#I even still have the same blog technically (just re-urled) so I still have all the things in your url-tag too xD

[starsmuserainbow]

“aren’t you too old to be trick or treating?” for Pyrrah ♥

HALLOWEEN  SENTENCE  STARTERS. 

[[Thank you for sending! :D]]

Honestly, she had been sure about her plans until Weiss asked it. Trick-or-treating was a child's tradition, sure, but it was a nice way to both take a walk, enjoy the colder atmosphere of the festivity, watch the children enjoy the celebration and have a chance to wear the costume she had worked on for a while. "It does feel like it's more of a thing for children." Now that she thought about it, would going trick-or-treating mean that she would get candy (which, wasn't the point for her of doing this) that otherwise another kid would be getting?

"Oh... it might be better to not do it." Now looking back to Weiss, Pyrrha added: "Does no one of your team work on costumes for Halloween, though? The costumes have to be used for something, right?"

[xcziel]

get to know me

tagged by @vishcount (thank you!!) and i'll follow her format bc making two posts seems a little much - i'm not that interesting!!

(hilariously, this post shows up as blocked for me bc of the tag 'joker' which? tumblr?????)

Part I

name: i'm an internet old, so i never use my real name online, mainly because it's spelled in a very unique way (thanks mom & dad) - i mean like, if you googled it you could find my home address in a few seconds kind of unique - but also, though i do enjoy the spelling, i actually don't like it very much when it's said out loud? (is it weird that my name written down is 'me', but my name aloud has never felt like 'me'?) always wanted a nickname but never acquired one :/

at any rate, i've had the username xcziel forever and i go by that 😊 (pronounced ex-SEE-zee-el, similar to etc. or ex-SET-er-ah! thanks @xia-xueyi for pointing out that it can be confusing to guess!)

rest behind a cut because it got long!

pronouns: she/her

star sign: i don't ... really *do* astrology? but technically saggitarius

height: 5'4" (162.5cm for the intl folks)

time: 5:43pm but these thing take me forever to type out so ... ???

birthday: playing the 'internet old' card again .. but it floats around american Thanksgiving depending on the year

nationality: american

fave bands/groups/solo artists: lumping these together because i just .. don't really do music much anymore. if you had asked me this back in my 20s i'm sure i would have had all kinds of opinions and things to share, but these days i actually mostly prefer to listen music from when i was a kid. part of it is also that as an old, i prefer to buy my music, even digitally, and i don't really use spotify - which does so much to enable diverse music exploration i admit! but i mostly have earplugs in all the time and music does not work for me as background noise, so...

so i guess my answer would be 70s disco and classic rock and 80s new wave artists? i've never liked any artist's entire discography and prefer greatest hits-type compilations, but i guess duran duran and def leppard and depeche mode would be considered formative? i love new order but specifically late 80s new order, NOT joy division. the only concert t-shirt i've ever worn was the cult? i loved sonic temple but i can't listen to most of it anymore though i still adore love removal machine. i think maybe if you get old enough, for some of us there's TOO MUCH good music and we can't pare it down anymore

song stuck in your head: jamiroquai's canned heat

last movie you watched: re: the above, i re-watched center stage, the 2000 one with zoe saldana and the mandy moore soundtrack, bc it's a happy comfort movie and i just got a digital version

last show you binged: i can't really "binge" very often bc after a couple of hours i need a break, so i guess i'd say the tgcf donghua on netflix since it was short enough to get through all in one go

when you created your blog: in 2012 i stopped lurking so i could post about the avengers movie

the last thing you googled: 5'4" in cm? lol before that it was chinese wrapped street food

other blogs: everything is here! i discovered i compartmentalize about as well as i tag reliably (😓) but i do have several automated ao3feed-tag style sideblogs. and i did, very briefly, have a *winces* hockey sideblog too

why i chose my url: ooh i know i've done this before, sorry if it's repetitive, basically it was the username i picked back when my family first got aol: short, unique combo of letters - 14-year-old me really thought about it! and then it wouldn't let me use anything other than my name. thirty-some-odd years later, trying to come up with a livejournal username that wasn't already taken and getting fed up, i plugged it in and went: good enough!

how many people are you following: like 760-something last i checked? although many, many, many of them are deactivated

how many followers do you have: idk i don't like looking at that stuff, but way fewer than i am following

average hours of sleep: it varies too much day by day, my sleep schedule is too wonky, i have no idea what the average would be

lucky numbers: 7? cliché i know, and again not really buying into it, but somewhere in my hindbrain i like it that my first, middle, and last names all have seven letters

instruments: none. i like singing

what i'm currently wearing: giant black t-shirt and baggy black drawstring shorts, standard sitting around the house gear

dream job: don't have one. if i did it would give me something to be working towards *sigh* this is how you end up in retail for decades, kids! but also, to quote a random post i saw in true tumblr fashion "i simply do not dream of labor"

dream trip: covered this one before but: back to the uk and some railway daytrips, or a really fancy northern cruise, atlantic/pacific either one

fave food: uhhh, don't really have a favorite but i'm almost always in the mood for pizza

top three fictional universe you'd like to live in: none really, if i had to still be me..maybe some kind of actually utopian future? but the pandemic has confirmed for me that i do NOT like living in interesting times, so most fictional story universes are RIGHT out. my favorites to read about like discworld or diana wynne jones' worlds would be way to chaotic for my comfort. possibly diane duane's young wizards universe would be safe enough to be okay?

Part II

last song: watching center stage made me think of my dance playlist so sunrise by simply red

last movielast stream: i don't watch streams or youtube often, so it was the same as you, vish! liu chang's birthday stream was SO enjoyable i screenrecorded the entire thing just so i could play it back (and maybe gif sometime if i ever get the drive to actually do it)

currently reading: well i just finished the translated quan qiu gao kao or global university entrance exam novel, which was sparked purely from catching a single rec post here on tumblr and basically just *falling* into this 166 chapter epic that is *amazing* and not coming up for air until i got to the end, which is typical novel-reading behavior for me (yes i was the kid who read through lunch period and got hassled by people who kept pestering me with "what're you reading" questions and yes i realize probably a lot of you on tumblr were too) plus, the new murderbot novel is out tomorrow!!!!! so that'll be where i end up next!

currently watching: the entire dmbj verse (that i can get my hands on) but ... sporadically and stopping at random different parts because the thing is ... this type of show is not really the kind i enjoy so much? so since it's more for "research" and learning character arcs (and let's be honest: shots of liu sang), etc. it's easy to get distracted by other stuff. i'm also watching the sleuth of the ming dynasty, mr queen, bromance, the expanse, re-watching farscape and stargate sg-1, just finished the falcon and the winter soldier, and then anytime something new and short gets introduced it jumps the queue. there are just. so. many. things. to. watch! (now i have to look into anti-fraud league too!? you all are cruel ...)

what is antipoetry to you: i ... don't really think much about poetry? i know what i prefer is usually the more basic rhymed kind like lewis carroll, emily dickinson, poe, coleridge, etc. so i suppose i don't have much use for classifying non-rhyming verse? i can appreciate stuff like rupi kaur which i guess would qualify? or that william carlos williams plums poem? but it doesn't really stick with me the way lyric-like verse does

currently craving: i never know what exactly this is meant to be in reference to ... hmmm, i would love a new high-concept, high production-quality movie like say, pacific rim, to be released, just for that massive, excited energy that comes with something new that hasn't already got tons of disappointing or conflicting history behind it - that would be so fun!!

other than that, right now, i mostly kinda want some fried fish? but that will have to wait until i go to get my second vaccine shot on wednesday since it's on the way there. i'd also like my internal body parts to settle down and fly right but it's been more than a month and they don't seem inclined :(((( maybe once i'm fully vaxxed i'll think about consulting somebody about it

tagging @foxofninetales @xia-xueyi @momosandlemonsoda @memorydragon @thewindsofsong @elvencantation @mylastbraincql @hesayshesgotboyfriend @aurawolfgirl2000 @smaragdine-galaxy and anyone who wants to! but never feel obligated and if you don't get around to it for like half a year that's totally fine, i am still interested!!!

[missroserose]

Tumbld questions meme!

