Blogger's life: July + August 2024

maipenquynh on 3. September 2024

Reviews are great. Monthly reviews, annual reviews, birthday reviews. Looking back is simply interesting. Funnily enough, I don't do that many retrospectives myself on the blog.

I also wrote reviews for the blog for a year, namely 2023. Then I stopped because I realized that I would like to do a complete review of my life. And a lot of it is not meant for the blog. Cutting down on the big personal review afterwards didn't feel like the right thing to do either, thus the era of monthly reviews came to an end.

I love documenting things, though. Blog formats come and go, some don't make it beyond one or two posts, even though I would have liked to. My latest idea: blog life recently. Or so.

I don't know how it will go but I know what I want: As a blogger you do things and I'm keen to do some "behind the scenes"-thingys. I do things for the blog, the blog inspires me to do things, I post things and sometimes I feel like writing about posting.

There is a lot of love behind my posts. And I think it's so sad when posts get lost in the feed, just over time. That's why I like that one section in the monthly reviews by jenni.works and kommunikato where they list the content they have created the past month.

Here we go, a blog review. I wish it to become a series but I don't promise anything like that. I run the blog too freely and unbound for such a promise, with as little pressure as possible and as much fun as possible. Let’s go 🏃‍♀️

JULY

Instagram experiment

My Instagram experiment came to an end in July. I documented a bit from start to end and plan to work it up. I hope to add a link here at some later time point ^^
Instagram life is not the same as blog life, in my case the two are definitely connected though. You can't really have one thing (Instagram account) without the other (blog).

Miscellaneous

I didn't document anything else for July. The plan to do the blog retrospective only came to me in August. I thought I'd show two months anyway. That way I could still include the Instagram experiment in here. And my posts 😋

📝 Posts

  • Internet findings (2)
  • Wild mix and a surprise bag
    • 💭 This was stuck in the drafts box for longer than I wanted. It was another one of those moments when I had doubts. At the time of the post to be published, I had reached the end of my doubts. And I reassured myself once again about what my blog is (not).

AUGUST

Madeira posts

A huge success for me: all the Madeira posts are ready to post. I started writing them a while ago (June 2024). Getting them ready for posting was in August (wow, two months!). I planned each publishing date more or less in advance. After a long time, it was the first time again that I prepared a series of posts on the blog. It was important to me that I had all my posts ready before I publish the first post. Otherwise I would have let the finalization slide and then I wouldn't have finished them ever - I know myself. And I definitely wanted to avoid that.

Thought: comment column

In addition to reading a blog post itself, it is often the comments column that is worth paying attention to and reading. I noticed this when I read other people's comments and when I receive comments myself, too. You actually communicate and get to know the blogger a little better. Nothing new but I realized that once again ^^

Emoji reactions on the blog

It was the first time that I got a unicorn as a reaction! I was happy about the first heart (and every other heart), too, but the first unicorn stood out next to the hearts in the statistics 🦄

In general, I've tidied up the reaction options a bit. It doesn't change the quantity of reactions though but personally, I thought there were too many options :'D

Cookies 🍪

Cookies on the blog has always been a pain point for me. But I have understood that how I have done it is okay. The following website helped me: Ionos: WordPress-Cookie-Plugins – die 5 besten Opt-in-Lösungen. Especially the paragraph „Wie erkennt man, ob die eigene Website Cookies einsetzt?“ has helped me.

Blog statistics and Google Search Console

I was very impressed when I saw bullion’s statistics: Jahresrückblick Teil 4: Analyse und Interpretation meiner Blog-Statistik 2023. And I would love to have something like that. It's just that I don't know how- as my statistics plugin (Statify) is very rudimentary. After I pinged bullion once, the Google Search Console came back to my mind and I looked into it a bit. I was a bit worried whenever I received an email saying that something wasn't indexed. After I watched a video (link here (german video)) and thought about whether and how important indexing is for me, I came to the conclusion: Currently not (yet) a priority. Just like SEO. Both are all well and good but I wouldn't know what keywords to enter to land here anyways. This is a personal blog - I think it's more about the network than the Google search engine to get to this blog. And ... what about the statistics? I stick to it and come back to it.

📝 Posts

New on the blog: Bilingual in a more elegant way and emoji reactions

maipenquynh on 18. February 2024

In my monthly recap December 2023 I wrote about how I fiddled around with the blog. I was at the very beginning. Plugins were selected but no end was in sight in terms of implementation. After about a month, things did happen.

Reminder:

  • Fiddling I was to get a more elegant solution for having my blog bilingual.
  • Fiddling II was to get a Like-button, so to speak.

How far have I got and which experience have I done?

Fiddling I - More elegant implementation of bilingualism

Up to now

The german text was at the top and the english text at the bottom in a blog post. Only the german text was shown on the blog's homepage. You had to use the read more-tag, which I elegantly labelled "Go to english version", to get to the whole post and would landed directly at the english text.

Target

The entire page should be written and displayed in one language. A button should be used to switch from one to the other language.

Tool

I have decided in favour of the plugin TranslatePress .

Before that, I came across Polylang and have tried it out as well. However, I didn't quite like this tool because it effectively creates a new page per post. As a result, previous comments were available on the german page (which is the source page) but not on the english one. I didn't like that. This is different with TranslatePress and somehow the english page/version is converted differently. The german text is replaced with the english text but the overall structure of the german page is retained (What the technical difference is? - idk).

