Blog Maintenance

  Have you ever wanted to change something that works just fine the way that it is? I received some tips about making the blog more user-friendly and took the advice. Although I didn't like the new settings, it did seem to be more successful for a short time. Then I noticed my ad revenue drop from almost-nothing to completely-nothing, and now I know why...

  Blogger/Google had notified me about some "mobile usability issues" after making those changes, so I've been working hard at fixing that instead of creating new content. One might assume this is the reason for losing viewers, but it is not. I can still pull in a decent amount of views without publishing new content thanks to other sites that link to my patterns. (BIG THANKS to all of them!)

  While fixing the "mobile usability issues", it seemed logical to do that work from my phone. It's not easy for me to work from a tiny glowing rectangle that is full of distractions. It was frustrating, but I finally got to the root of the main problem and fixed all the things Google suggested.

  Or so I thought...

  Everything seemed fine until I went back to using my PC, and... Oh. No. There's text overlapping borders, photos taking up the whole screen, paragraphs mashed next to each other in tiny print instead of running down the length of the page.

  Large text, text that is small, and some text that should be there but it's not there at all... 

  So now I have even more work to do, in addition to fixing all those broken-link tutorials and trying to get back to creating new patterns. It looks like my recent posts, created on Blogger's new interface, are working correctly. Anything made on the old interface is a mess. 

  Oh yeah, so it's all that plus I'm still trying to learn that new interface which has changed the way things look to me while creating content. All actions have been reduced to tiny little icons that don't have a "hover for more info" feature. It may be easier for me to just copy/paste the content from old posts into the new interface and republish everything, but then that will cause broken links for the previously mentioned pattern sites... Ugh.

  But this post is less about complaining and more about my need of a bare-bones post without photos, links, or any of the other stuff that adds to the HTML. I just need something plain so I can see the basics of what the body, borders, widgets and what-nots should be. I might come back and change some formatting or add a picture as I'm working. 

(Add random kitty pic)

  Or you may start seeing older content being republished. Everybody please hold some extra yarn for me, because all I'll be holding for a while is a keyboard and mouse. Okay, that's not true... I'll probably be holding a cup of coffee and a bottle of ibuprofen for the headaches... But once in a while I have to put it all down just so I can hold up one specific finger directed at Google. 

Happy Crocheting!

Update:

  The main thing I'm concentrating on is getting the photos to fit. I thought that had been going well until I reached my tutorials for the WBS blankets... "Oh no" again. I included the instructions as captions attached to the pictures. The good news is that my photos fit.

And the bad news is pretty obvious:

  Some of the text background is white, some isn't, and some is white text on white background... The more I try to fix, the more problems I find. And now I'm doing ALL of this work from my phone because my PC has decided to take a permanent nap... This is what I get for running to Walmart and buying the only HP (stands for "Has Problems") they had in my price range. 

Update 2:

  LOL... Does anybody have a sledgehammer I can borrow? Mine seems to be missing. 

  The good news is I was able to fix the text, when viewed from desktop. 

  The bad news is that now the mobile page looks like this:

  Now if you'll please excuse me, I can't properly demonstrate my level of frustration here. If anybody needs me, just follow the sounds of smashing electronic devices and four-letter words being screamed into a pillow.