@withoneheadlight tagged me, because she is amazing and I adore her. <3

1. why did you choose your url?

It's a long and boring story, but the short version is, my last name is Rose, and Rose is also a convenient short form of Ambrosia, so there you have it. Entertainingly enough, I once came across a ghost story in an anthology that featured a character named Miss Rose Rose, but it was after I'd already begun using the handle.

2. any side-blogs? if you have them, name them and why you have them.

Nope, I have absolutely zero patience for Social Media Management (TM). If you follow this blog, you're getting the unfiltered Me Experience. I hope you've got your tag filters set appropriately 😂

3. how long have you been on tumblr?

Technically since 2008, I think? But I only really started using it ten years later.

4. do you have a queue tag?

See above re: social media management, haha. I never use the queue, I'm kinda surprised people still follow me tbh.

5. why did you start your blog in the first place?

Entirely to stalk @skybound2, which means she is directly responsible for the many amazing friends I've made via Tumblr (both online and IRL). Thank you, love!

6. why did you choose your icon/pfp?

It was the middle of the pandemic, I had a lot less patience for people's shit than usual, and I'd just gotten my hair cut like Andromache the Scythian's. So I decided to experiment with a slightly less friendly-looking avatar. I haven't decided if I'm going to change it to something more cheerful/inviting again...

7. why did you choose your header?

It's a photo of Auke Recreational Area, locally known as Auke Rec, one of the nicer places in Juneau to hang out with friends and have a barbeque/admire the view/generally chill. I have a lot of happy memories there, and while I love the lake in Chicago, I miss that particularly Alaskan combination of stunning mountains rising directly up out of the ocean.

8. what’s your post with the most notes?

a total Stranger Things shitpost I made in an hour, and most of that was finding a meme generator. I'm not mad about it, but I hope at least a few of the people who've liked and reblogged it have also checked out the fic it illustrates.

9. how many mutuals do you have?

Hell if I know. I'm not even sure I could estimate how many people I interact with regularly—I'm on here so erratically that it's kind of a revolving door, depending on who's around and who's awake at the time. But I definitely have those people who it gives me a little jolt of warmth to see their username in my notes <3

10. how many followers do you have?

Don't know, don't care. That way lieth madness.

11. how many people do you follow?

um...maybe 100? 🤷‍♀️

12. have you ever made a shitpost?

See above re: most popular post, haha. I've tried a few others but none have taken off to the same degree. Usually I'm more likely to be muttering to myself about my latest writing project.

13. how often do you use tumblr each day?

Depends. If I'm at the good part of a writing project, or if my life is particularly busy, maybe once. If I'm procrastinating, or sick at home in bed, or just braindead and in need of dopamine, I might open the app dozens of times in a day.

14. did you have a fight/argument with another blog once? who won?

Nah, fighting on social media's not my thing. The unfollow and block buttons exist for a reason.

15. how do you feel about “you need to reblog this” posts

I give 'em the ol' roll-and-scroll. 🙄📜

16. do you like tag games?

I do! (Though I feel like this sample set is skewed, haha.) Initially I sorta pooh-poohed them but as I got to know how Tumblr works I've come to enjoy them as ways to bond with people whose posts might otherwise get drowned out in the noise.

17. do you like ask games?

I do, because like all performers, I love talking about myself. Plus it's always fun to see which ones people actually send in asks for.

18. which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

No idea?

19. do you have a crush on a mutual?

definitely. More than one. Maybe it's you. <3

20. tags?

@skybound2 @rhubarbdreams @marvelis @notwhatiam @introvertia @letshargroovetonight @avalonlights @shewritesdirty and anyone else who wants to do it—tag me, I'd love to see your answers!

[onlinebobm]

Index Your Site Fast In Google

3 Ways For Fast Google Indexing Process

When we are talking about indexing in the web searches, there is always the question about (for now) still the biggest one - the Google. And it's not about how to index your site in Google, but rather 'how do I get Google to index my site faster'? When 'faster' means not days but just hours.

World is going faster and faster, so we all are staying against very important question: how can I get indexed faster, especially by the most popular crawlers like Google. Fortunately there are very simple, easy to implement methods, which we can use for our websites quite straight. There aren't so called 'silver bullets' of course, but we can play some simple tricks for almost instant Google indexing.

When we are starting to play with web design, there are some technical steps to learn. At the same time we have something more 'artistic', magic like question: how do I get indexed by Google? Theoretically all you need is just to signal to the crawler to index your site, unfortunately there are changes inside the robot, so Google crawler sometimes needs keywords, another time external links and it is changing constantly.

Title Trick For Fast Indexing Your Site In Google

As we said there are constant changes inside the web crawler robots, especially inside the Google one, but there is very constant and quite important thing which stays for years without the change. It's the importance of the title with the context inside it. The algorithms are evolving, the web 'fashion' is transforming, the new and sometimes neat tricks can be implement, but the weight of the title still stays as one of the most important SEO components.

We can use this property for our advantage in speeding up the Google indexing process. The method is actually well known for most of the web developers, unfortunately it looks like it's being forgotten too often. What more, this trick as one of the Google indexing techniques works perfectly well with so called 'long tail' page promotion - probably the best method to climb high into web search results.

How is it working? It's simple, but it works very efficient.

When you are looking for the perfect title for your page, check first, which of the 'long tail' keywords has the lots of searches with small competition, so you can create some titles with it. Then use the web search for simple check which of your proposed titles is showing the most results and... That's it - for the great way to fast index your site it's just best first step.

As we know them - 'long tail' keywords are the great tool for finding the niche and because you need to find them anyway, then putting one inside your title is working for your whole page. Well, but it's not all if you're asking yourself 'how long will it take Google to index my site' - you need to speed up the whole indexing process.

Submit Trick For Index Your Site Fast In Google

There is one of the oldest way to inform the Google index checker about the change in your blog, through pinging the new web page. Many people are still using this method, unfortunately it's needs the time and you never have the comfort that your work is properly submitted. So, there are the authors who decided to use other search services for index, because the Google indexing tool is using other services to check the link popularity.

It's good and if it working it is always nice to use different ways to fast index your site, but why don't you decide to use the native website indexing tool? Instead of creating more troubles and asking yourself 'how can I speed up Google indexing?' you can log in into your Google account and use internal Google webmaster tools. It's the fastest possible way to submit URL to Google and probably the perfect one for fast Google indexing process.

Just think about it - instead of looking for detours and complicate your work, you can use already implemented technology. On one hand you can index your site using accepted Google indexing tool, on the other hand you are at the source, so you can work immediately with fast Google indexing process. Forgot the dilemma: how can I get indexed faster, because now you will be crawled in hours or minutes.

Your main problem with Google indexing techniques is solved instantly. Instead of waiting days or sometimes even weeks for robot to check your new page, you will have updated service at the same day. You can choose of course how often the robot will come to your site, but the first update is really fast.

Number And Bullet Tricks As Google Indexing Techniques

We should be honest here - this trick speeds up the indexing process just a little, because actual Google crawler 'likes' it and with current algorithm it is pointed really high. It doesn't matter what kind of fairy tales you will put in your bullets or what kind of number you will put with 'long tail' keyword in title. Current robot works pretty well with  this trick, so even many people are going out to other web searchers, for some time more it is much better in Google than external link farms, catalogs etc.

My duty here is to warn you: the fact, that it's 'hack' good for today doesn't means it will work great tomorrow. When you are looking for information and at the top you have stupid lists with almost the same babbling, it's just a matter of time when it stops working. So be aware.

All Tricks For Index Your Site Fast In Google

Maybe we didn't said how long does it take for Google to index or to re-index your site, because it's more like an art than science. What we know, that there are 3 simple tricks important for fast Google indexing process:

Title trick for fast indexing your site in Google - basic, but still very strong and 'liked' by the crawlers method for little bit faster, but also higher in search results.

Submit trick for index your site fast in Google - very useful implementation of the Google webmaster tools, mostly forgotten and probably the perfect way for index your site as fast as possible.

Number and bullet tricks as Google indexing techniques - not too great, but still working, 'liked' by the crawler ways to speed up indexing process and (more important) kicking you up in web search results.