I watched these two videos and they really helped me to make my decision. Without the YouTuber, I wouldn't have come across TranslatePress so quickly or at all.

Status

I've started the adaptions post by post. And now it's WIP. I was thinking about doing it all at once because I didn't want to have a few posts in the old format (both languages in one post), and some new posts already in the new format with one language only where you can switch between the languages with a button. Somehow I was afraid that this would look too wild. But it doesn't. If it's in the old format, you'll find the read more-tag. Otherwise, it's now gone because I deleted the english part from the post.

And so I'm slowly working my way through and back, down the blog history so to speak. Whenever I feel like it and have time, I revise a few posts and it's an ongoing process.

The plugin is live and you can switch between german and english by clicking on EN/DE in the menu ribbon at the top right.

Conclusion

I'm happy with this fiddling. Of course it drags on, and sometimes a post takes longer than I thought. Overall, this in-between state doesn't bother me as much as I initially thought. I'm glad that I watched the second video - the one about TranslatePress - and realized that it was the better option for me.

 

Fiddling II - A fast reaction possibility

Up to now

The only way to react to a blog post was to leave a comment.

Target

I liked the idea of a Like-button and thought of it being very charming, in case there is nothing to say and you still want to leave a reaction. So I had to find something suitable.

Tool

I found what I was looking for with the help of Jenni from jenni.works. I first saw the emoji reactions on her site and was thrilled. She told me about the plugin DaReactions and that's what I ended up with.

Status

Done and ready to use.

To see and use the emoji reactions, you have to click on the post and read it in single view. You find the emojis at the end of a post.

Conclusion

It was easy to implement and I am happy.

 

I use both plugins in the free version and so far they fulfil what I wanted. Ergo: Successful fiddling.

December 2023

maipenquynh on 10. January 2024

The last month of the year.

I had discussed with a friend: In the course of a conversation about a reflection tool for 2023/2024, we thought we wanted to reflect more in general so that we could see and appreciate what the passed time had given us. I realised that the monthly review on the blog which I am doing for almost a year had led me to this direction. To help me remembering many moments and days that would have disappeared too quickly into the recesses of my memory otherwise.

I only show a fraction of my life on the blog. For me, the final text here is only an excerpt and I think that’s a bit sad for myself. So after the discussion I recapitulated December 2023 for myself quite detailed. It was a lot and it was worth it! I was pretty happy afterwards. As a result, however, I’m now tired of creating a slimmed-down version for the blog.

So I don’t know what else remains for the blog right now?

Photo is not from December

Nevertheless, a few words

December was full of life: There were various parties I went to. Birthday parties, wedding parties, Christmas parties at work and at home. I met people, spent time together and enjoyed the time. It’s not necessary the case that the time spent together is also enjoyed.

I have learnt that after a workday, it feels different – better! – when I’m not fiddling around on my mobile phone first, like „from the work screen to the mobile phone screen“. Instead, I do something „practical“/“manual“/“haptic“ such as cooking, tidying up, looking after plants. The feeling afterwards was rewarding, saying „I’ve done something!“. It’s not that big of a secret. Apparently I needed to experience that nonetheless.

What else happened:

Keyword „sorting“:I have organised my negative films and prints into a system. Through further conversations with people close to me, I finally realised that „sorting“ is one of my hobbies.

A few months ago I bought a digital camera (full format)that is compatible with my existing lenses. During my week off at the end of December, I took it with me and tried it out. I’m a bit lost.

Fiddling with the blog I: I keep my blog bilingual and this is implemented quite „pragmatically“: there is a blog post, at the top is the German text, at the bottom the English text. Other blogs have implemented this in a more sophisticated way by clicking on a button and the whole website changes into the other language. I wanted to have that, too! In December, I finally took the time to look into this topic and tried out two plugins. One of them convinced me. Now I „just“ have to implement it. I estimated that this would take quite a bit of time, at least a weekend. That’s why I wanted to do it all at once, so that it would be finished, not drag on and the blog wouldn’t be in an intermediate state for a long time. But in the meantime, I think I’ll find it very difficult to find a block of time like that. So it’s possible that I’ll actually do this bit by bit and the blog will be in this kind of limbo for a while eventually.

Fiddling with the blog II: I’ve also been looking into the question of how I can create the option for a „quick reaction“ a.k.a. Like button. Here, too, I have found a potentially suitable plugin. But the implementation of this is pending until after the technical conversion of my blog to multilingualism is done.

During my week off at the end of the month, I also had a lot of time to work on a few texts for the blog and changed my system to create and keep an overview of what I actually want to post and how far I am in each case. I’m really happy about that.

2023 in a nutshell

I won’t do a separate annual review on the blog. But at least I can say a few lines about it here: It was a very nice year personally, with lots of lovely highs and I’m so so grateful for that. As far as the blog is concerned, I’m on a path that I really like at the moment and hope that it continues at least like this. Both in terms of my blog itself and how I move around in the blogosphere. Despite the many construction sites I do see. There have been a lot of great things!

With that in mind: wishing you a happy and prosperous new year – 2024!