Blogovations, I've done a few

I spent this last weekend doing some blog maintenance. Some 'blogovations' if you will. Some of it I've been wanting to do for a while, some of it has come about after mulling over stuff I learnt at DPCon13.

First up, you may or may not have noticed that I changed my header slightly. I also created my own customised menu bar coz I was annoyed at not being able to centre the built-in blogger one. And I created a little 'About Me' picture and category buttons over in the sidebar.

The new 'About Me' picture

I'm hoping that the 'About Me' picture helps to sum up my blog and let people know what I'm about quickly and easily. Does it?

I'm hoping that the new category buttons make it a little easier for people to be able to find and read about the things they like to hear my bang on about, and ignore the stuff they don't. Do you think they are too big, too small, or just right? And do you get that 'Stellar Contradictions' is referring to my best posts?

I also created a new Welcome! Start Here page, which you can access from the menu bar under the header. It's just a quick one-pager about me and the blog and the things I blog about, kind of an expansion of the 'About Me' picture in the sidebar.

I've tidied up the sidebar, made it a little neater and more condensed and hopefully a little friendlier on the eye.

I've done a lot of googling to figure out how to do some of this stuff, like creating the custom menu bar and also how to bulk change the labels used for my posts (on a blogger blog). I kinda wish I googled that a bit earlier though, would have saved me manually going in to quite a few posts to change their labels! If you have a blogger blog and you're wondering how it's done, then click here. You're welcome!

Ok, so it's not really extreme but this was the best image I could find ok!
{Image Source}

The final thing I did over the weekend was create a reader survey. A super fast survey designed to find out what type of weirdos people are actually reading my blog and what they do and don't like reading about when they visit. I've had a few people answer so far and the responses have been interesting to say the least! Apparently people really, really like it when I rant about stuff! It's totally anonymous and doesn't take long and I would absolutely love you long time if you could bring yourself to do it for me. Well, not that I'll know which of you has taken the survey, being anonymous and all, but you'll know when you do it that I love you for it and that should give you a warm glow in your special place! You know the one I mean! You can take the survey by clicking the link below...

Click here to take survey

A big thank you to those who have already taken the time to do my survey. And if you don't take the time, well, don't expect to get that tingly feeling in your groin area you hear! And if you do get that tingly feeling its probably because you've got some gross disease and you should really get that looked at!

So tell me, did you even notice that I'd made some changes to the blog, some blogovations? Or are you a bit like me and tend to not notice that kind of thing? Is there anything you've just been busting to tell me about the blog, anything that really bugs you or that you think is totally fabulous? Please let me know in the comments, I would love to hear any and all (constructive) feedback (and for those whose pesky browsers don't let them comment via Disqus, feel free to let me know your thoughts on my Facebook page here).

THANKS!!!!

Linking this post up with the just-as-awesome-as-me creator of the world's best Tuesday linky (IBOT, duh!), Essentially Jess!