It should be some more words about all of those methods, but it needs much more space. Maybe in the future.

Have a nice day.

[gettin-bi-bi-bi]

Hey I just have two questions really: 1) Are there any blogs that are similar to yours? Like do they answer questions concerning sexuality/gender? If so, what are their urls? 2) Do you have any information concerning safe wlw sex? Like what contraceptives should I use? Any techniques/information concerning (vaginal) fingering and oral sex? Like any info concerning straps- how to use one, where to buy one, what length is best suited for me and my partner etc.? (Part one)

How to have sex with trans women without making them uncomfortable or feeling disphoric (did I even spell that right???) and the dos and don'ts when it comes to a sexual relationship with trans people. I'm sorry if this comes across as blunt or insensitive that was never my intention.   Like most of my questions are concerned with safe wlw sex and if you can't answer them (for whatever reason) then can you at least point me towards any blogs (if you know of any) that would be able to answer

these questions.   Thank you if you choose to answer. I know I'm asking you to cover a lot of topics but schools don't tend to teach about non-cis or non-het sex ed so my options are pretty limited to the internet.

I can try to answer these questions for you but before I forget I would recommend you check out @sapphic-sex-ed. They are pretty much exactly the kind of blog you are looking for. They also have a pretty decent tag-system (as opposed to gettin-bi, sorry, I know this blog is a mess) so you may be able to go through old asks and already find the answers you’re looking for without sending your own question.

But now, let me see what I can do. I think a lot of those questions you want to know, like “what’s a good strap size” and “how do I make sure trans women feel comfortable during sex” all come down to the two magic words: Open Communication! Because not every person is the same, both in terms of their anatomy and in terms of what they like. So maybe you’ll have a partner who likes deep penetration and wants a BIG dildo and maybe the next partner doesn’t like penetration at all. You can only know these things if you talk to your partners. Ask them if they already know what they like or if there’s things they want to try out. Ask them if there’s anything they are uncomfortable with and don’t just make assumptions. For example, not all trans people are dysphoric or not for all of them it gets triggered during sex. Not to mention that not all trans women have the same genitals. Some may have had bottom surgery, others may still have a penis. And of those who have a penis some are able to have an erection and others aren’t; some like "using” their penis during sex and others don’t. You can only know if you ask.

So you see how many variables there are... I can’t give you a more specific answer to those questions other than “talk to your partners about needs and boundaries”. That is generally the advice I give regarding any question along the lines of “how do I make sex good?”

Some technical answers I can give regarding contraception/safe sex: Of course that also depends on a couple of things. For example when you have sex with a trans women (and you are cis) then you may have to also think about pregnancy prevention (be it by using condoms and/or hormonal birth control). If that’s not an issue then there’s still the question of safe oral sex - dental dams are an option there which are thin sheets that you lay over the vulva or anus. Regular testing for STIs, especially if you change partners frequently, is also generally a good idea.

Also re fingering: cut your fingernails SHORT! You may be able to finger yourself with long-ish nails without hurting yourself but that is NOT the same as doing it to someone else. So file them down! Your partner will be thankful! (What I do after cutting them is to run each nail over my lips and if I can feel any sharp edges, I file that area until it’s smooth!)

And some advice about strap-ons: don’t just focus your search on the perfect dildo - also pay attention to what harness you want to buy. Imo you can get away with a decent 20€-dildo and have a good time with that but the harness? It’ll really pay off to invest in a more expensive one that gives the wearer decent support because topping can be exhausting. Personally I find the “jock strap style” with a wide hip belt much more comfortable than any of those “thong style” harnesses because they jsut end up giving you a major wedgie. Cheap harnesses also don’t usually have decent padding in the pubic area so thrusting can get painful and leave your mons pubis feel bruised for days. So... invest in a good harness! Maddie says “top rights”!

Feel free to keep sending questions about sex ed if you find my answers satisfying enough but also check out the blog I tagged above - they are really good!

Maddie

[dunermacdonald]

Website SEO and ranking any website in less than 2 months

Ranking a Website and website SEO .

The process I would say is as follows

Buy domain with keyword in the title / URL- Google domains

Get hosting on a super fast host / Green geeks / English support for your website 24/7 / Simply amazing service.

Get wordpress - the rest are tedious - second option is a landing page I recommend another builder for small one page sites called swipe pages

Get a GMB - Google my Business profile - its Free and from Google and can be operated from your smartphone

Get Citations on fiverr - biggest draw card in local search - NAP being consistent.

Learn Basic SEO and web page optimization via the Moz Pie chart - This is your bible

Get a tracking software as you start your journey - Brightlocal $49 per month and you can help out 5 other businesses once you've taught yourself ...

Use the Semrush - Moz - Ahreffs free trial periods to learn SEO to a higher level

Build up your portfolio - get reviews for your GMB listing ,Facebook reviews ,Trustpilot reviews, be religious about this

Using Google analytics , free from Google analyse your traffic and see what content - search terms are relevant to your industry and site and add these with Fiverr to your site - get content written on Fiverr

Level Up - Get the paid version of Semrush - search your competitors back link profile

  Brightlocal ( has a great citation checking service ) or  you can properly check your competitors sites and emulate their strategy , get the same back links as them and get the same citations

Get reviews and add widgets to your website from Trustpilot - Facebook - and GMB widget - Wordpress has all these plugins to add widgets for free .Its proves multi platform credibility

Let me say from the start I knew nothing about ranking a website!

Well, I do now, but I did not when I started. I'm an electrician by trade.

The way I got into SEO has been a 3 year long journey .

I run my own electrical install and testing  company -www.zaelectrical.com

The company struggled to rank on first page and the Google map pack / snack pack

This was a problem I wanted to solve. How do I, a one man band, compete with established companies who have 20 + staff members and a budget of £2000 per month and then some?

Well, short answer is "Yes, you can!", but it took lots of research and trial and errors.

At first, I gave up.

I was interested in taking a stab at internet retail and I attempted selling products on Amazon in the USA.

9000 meters of climbing rope - 10m/ 20m /30m denominations / Unbranded

650 units of climbing chalk / Branded - XLR8

400 units of unbranded climbing chalk

I was out of my depth and had to study PPC via YouTube videos and it felt that I was fighting a losing battle. I barely broke even after Amazon's storage fees and monthly charges and charges for delivering my products from their warehouses. They also lost some of my stock ...

I then tried Shopify and the drop shipping model combined with  Facebook ads

This gave me back a glimmer of hope  that online sales were the way forward again , seeing the metrics of the impressions of advertising on a platform that works - Facebook

I eventually broke even, well sort of and vowed not to give up , but to take these lessons and try and apply the correct PPC to my business in the UK

ZA Electrical Ltd

OK, so here the journey technically starts:

Lots of videos on YouTube later

SEO experts - £200 a month for 4 months

Wiring up a friends house , which caused numerous rifts - in exchange for a website

Re-doing the website again myself with help from a person on Fiverr

And then having to do it again with help from a friend I met through a work contact  (He informed me that he was doing the bare bones site after I had given him an outline explaining that I had been let down time and time again)

He pulled the site together. Amen

I had super ambition and hoped it would rank immediately

Talk about living in a dream

I started to study with the same ambition I had applied to Amazon , every night after my day work I would study

Then things started to make sense to me.

You can't beat what already has been done - big companies can out budget you and out staff you every day of the week

So DO NOT reinvent the wheel I thought

What are they doing and how is that working ?

This is where having the right tools is my only chance, I decided.

Get a domain from Google Domains  with the main keyword in the title

Get a domain Host from Green Geeks - the fastest Host and 24/7 Helpline

The first thing I learnt is Google My Business - GMB

In the UK you have a big authority for trades called Checkatrade with unlimited budget and 2 million back links - Yes, 2 million

You wont beat these people so ...

Emulate - and over ride them

Step 1 -Cue- Moz Pie chart

This is a gem and started me on the road properly. It basically gives you a % of every item on the checklist to be completed for local and organic map positioning

So during studying I learnt the basics are ...

