#Bloggiesta: Saturday Mini-Challenge Round-up

Rather than write up individual posts for the mini-challenges I am opting to participate in for Bloggiesta, I thought I'd do one round-up post today and another tomorrow. That way I won't be cluttering your Readers and driving myself nuts typing up multiple posts! :-D

So, here we go!



First Mini-Challenge: Feed Readers

So, um, I didn't even realize that Google Reader was going away later this year until I saw the news on the #Bloggiesta Twitter Chat last night. I can't say I'm particularly sad. I never really cared for it that much and I think it has actually hampered my reading of other blogs. Well, over at The Picky Girl, she has provided an awesome summary of some great replacement options. For now, I am starting out with Feedly, which caught my eye out of all of her descriptions of the pros and cons. I've got the app installed on my computer and iPhone and plan to explore it more as the weekend goes on. I like that it is powered by Google Reader, so hopefully I won't miss out on any of the blogs I currently keep up with!

Second Mini-Challenge: Through a Visitor's Eyes

One really helpful Mini-Challenge is being hosted at On a Book Bender, where we are challenged to navigate our blog and have others navigate it to make sure it is as user-friendly as possible. The biggest change I made as a result of going through that post was allowing anyone, including anonymous users, to comment, as opposed to just registered users. I am not nuts about having to do that, but because I couldn't seem to comment easily when I wasn't signed into Google+, I wondered if other people may be having problems, as well. Hopefully I won't have spam problems as a result... Otherwise, it seemed navigating my blog was pretty easy -- I invite you all to give it a try and see if you have any suggestions of improvements I can make!

Third Mini-Challenge: Declutter your Sidebar

Over at Debz Bookshelf, she discusses the importance of cleaning up your sidebar(s). I actually did this several weeks ago in what I suppose was my own personal Bloggiesta! The first thing I did was move my blogroll and grab buttons to their own page in my navbar. Then I got everything organized a bit more logically -- primarily social networking and things about me on the left (except for my blog archive), and then blog navigation and bookish related items on the right. I created buttons to link to genre and character labels, and I think I want to do the same for reviews by year this weekend. I am sure that ultimately more could be cleaned up, but for now I'm pretty happy with how the sidebars are looking. Feel free to offer any insights and suggestions you might have -- I am always looking for new ideas!

Tomorrow I should have another post with a round-up of two or three mini-challenges. I do love Bloggiesta -- it makes for a fun weekend!