time to make changes and perhaps change the traditional face of a blog. Lemback Blog has undergone a lot of changes even before but never adopted a layout that’s out of the core of blogging. I preferred a simple chronological blog layout since I started blogging, and modified free themes to suit my blog. But the rise of premium themes with impressive layout have always been a welcome option. After browsing a number of WordPress themes sites, I decided to go for a priced theme though the decisive factor that led me to purchase this CelebrityPress theme is the simple magazine layout styled with different colors. This is the second time I purchased a theme for this blog. Hubby was apprehensive but knowing me, by all means, I get what I want. Thus, here it is now, right before your eyes.

As you may know, there is no magic in installing a theme, whether paid or free. The need to modify a little or tweak some codes are the things that a blogger should have learned in the process. Although this theme from Gorilla Themes comes in different packages which includes support and forum depending on the package you choose, I preferred the cheaper, no support and forum included. Hubby and I spent the whole day to make it appear as it should. He fixed the header while I worked on codes. Problems like square banners appearing vertically, smileys taking the whole line in a post and adding necessary page templates.
Because of this theme, I’m back to working with widgets. I normally go into the files when adding contents in the sidebars. But doing what I used to do would ruin this theme and losing all the features as shown. Anyhow, I liked how my blog looks now, and so did hubby. I skipped the slideshow feature for now. If you want to see more of Gorilla Themes, just head on to their site.
Where Have They All Gone?
I think I need to update my blogroll or the right phrase should be to delete the links of those who disappeared in the blogosphere. I was cleaning my inbox the other day and found links to commenters I have not seen in a long time. When I clicked the links, it showed that the site is nowhere to be found anymore. The idea of checking the links in my blogroll just came to me after that and my discovery of inactive blogs was a huge surprise. Blogging was like an explosion when I started in 2007 and asking for link exchange was unstoppable. I had not declined anyone who wanted to exchange links with this blog.
When I met with broken links from my blogroll, I wondered where they all have gone. Some links are broken, some have not been updated for months and some have changed to a brand new site. I laughed when one or two blogs greeted me with a Happy New Year post and in my mind I was telling, Happy New Year to you, too! It was also a surprise when some blogs have been revised where old posts have been deleted and what remained as first post was the WordPress welcome title, Hello World!
I thought my persistent complains about my lack of time for blogging would persuade me to abandon this blog completely but I’m still here. And my batch-mate bloggers are gone! Although there are new blogs out there, the spirit is not as intense as when I started. I guess it’s the downcycle of blogging that’s taking place now. Many must be disappointed in the money-making schemes integrated to blogging or they just totally gave up for personal reasons. Blogging is not easy if you have nothing to write about (laughs).