Buy a Domain on Google domains with your keyword in the title

Purchase hosting on a superfast Host - Green Geeks

Links and Authority

Google index Count

Link count

Linking Domains

Majestic C Flow

Domain Authority

Website age

Rank Checking

Google

Google Mobile

Google Maps

Bing

Bing Local

Google My Business

This is claiming your business on the GMB app and building your profile.I will elaborate further down on this Blog .

On site SEO of your Website

Page Load speed

Robots.txt

XML Sitemap

Errors

Internal links

URLs

SSL

SEO

Page Titles

Page descriptions

Open graph tags

Twitter card tags

Image alt tags

H1 Tags

Word count

Flash

Responsive design

Mobile friendly

Mobile load speed

Mobile rendering

Content

Address

Phone number

Schema.org Markup

Top Keywords

To do this I had to find a program that is both easy to navigate and understand I highly recommend BrightLocal

The process after getting my website to a reasonable level was to order citations on

Fiverr

The more niche, the better.

I recommend looking at your top competitors with

Brightlocal

and matching or ordering more citations through either

Brightlocal

I also looked at

Fiverr

, which is by far the cheapest option, but you have to research credentials and levels.

Look at your top competitors' keywords and then optomise your GMB listing together with your website to match those keywords and get content written for you on

Fiverr

, again check the sellers' credentials and level.

Backlinks ...Well, well, well....

This is not a quick process , the citations you order will help get backlinks too, but the quickest way is to ask other sites in your trade / profession to reference your site. This was my route on a budget, however there are so many ways. Google does not love you if you buy them and this is against their terms and conditions, so buy them on

fiverr

at your own risk. Just saying.

I had to teach myself a bit about Wordpress, which seems from all accounts the easiest to self teach, with tutorials on the web, also the SEO and range of plugins, both paid and free, outweigh any other website builder by a mile - this was a big thing for me anyway.

I would work on my reviews from each customer and once I started to see I was approaching 70+ reviews I started to see my rank increase in the local rankings for "near me" search terms

T

Step 2 Study some more -  a different set of tools

You tube - greatest invention of the 21st century

I would need to learn about my GMB listing and how to maximise it

Step 1 I had started - Logo - reviews - regular photos - weekly posts - Geo located and alt tag stuffed photos

step 2 study - Greg Gifford  - what a genius

Step 3 - better analytical tools - Semrush -

This  tool has a free trial period so if you want to try it you can cancel within the cool off period without being charged

Armed with a new arsenal I felt much more confident .

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[strrawberrymoon]

name  /  alias : leigh  gender  /  pronouns : female + she/her where  ya  from  ? : europe 👀 the  current  time :  18:53 height :  164 cm, i think that’s 5′4 job  or  major :  double major in sociology and media communications, still grinding pet  (  s  ) :  two dogs! one is a 7 year old maltese and the other a 3 year old cane corso favorite  thing  (  s  )  about  yourself :  im a great listener and i give great advice, i’m straighforward which some people don’t like but oh well, i’m pretty adaptable. i got some nice titties any  special  talents  ? :  i can roll my tounge in any direction + crack a lot of knuckles ajkdshaj

why  you  joined  hqclouds :  i’ve been itchng to write more lately, so when love told me about their group i thought i’d give it a shot !!

meaning  behind  url :  strawberry moon was just a recent occurance irl which was really cool + i associate marinette with strawberries for some reason, and i’m a big fan of the lady moon

last  thing  you  googled :  i’m having some issues with my michrophone and zoom so i googled how to fix it, but no dice

birthday  /  zodiac :  leo ! my birthday is august 11th in  your  opinion  ,  does  your  sign  suit  you  ? : yes and no. leo’s are very misunderstood imo, but each sign has the “more popular” or well known traits and then there’s the flipside of the coin—which i think suits me more myers  -  briggs :  ISFP / INFP moral  alignment :  chaotic idiot hogwarts  house : gryffindor

three  fictional  character  (  s  )  you  see  yourself  in  +  why :  i honestly see myself in katara from atla, the whole smothering mothering routine. it’s becoming a regular thing for my friends to say “thanks, mom” or “ok, mom” so i guess i’m the mom friend. also fred weasly... he’s a twin.. i’m a twin... that’s all i need. and lastly, and very leastly, neil josten from all for the game series. most of you probably don’t know it, but he’s a demisexual chaotic idiot who says “i’m fine” way too much for someone who is most definitely not fine.

i  started  roleplaying : probably when i was around 16-17 was my first official roleplay experience. it was on facebook and kind of a nightmare types  of  rps  i  enjoy :  i like college stuff and small town rps, but i also love plot heavy rps that push you into developing your muse. really anything that isn’t too restricting favorite  fcs  to  use :  i don’t have go-to faceclaims. i tend to make a character around a FC and then use them until i lose muse or just feel like they need to rest. switch it up a lot, but some faces that i’ve really enjoyed playing for a longer amount of time are steven kelly, cindy mello and ellen v. lora fandom  (  s  )  you’d  like  to  write  in : i want to write in all of the fandoms i know nothing about and look like a dumbass. also harry potter, the hunger games, avatar the last airbender, gossip girl, etc etc fandom  (  s  )  you  aren’t  in  but  are  curious  about :  marvel somewhat, any video games are very fascinating to me even though i’m not a gamer + know nothing about them, any distopian kind of fandom re: hunger games

share  a  funny  roleplay  horror  story :  recently an admin of a twitter rp tried to use my male muse for their weird ship narrative. they tried to make him look like an asshole (& i do play assholes but this one wasn’t one) + used another male muse to make it seem as if these two boys were fighting over the person’s girl, even though she actually had a ship all lined up. they were also running the gossip twitter, so they made up a bunch of stuff about our muses without our consent and consequently i told them to fuck off, and both of us left the group. then she had no more “groupies” so she cuffed and the group closed two days later. it was petty hilarious.

fondest  roleplay  memory :  once in an OC group, i wasn’t “technically” doing a ship with a friend, even though the characters had feelings for each other. but for some reason the status of their relationship was a hot topic group wide, meaning everybody had their nose in it and wanting to know what’s up, so they publically kept doing things to make people think they’re together while denying it in the same breath. it was really fun to let it play out like that.

favorite  canon  muse  (  s  )  to  play : roy mustang from fullmetal alchemist, katara from atla, and my baby marinette favorite  original  muse  (  s  )  to  play : the last original character i played and fell in love with was named alex. im obsessed with him. still doing 1 x 1 with his girlfriend. they’re having a baby, it’s all very emo and domestic. maybe i make him relapse for funsies. canon  ships  you  can’t  help  but  love :  lupin x tonks from harry potter, korra x asami from legend of korra, danerys x daario naharis from game of thrones, katniss x peeta from the hunger games, etc... trope  (  s  )  you  tend  to  be  guilty  of : i use the rich kid douchebag stereotype a lot. i also make a lot of my characters addicted to something to make them struggle with that.

i  prefer  .  .  . angst  ,  smut  ,  or  fluff :  bro... i am a sucker for ansgt and smut. i do fluff on special ocassions >:) long  or  short  replies :  i prefer when they start out shorter, but medium is my fave pre  plotting  or  chemistry : chemistry all the way. plotting can be really fun but it’s a miss more often than a hit for me. plotting can be good for pre-established relationships but that’s about it sentence  starters  or  headcanon  memes : sentence starters single  muse  or  multimuse  blogs :  i’ve never done a multimuse blog, and i’ve actually been super against them in the past, but i’m starting to change my mind hehe gif  icons  ,  medium  gifs  ,  or  static  icons : static (or none honestly)

grab  the  book  nearest  to  you  and  pull  a  quote  from  it :  ❝ You were children. was there no one to protect you? ❞ — ❝ Was there no one to protect you? ❞

what’s  a  quote  or  song  lyric  that  speaks  to  your  soul  ? :  ❝ I loved her, and sometimes, she loved me too ❞ 

