Blog tweaks and upgrades. {Day 20} Heart Matters

There are so many nifty upgrades that we can apply to our blogs that it can almost be burdensome to figure out what we should or shouldn’t use. Here is my quick list of must have blog tweaks and upgrades.

• Use custom social media icons.

It is so easy to swap out your plain old icons for some purty ones. First you have to find some that you like. Here are a few of my favorites: Twitter Birds, Blogging Lab, icon finder, My Site My Way, Atulperx, and Identyme. Once you find the ones you want simply follow the instructions here for installing them on your blog: Add Social Media Icons.

• Add a favicon.

A favicon is a small square image measuring 16 by 16 pixels. Having one gives a more put together appearance reaffirms your blogs identity. Having a favicon can help people easily remember your blog. Typically it is displayed to the left of the address bar next to the URL.

You can make a favicon using any graphics program. paint.net and Gimp are both excellent and free. Save the image as a .png file and then convert to a .ico using a service like Favicon Generator. Then upload the favicon to your WordPress library or to an image hosting service. Then add the following code above your closing </head> tag.

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico">

Save it and check it brower after refreshing ( Ctrl + f5 )

• Have a custom design.

First impressions are crucial. When someone who isn’t familiar with you or your blog visits for the first time and they see  a generic blog design it almost seems to imply that the blogger does not care too much about the blog. Your blog design is a reflection of your personality. You can try your hand at designing or have someone else do it. There are several inexpensive designers out there that do good work. I think it sends a loud message to your readers when you have a custom design. It says, “This is who I am and I’ll be here for a while”.

Here is a tutorial for customizing your blogger blog: Blogger Design Tutorial

• Add navigation to your blog.

With Bloggers addition of navigation bars to the basic design there is now no excuse for anyone to not have a navigation bar. This feature has been implemented on WordPress sites. Use it, ladies. What should you include? An about this blog page, and about me page, a contact page, and a bonus would be a links tab that tells us who your favorite bloggers are. After all, that is one of the main ways of discovering other blogs: recommendations. While you are at it clean up your blog labeling system. Make is easy for readers to find things on your blog.

• Add a search feature.

This is crucial. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to reread a post that a blogger wrote and not been able to find it. The search feature eliminates that problem. Blogger and WordPress both offer search widgets.

What tweaks and upgrades have you implemented on your blog? Share them with us!

Find the rest of the series here: 31 Days to Online Ministry

Also check out:

• Missed BlissDom 2011? Get It Here. It’s just like being there!
• ? 31 Days to Build a Better Blog – Easy step by step ways to improve your blog presence!
• Simple Blogging. – Don’t have 40 hours a week to spend on blogging? This E-book helps you grow your blog with less time on the computer.