If You Have a Blog . . .

. . . there are three things that I think you need to know about:  Statcounter, Windows Live Writer, and Blurb. 

Statcounter (which has a free option that I use) is important because (1) you know how many blog hits you have, which is just cool, and (2) you can keep up with who visits your blog.  I can even tell from what city your visitors are logging on, their IP addresses, their internet providers, what websites were used to find my blog, and what websites my visitors leave my blog to visit.  I really like that I know “who” is reading our blog, especially if I get some weird (or rude) comments. 

And then you have Windows Live Writer.  This is FREE software that you download.  You can draft your blog posts offline with this software.  The most amazing part of it is that you can make your photos much larger than Blogger generally allows without a special HTML code.  When you upload your photos, if you choose, you can automatically watermark your photos.  Also, uploading photos takes a fraction of the time that it takes on Blogger and your photos are automatically resized for the web, which makes your photos look better.  This is a serious timesaver and really changed the way I blog.  Since I learned about Windows Live Writer from Krystyn of Krizzy Designs (who designed my blog), I’ve almost exclusively used it for blog posting. 

Blurb is important so that you can put your blog down on paper.  Or a nice image-wrapped hardbound book. . . .

Blurb has amazingly user-friendly software, and an extremely high quality end product.  I downloaded the Blurb software, and used it to pull in the blog posts I selected (I did a blog book for 2008, one for the first half of 2009, one for the second half of 2009, and one for 2010).  Then I rearranged the posts and photos.  This did take a lot of time, but it was not difficult by any means.  I started my first blog book in mid-February and finished them less than 2 months later, so it wasn’t that bad.  Then I uploaded my books and a week later I had them in print. 

The blog seems so much more real in print. 

In 2010, I made 79 blog posts and uploaded almost 1,000 photos on the blog.  In 2009, I made 132 blog posts and uploaded almost as many photos as in 2010.  I love the digital age, and I love how easy it is to share and publish online.  However, there is something about being able to hold it all in your hand.  It definitely gives me yet another reason to continue blogging regularly.  I hope that one day our kids will be my age and read about their childhood from my point of view, and hopefully appreciate this documentation of their early lives. 

After that, I had to twist Gary’s arm but he eventually agreed to let me make and order a blog book of his blog. 

The next documentation project is actually putting all those photos I’ve printed from 2008, 2009, and 2010 into albums.  That may take a while, but I’ll get caught up and hopefully stay caught up! 

One more thing that you should do if you have a blog is BACK UP your blog.  There are a couple of ways to do this.  One is to use BlogBooker to do it, which is something I found while I was looking for a way to make a blog book.  With this method, you just create a pdf book.  You can also print the pdf book, but I far preferred the customization available with Blurb.  Another way to back-up is recommended by Rita with Coffee Shop here.  I use BOTH. 

If you have a blog, I hope this helped.  And if you have any tips for me, I’d love to hear them!