top  current  celebrity  crushes :  zendaya, margot robbie always last  movie  you  watched :  365 days (2020) did  you  like  it  ? :  i hated it, what a waste of a perfectly good 2 hours  favorite  movie  (  s  )    of  all  time : harry potter franchise makes me nostalgic, perks of being a wallflower, my sister’s keeper favorite  tv  show  (  s  )  of  all  time : for some reason i’m obsessed with grey’s anatomy but i hate it favorite  tv  show  that  hasn’t  ended : well fricking grey’s anatomy favorite  series  of  books  /  novels  /  comics : the hunger games, harry potter sports  team  (  s  )  you  rep : my friend is into sports i rep her ksdsdj favorite  video  game  (  s  ) : the sims. i like playing animal crossing vicariously through switch owners favorite  youtube  channels : don’t usually keep up with yt channels but i just binged some stuff from psychology in seattle hobbies :  procrastinating

what  are  the  three  non  essential  things  you’d  bring  to  a  deserted  island  ? : sunglasses, hairtie, hand cream

put  your  music  on  shuffle.  what  six  songs  pop  up  ? : 

say goodbye by skillet, 

off the grid by alina baraz & khalid, 

bury a friend by billie eilish, 

break up with your girlfriend by ariana grande

get back by nine lashes

marry you by bruno mars (man)

personal  aesthetic : growing out my hair only to always wear it in a bun dream  vacation  ? : i just wanna go to the seaside with my friends dream  job  ? :  i literally can’t stand capitalism. wanna move to italy and collect berries and draw titties all day dream  car  ? :  something that drives itself if  i  could  live  anywhere  ,  it’d  be : somewhere in canada near the woods favorite  musical : mama mia? counts favorite  food  (  s  ) :  bananaaaaas, ice cream, cereal. these are all foods ok coffee  order : i don’t drink coffee unwatched  stuff  in  your  netflix  /  hulu  /  etc :  13 reasons why (i’m too bored), the flash, outer banks, elite, the half of it, intersteller, locke & key aaand some stuff that’s not mine but someone else using my account

what’s  a  subject  you  know  too  much  about  +  never  get  tired  of  talking  about  ? : idk anything about anything askldhl

[marriael]

1 Year Blogiversary

So. Hello people. Since 100 followers is still far away for me this was just me taking a chance to appreciate mutual, let me have this. 

All of these could be started with we've never talked/we haven't talked much so. Ehe. That one’s on me folks.

This is just a big, dumb, sappy post that I wouldn't recommend reading tbh.

Thank you to everyone who follows me, no matter for how long. It must get exhausting to see my dumb ass so often.

@wydyuto You were my first follower! When you first followed me it gave me so much confidence to keep going and making moodboards. Thank you so much! 

@igot7-penta-seo You've been dming me all these posts and I feel bad since I never send anything back. One day I will, I promise! It feels so long ago but I just remember reading all your pentagon stuff when I was getting into them and loving your writing and them even more. 

@mrchoiholic Alright since I’m dumb and don’t know when we became mutuals I’m putting you here. I remember my first interaction with you (technically) was I requested a Hoshi fic and then reblogged it because the title was incredible. Then I was Tea anon for a while, which was a good time. You’ve always given me caring older sister vibes even if you’re my ‘mom’. 

@cxvert-edits Oh my goodness hello! So I deleted my insta app. Since you’re mostly on there and I’m mostly on here we don’t really see each other much :(.It took me far too long to realize but I kind of sounded like an ass in our my last dm’s on here so. Very sorry about that, I didn’t really realize how my words sounded at the time. Honestly you were among my first inspirations for moodboards. 

@ladyluck852 Hey bub! I haven’t seen you around much but I hope you’re doing well. You’ve seen a lot of my blog and I hope you’re here for a lot longer. 

@mixtapejoon It seems like you started @/chulobangtan again so I think you’ll see this. I love reading all your stuff and since it seems like you enjoy writing so much I really hope you get the chance to again. With all the crap that went on with that guy and your school I hope you’re doing better now. 

@peachy-bangchan I feel like I don't talk to or about you enough which is an issue I must remedy immediately. I didn't know how popular you were when you followed me so I didn't properly lose my shit. You've really been here for a long time and never once have you stopped supporting me. Thank you, I appreciate that more than I could ever put into words.

@luvhannie Moodboard queen Anna! You’ve given me so much inspiration for moodboards. Motivation, too. I remember when you said you liked my moodboard, I felt amazing for like a week. 

@queerjunhui I just remember being so intimidated by you (still am lol) because you were friends with so many cool people. I think I sent you an anon once as Emotional anon? Maybe that was a dream or something. I started a conversation with you once and I’m pretty sure that was before we became mutuals, interesting. 

@middle-of-a-wonshua-sandwich Your URL will always be a mood lol. A lot of your more recent stuff has been Monsta X and non-kpop related but you still follow all my weird bullshit.

@stray-kids-stuff My first official stay mutual! You’re such a darling and I’m glad I found your blog and that discord. I hope you’re doing at least a little better now. 

@han-jxsungs  I clowned myself as ao3 anon that was fun lmao. OMG I just looked and ROSE HELLO MY DARLING ANGEL. If you didn’t get my last ask, just now it was super sappy and gross. I’m glad you’re back but if it gets too much again, don’t hesitate to leave. 

@gryffindor925 lmao hey Aaykta what’s up. I don’t think you use tumblr because wow you must be tired of all this kpop shit. I forget you follow me most of the time. If you ever thought I was curbing my tags to seem less weird at some point it was because I see her in real life and thought that me freaking out about this stuff was super weird. I actually had a dream last night I found your secret kpop blog. 

@finn-shitposts I honestly didn’t connect this blog and your art one until after you were revealed because I’m dumb. You seriously made the most amazing thing. Pun + Jilix, gah that was seriously amazing, and when I think about it I smile. 

@pikachulein Even though I had several very popular blogs follow me before you were the first one I seriously like, panicked about. I have an official offer for you. Feel free to decline because time zones are crap but french learning buddies? 

@ult-bee So we met in a discord server but I feel like I left it? I honestly couldn’t tell you what server it was though. Sorry, boo. Love you though <3

@dreamsevens You made the cutest Junhao drawing ever. You were such a sweet lil anonnie, too. We haven’t really interacted but I see you, boo. 

@jihan You’re both such lil sweeties! Honestly just a wholesome jihan blog, would recommend. Loved being an anon even if it was just a little while. 

@nerdynerdynerdy Iyoniiiiiiiii! You’re just the sweetest lil babe and I feel like I need to protect you. 

@visualgiggles I don’t know how I didn’t see you before we were platonically shipped, but I didn’t. I’m really glad that happened though, and that I had my brief anon stint. 

@3rachad Clowned the hell out of myself and revealed as CB anon (who I still am because I’m cowardly and dumb). Love the new hair cut bb.

@0hyja Ya seem super cool but also. You called Park Jisung rat boy and I don't know if I can truly forgive you for that  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ jkjkjk. I just feel like you don’t like me. One day I’ll get over that and send some asks or something. 

@nanjaemin I always forget you’re younger than me because you talk exactly the same as the other people on here. You baby. Love you darling, don’t let those give you shit.

@ethereal-lix I so often go to send you ask games and then forget entirely. I will make a better effort to interact with you! 

@soulclub My first aroha mutual! I really like seeing all your edits and thank you for co-creating the idea of Aroha Village! I’m trying to write a kind of tour thing for it but it’s not great so. This is embarrassing but you and Bex kind of meld together. I don’t know what it is but the best reason I have is my terrible memory.

@cherry-seungmin My stay host(?)! Wow going to your blog is such an explosion of happiness and Seungmin I love that. It felt like ages ago we were freaking out about Miroh teasers but it was actually March.

@ultkyu You were my lil stay anon! I feel bad that I haven’t made anything for 99kdh. It might take me a little longer yet but I will do it.

@uwujpgs Heeeeeey Bex. I don’t really know what to say :(. Actually. This is embarrassing but sometimes you and Rae just meld together. I don’t know why and then when I get you mixed up I feel bad. But yeah. Stay safe and know I’m figuratively sending you nice candles.

@jinniesmeow I’ll be honest I thought you didn’t like me at first. It sounds dumb but after I joined skzrequests you didn’t follow me so I was just like ‘:} ok.’ I want to honestly apologize because I was kind of ignoring you in the kakao chat. I don't have a reason/excuse for that. An official question for you as well. Feel free to decline because time zones suck but be my unofficial french teacher?

@staytion-nine Pitchfork anon! I have no idea where the anon name came from. I was pretty surprised when I saw the post about you getting a tumblr. Overall you’re just a little dol and I hope to know you better.

@kimwoojin-s I thought I was going to cry when you followed me istg. I’ll talk in the TGS chat. One day, eventually. Take care of yourself and try not to burn out lovely.

@bbywooyoungie  We have interacted exactly 0 times (i’ll send an ask soon, promise). Scrolling down your blog I now notice we have mutual mutuals. I don’t understand how I didn’t see that before, but ok brain sure. 

@re-biirthday Anyone who organizes an anon event is automatically a sweetheart in my book, so there you are. I really liked that sketch you posted today and I hope you’re doing well sweets. 

@xiaocity I saw you in others ask boxes for a loooooooong time but only followed you recently for some reason. Yeah, you just seem super dope and I’m glad we have something in common. Even if it is finding our bias intimidating lol.

@luvjisungs I’ve only seen you around recently but you are an absolute darling. Thank you so much for helping me out that night, I really needed it.

[spnfanficpond]

July 2019 Pond LiveChat Recap

We had a great time chatting with @crispychrissy today! Thank you so much, Chrissy, for joining us!

This month, to make up for not having a chat in June, we chatted for two hours about some issues related to posting your works on Tumblr. Chrissy talked to us about making our own gifs, we discussed giving credit to gifmakers, how to make a Keep Reading cut, and much more!! A rundown of the chat, as well as general Pond news, is below the cut!

[Editor’s Note: For ease of understanding, the tags you put at the bottom of a post with a # will be called #hash-tags, while the tags you use to notify another Tumblr user that you’ve posted something will be called @mention-tags.]

Q: What programs do you use to make gifs? Are they free, or do you have to buy them?

Chrissy: Well, there is a free one I used back when I started called GifCam. It's easy to set up (it's just an exe) and there's a little learning curve, but it's easier than what I do now. I currently use a screen capture program that came with my $1500 graphics card along with Sony Vegas. If anyone wants GifCam, I can send it to them.

Q: And are you watching via Netflix or some other way?

C: Yes, I use Netflix. I have the first 6 seasons on DVD along with 12 and 13, so for bloopers and deleted scenes I have to use the DVD's. For current episodes, I have YouTube TV, and use the screen capture option with that. Tumblr has a 3MB limit on file size, so it’s really hard. The amount of frames you can fit in a sub-3MB gif depend on so many factors. Colors in the scene, movement, FPS (frames per second), and length. A low FPS gif looks pretty choppy, while a high FPS gif is smooth as butter.

Q: So that's why some gifs seem to go on forever, and others are quick things.

C: Yes. I can make a really long gif of something that's really really tiny, but if you want it to fit into the pixels of a Tumblr post, it limits how long they can be.

Q: And I guess that's also why some gifs I find from Google and try to put into a post won't animate right. If they're too big, I guess Tumblr stops them?

C: Yes. Tumblr just freezes the image instead of animating it. When you save it, check the file size.

C: So this is an example of the brightness and colors of a gif affecting the size. Since there's so much brightness and color, the more the gif has to render, meaning the bigger the size. This worked out to be only 35 frames, which is like... really small, but the gif itself came out to be 2.83 MB.

Q: Are websites that come up when I Google "gif maker" worth my time and effort?

C: Only if you don't mind a stupid watermark from the company.

Q: About giving credit to gifmakers....any thoughts?

C: Well, all my gifs have "cc" in the bottom right corner, that's how I give myself credit if they're used. Not everyone knows the "cc" gifs are mine, but I do. I offer my gif making services to anyone if they need a specific gif made for a story or otherwise, not limited to SPN. I've made porn gifs, ones from YouTube, and from other shows. If it exists, I can gif it. Tumblr's search feature is... well, it's not perfect, but it'll help give you a quick gif and give credit to the author. When someone uses a gif I've posted, it gives me a notification, which is awesome, but annoying if it gets reposted a crap ton. It also links the person back to the original post and who posted it.

Q: Some folks seem to think that if they grab a gif from Google, just saying they found it on Google is giving credit. I know this isn't the case. (I mistakenly thought that pasting the link to the image would allow folks to click through to where I found it, but discovered last night that's not the case.) If I found a gif on Google that was yours and used it, and provided a link to the page where Google found it, would that be enough, do you think?

C: Sometimes a reverse image search can be helpful, but it mostly doesn't work with gifs. That would be fine for me. Like I said, I have "cc" in the corner so that's me marking the gif as one of mine. I can't control where someone reposts them or uses them. There's a difference between reposting it to a site like Pinterest or using my gif on a LiveJournal post and saving it and reuploading it like it's yours and without giving me credit. One is malicious, the other isn't. I have a problem with the latter.

Q: I started looking at where Google finds gifs last night, and noticed that sites like gfycat have whole pages of gifs, and just citing that page might not be enough. (And trying to find where Google found them many times leads to a Tumblr blog that’s now gone.)

C: Google finds gifs all over the place. Someone can take my gif from Tumblr and reupload it to a bunch of different websites, all which would show up in a Google search. It's hard to find the original poster when it happens. Yeah, people delete their pages, but the gif stays. If you get to that point, just say, “Gif found on Google, unable to find original post"

Q: Speaking of finding gifs, how does the search function work on Tumblr? Is it just whatever the post was tagged with or the first 5 tags like regular searches or something else entirely?

After some discussion, we all decided that the gif search uses whatever #hash-tags are on a post where a gif is used, and then makes that gif searchable by that #hash-tag. So, if you make a post about chronic pain and use a gif of the Winchesters hugging, that gif will then show up in the gif search under #chronic pain. Also, popularity of the gif ensures it shows up at the top of the search. As people stop using a gif, it eventually falls out of the search results.

Q: Going back to file sizes...Do the dimensions of the source video (like watching Netflix/YouTube in full screen vs in a smaller window) impact the size of the gif, specifically with GifCam?

C: Now, that's a HUGE reason why I switched the way I make gifs. Netflix has a set streaming rate, which is only optimized at full screen. So the smaller you make the window to get it to fit into the size of the gif, the more degraded the image is. (Some confusion was expressed, so she continued to explain it further.) Netflix likes to run as big as possible. It wants as many pixels it can get to show you an image. If you minimize the window, it kind of freaks out and has to quickly scramble to make everything smaller so the video keeps playing. It does that by squishing everything down, making the image look weird. It might not be too noticeable when you look at it, but when you make gifs, they're gonna come out lookin all wonky.

Q: So, you have to make the Netflix window smaller in order to capture the images with the gif-making software? The gif-making software can't capture full screen?

C: GifCam will record the gif based on the window size. You gotta squish the window down to make it a reasonable size to fit on Tumblr. Other programs, which you might have to pay for, might be able to capture full screen and do the squishing for you. (Side note: during this discussion, Chrissy gave us some examples, and in showing them to us, revealed that a good gif size for Tumblr is around 410-430 wide, 230-250 high.)

After that, we moved on to other topics that had been brought up in the Pond survey a while back. 

How to make a Keep Reading cut and when you should use it.

Note: Although this worked for one person on the app, it doesn’t seem to work for all, and we’re not sure why. There are too many variables to determine the root cause for why it doesn’t always work. 

Q: "When should I give someone credit for being a beta (for example: I bounced ideas with someone for a minute or two but they didn’t technically beta read it; I can’t decide between X and Y (with no context), pick one)"

A: Always mention anyone who helped you. You don’t have to say they beta-read your story, but at least mention that they helped, even if they didn’t know it! Gratitude is always a good thing!! Writing takes a village, and being thankful for help is courteous, kind, caring, and helps you to make friends that will be the same right back to you.

How do I add my masterlist for my blog description?

Note: Chrissy pointed out that if you change your bio by hitting “edit appearance” instead of “edit theme” the link will break, so be careful where you add this! These things and more can be found in the Pond FAQ list!!

Q: The facts on search issues (re: links, tags, and anything else that keeps a fic from being “searchable”)

A: A lot of testing and research went into trying to figure this out, and we still probably don’t have it all figured out, but we learned some interesting things!

Most importantly, since we have a lot of smut writers, if you use the #hash-tag #NSFW on your post, your post will NOT show up in any searches!!

Adding an external link should not cause your post to be unsearchable, but that’s not guaranteed. According to Tumblr’s own help pages, “some links may cause posts to be hidden from recent search results.” Since spambots use external links in their posts, this will always be something that could possibly interfere with your post being searchable.

According to Tumblr: “Blogs that have been either self-flagged or flagged by us as “explicit” per our old policy (before December 17, 2018), will not show up in search. Users under 18 are still not allowed to click through to see the content of these blogs. If you think your blog has been erroneously marked as explicit, you can file an appeal by following these instructions.”

When you are searching for your post, make sure you are looking at Most Recent posts, not Most Popular! 

Some things to know about searching:

There are two ways to search a blog. If you use the search box at the top, then your results will have a URL like this:  https://spnfanficpond.tumblr.com/search/big-fish-chat

However, that is not the only way you can search your blog. If you look at a post, and click on one of the tags on that post, your results will have a URL like this: https://spnfanficpond.tumblr.com/tagged/big-fish-chat

The first search will look through all of the text in a post to find the words you’re searching for. The second search will only look for posts with that specific tag. If a blog doesn’t have a search box in its theme, you can type these searches in manually, and they will still work.

You can also do these searches manually through all of Tumblr. Keep this in mind when you’re doing your general Tumblr search and check the URL of your results, because... “search” & “tagged” look at #hash-tags differently!

(This is so confusing, we know.)

“Search” will look through 20 #hash-tags. “Tagged” will only look through 5 #hash-tags. So, put your most important #hash-tags in your first 5!!

Q: Can you talk about xkit?

A: xkit is awesome and we should all bow down to the xkit guy because he fixes things when Tumblr poops on the carpet. Seriously. It’s only for use on desktop, but it makes Tumblr so much easier to manage.

xkit is an extension for your browser. Look for New xkit, and download that. Once you have xkit loaded, click on the xkit icon near the top right of your screen. When the xkit window pops up, click on Get Extensions. We could suggest a list of the best extensions, but they’re all seriously awesome. Blacklist seems to be the most common, as it filters out posts you don’t want to see based on tags and text. Auto Tagger, Activity+, Outbox, One-Click Postage, and Quick Tags are all ridiculously useful for everyday blogging. The whole thing is super easy to learn and use, and you can’t break anything while you’re learning. Some extensions, like Blacklist, may slow your computer down when you’re surfing your dash because they essentially surf it ahead of you and manipulate it. If you start seeing problems, you can disable any extensions you decide you don’t want to use, anymore.

Seriously, it’s freaking awesome.

Great talk, guys! If you have ideas for topics, please let us know!!

General Pond Updates and Reminders

What we’ve got cooking up next: 

We’re working on setting up the discord server. We’re still learning the ins and outs and all the options available. More options means more discussion among the admins and decisions to be made, so please be patient! We’re getting there!

Reminders:

Angel Fish Award nominations are accepted all month long! No need to wait to tell us how much you liked a fellow Fish’s work!  IF YOU HAVE SENT IN A NOMINATION, BUT HAVE NOT RECEIVED A PRIVATE MESSAGE CONFIRMING WE RECEIVED IT, WE DIDN’T GET IT. Be sure to use Submit instead of Ask!

Don’t forget to submit your stories to be posted to the blog! When your stories are on the blog, then they are easier to nominate for Angel Fish Awards!

SPNFanFicPond Season 14 Weekly Episode Challenge - Now that the season is over, we will be reposting each prompt list through the summer months! Remember, there’s no deadline for submissions!

Say hi to June’s New Members!

Check the Pond CALENDAR to see when Big Fish will be in the chat room and other Pond and SPN events are happening! Know of something that’s not on the calendar, send us an ask or submission with the deets info details!  The calendar offers a lot of features, such as showing you when things are in your own timezone! Since we’re an international group, that’s a definite plus!!

We don’t have a topic or speaker set up for August’s event, yet, so if there’s something you want to talk about, or someone you want to talk to, LET US KNOW!

[uniformbravo]

me trying to make a gif part 2 (thrilling finale, buildup ver.)

ok good news and bad news: good news being withheld for Spoilers (not that it’s that hard to guess anyway lol), bad news explained first bc, chronologically, it is first

so yesterday i mentioned in the tags of that post that i had seen that krita has an animation feature so i was gonna try importing the frames into that and then exporting it as a gif. easier said than done, as it turns out

i started by opening the file i made yesterday with 62 layers as the frames and importing that into krita, which worked fine (i didn’t know you could actually open .psd files in clip stuido ((this typo is so fucking stupid it made me laugh so im leaving it)) and krita, so that’s pretty neat, i wonder if it works the other way around too) but i ran into problems when i tried to convert those layers into frames in an animation. because, like, the layout of the program has the layers displayed in one tab, and the animation timeline in another, like so:

(do u like how im using pictures now, i thought of that yesterday after i published the other post and realized hey, visual reference would probably make my plight a lot easier to understand!! so enjoy these educational diagrams from now on)

so my goal was to get the frames from the layers into the timeline, and i still don’t know if i did it right bc lbr krita is not very intuitive at all,,.,, i mean i watched a video tutorial abt how to animate in krita which was v helpful (it’s the one by jesse j james on yt fuckin SHout out) but it was about animating from scratch, not importing an animation you’ve already done elsewhere

so like, the way krita’s animation thing works, from what i could piece together as i bumbled my way around w/ it, is that each layer in the layers tab is a separate timeline in the,,, timeline tab

i want them all to be in the same timeline, not separate ones, and there’s no way to combine them in the timeline tab bc doing that just overwrites whatever layer you’re pasting it down onto, and also if you define the number of frames for that timeline (62 for this project) it just puts the single image of that layer for all of the frames instead of just one of them, so you’d have to go through and delete all the other frames you don’t want it to be, which would be such a fuckin pain

so i found a workaround, which is so tedious that it can’t be the right way to do it, but basically i started w/ layer 1 and defined 62 frames & then emptied frames 2-62, like this

(that blue box is the frame, btw, even tho it says 0, which actually kind of annoys me like why doesn’t it start the first frame on 1????)

from there i went up to layer two and selected that in the timeline, but for some reason the frame doesn’t show up automatically?

& i couldnt fuckin figure out how to make it into like, an Official Timeline Layer or whatever tf bc like, u see on layer 1 how theres that little lightbulb-looking icon on the right? that’s for turning on onion skin which only applies when you actually have frames with things drawn on them, so basically layer 2 in the layers tab has a drawing but in the timeline it doesn’t?

i didn’t find out what the actual reason for this is or how you’re /supposed/ to make the frame appear in the timeline, but what i did was right click on layer 2′s timeline & select “create blank frame” which magically made the frame i want appear

but it’s on top of the layer 1 frame, and i want it to be the frame after. also it’s still in a different timeline. this is the only easy fix in this whole damn process, u can literally just click & drag the frame from layer 2 to layer 1 and put it wherever u want on the timeline

and then u just delete layer 2 and that’s it, frame transferred!! then i just had to do that for 60 more layers and after [unspecified amount of time but it was a fuckin while ok] my timeline looked like this!

(the gaps near the end are held frames, to save me time so i didn’t have to copy a bunch of frames that were exactly the same)

krita is great because as far as i know ur animation can have an unlimited number of frames, at the risk of your own pc’s processing power, which is a definite upside to SOME expensive art programs i know (clip studio, i’m talking abt csp) and u can pick the frame rate too (cough photoshop elements 5.0 even tho u dont technically have an animation feature & it’s a miracle u can even make gifs at all) so once i finally got all the frames situated all nice and in order like on the same timeline, playing it was great! played at the right speed, looped perfectly, it was a dream come true right

well, time to export it as a gif

ha

haha

hoooo oo  o

so u got 2 options for exporting ur animation, u can either hit “export,” which lets u save it as different file types, one of which being gif, or you can hit “render,” which gives you gif and video options

well

i tried export first, bc that seemed like a good idea, but the “””gif””” it made was distinctly not a gif, despite its claim to be one?? this is what i got:

notice: 1. it is not moving, and 2. the black bars to the sides?? those are supposed to be transparent. they’re transparent in the file i made so why didn’t they register as transparent in the export, when gifs have transparency capabilities??

so That was some real live bullshit but i still had the “render” option, right? export was wrong, so rrender must be the correct option to go to that will produce the results i am wanting to see produced in front of me like a silver dinner platter with a correctly functioning gif under the lid, that’s what i want to see and “Render Animation...” is gonna Give me that silver platter righWRONG ok look at this shit rn ok Look

it says GIF it says it RIGHT THERE right??? right?????? then WHY

?????????????

and it also gave me all This bullshit

like did i ask?? did i fucking ask???? i already have all the individual frames why do i need even M o re i mfjgjgk

((rationally ok yea thats v useful for if ur making the animation in krita and want to export the frames to use elsewhere, but like uhhh 1. again, they’re not transparent & 2. i should have the option of saying i don’t want these??? bc *meme voice* i don’t want these)

so in the end i could find NO correct method of exporting animations as a gif in krita bc every ooption that says gif is fuckign LYING to ur face there are NO gifs in krita, aliens made the progam who looked at gifs and went “hmm i thikng this is how a gif works “ and just made jpegs instead but somehow got on the computers good side and got it to lie for them about it being a gif so thats why it says gif on the file still even tho its not a gif illimati confinr

so what is the conclusion to this? well i said there was good news too, and this is the portion where i divulge that sweet nectar (i type dthis 2 seconds ago and @ me what the fuck)

so after wasting a good 2 hours trying to figure out krita i gave up and watched some good old [youtuber name redacted bc what if it shows up in search & ppl see this dumbass post in there but it rhymes with fjackfsepticfeye] to relax into accepting my fate that i’ll never be able to upload my animations to tungle except in poor quality loopless video form, making me into a laughing stock on my own art blog, but THEN i had a stroke of genius, in my Brain

so if u read yesterday’s post u might remember that flipnote studio, the animation program i use on my ds, to animate, has the option to export files as gifs, both animated and sequential (meaning either as one fully animated gif or each individual frame separately), which is super convenient, but as i mentioned yesterday, any time i tried to open the folder with those files on my laptop, it crashed immediately

WELL today i thought “hey, how about instead of opening the folder in the sd card when it’s plugged in, how about i copy that folder from the sd card to my flash drive, and try to open it there, in case it’s the card’s hardware that’s causing the problem, not corrupted files”

so i tried that and it FUCKING WORKED THANK GOD GLORY HALLELUJAH

so now instead of spedning A THOUSAND YEARS trying and failing to force art programs to bend to my will i can just export the animations straight from my ds and drag them onto my computer Just As God Intended oh GOD im so fucking happy

here’s the gif in the end, i’m gonna post it to my art blog too but this is the Green Version bc i animate in green bc of some default settings in flipnote that i got used to, plus it makes me feel like i’m just sketching so nothing really has to be finalized so i’m comfortable while i work, and also it’s just nice ok it’s a Nice Green

(there’s a few frames at the end that are like the extra scraps from while i was working dw i got rid of those in the final version that i’m posting to my art blog later. also i added my blog url to that one too it’s aaaaaall good)

the only downside to this method is that i can’t change the canvas size to be 540px wide to fit with tumbrl s image dimensions but whatever i can just post them in a text post and fix the html to display it at its original size instead of the resizing bullshit tmurbl pulls constantly ugh. anyway it works great on desktop but it’s inevitably gonna look like shit on mobile no matter what i do *Big Ass Shrug*

anyway thats the end of my success story uhh i can’t make the like comment & subscribe joke again bc i already did that in the last post so like bye i guess thanks 4 watchign & have a great day i’ll see u in my next fvideo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYob4uDjEKI&t=0s

(^that’s my outro music)

[reallycrookedcandy]

What to Do with Your Old Blog Posts

Posted by -LaurelTaylor-

Around 2005 or so, corporate blogs became the thing to do. Big players in the business world touted that such platforms could “drive swarms of traffic to your main website, generate more product sales” and even “create an additional stream of advertising income” (Entrepreneur Magazine circa 2006). With promises like that, what marketer or exec wouldn’t jump on the blog bandwagon?

Unfortunately, initial forays into branded content did not always dwell on minor issues like “quality” or “entertainment,” instead focusing on sheer bulk and, of course, all the keywords. Now we have learned better, and many corporate blogs are less prolific and offer more value. But on some sites, behind many, many “next page” clicks, this old content can still be found lurking in the background.

This active company blog still features over 900 pages of posts dating back to 2006

This situation leaves current SEOs and content teams in a bit of a pickle. What should you do if your site has excessive quantities of old blog posts? Are they okay just sitting there? Do you need to do something about them?

Why bother addressing old blog posts?

On many sites, the sheer number of pages are the biggest reason to consider improving or scaling back old content. If past content managers chose quantity over quality, heaps of old posts eventually get buried, all evergreen topics have been written about before, and it becomes increasingly harder to keep inventory of your content.

From a technical perspective, depending on the scale of the old content you're dealing with, pruning back the number of pages that you put forward can help increase your crawl efficiency. If Google has to crawl 1,000 URLs to find 100 good pieces of content, they are going to take note and not spend as much time combing through your content in the future.

From a marketing perspective, your content represents your brand, and improving the set of content that you put forward helps shape the way customers see you as an authority in your space. Optimizing and curating your existing content can give your collection of content a clearer topical focus, makes it more easily discoverable, and ensures that it provides value for users and the business.

Zooming out for a second to look at this from a higher level: If you've already decided that it's worth investing in blog content for your company, it’s worth getting the most from your existing resources and ensuring that they aren’t holding you back.

Decide what to keep: Inventory and assessment

Inventory

The first thing to do before accessing your blog posts is to make sure you know what you have. A full list of URLs and coordinating metadata is incredibly helpful in both evaluating and documenting.

Depending on the content management system that you use, obtaining this list can be as simple as exporting a database field. Alternatively, URLs can be gleaned from a combination of Google Analytics data, Webmaster Tools, and a comprehensive crawl with a tool such as Screaming Frog. This post gives a good outline of how to get the data you need from these sources.

Regardless of whether you have a list of URLs yet, it’s also good to do a full crawl of your blog to see what the linking structure looks like at this point, and how that may differ from what you see in the CMS.

Assessment

Once you know what you have, it’s time to assess the content and decide if it's worth holding on to. When I do this, I like to ask these 5 questions:

1. Is it beneficial for users?

Content that's beneficial for users is helpful, informative, or entertaining. It answers questions, helps them solve problems, or keeps them interested. This could be anything from a walkthrough for troubleshooting to a collection of inspirational photos.

These 5-year-old blog posts from different real estate blogs illustrate past content that still offers value to current users, and past content that may be less beneficial for a user

2. Is it beneficial for us?

Content that is beneficial to us is earning organic rankings, traffic, or backlinks, or is providing business value by helping drive conversions. Additionally, content that can help establish branding or effectively build topical authority is great to have on any site.

3. Is it good?

While this may be a bit of a subjective question to ask about any content, it’s obvious when you read content that isn’t good. This is about fundamental things such as if content doesn’t make sense, has tons of grammatical errors, is organized poorly, or doesn’t seem to have a point to it.

4. Is it relevant?

If content isn’t at least tangentially relevant to your site, industry, or customers, you should have a really good reason to keep it. If it doesn’t meet any of the former qualifications already, it probably isn’t worth holding on to.

These musings from a blog of a major hotel brand may not be the most relevant to their industry

5. Is it causing any issues?

Problematic content may include duplicate content, duplicate targeting, plagiarized text, content that is a legal liability, or any other number of issues that you probably don’t want to deal with on your site. I find that the assessment phase is a particularly good opportunity to identify posts that target the same topic, so that you can consolidate them.

Using these criteria, you can divide your old blog posts into buckets of “keep” and “don’t keep.” The “don’t keep” can be 301 redirected to either the most relevant related post or the blog homepage. Then it’s time to further address the others.

What to do with the posts you keep

So now you have a pile of “keep” posts to sort out! All the posts that made it this far have already been established to have value of some kind. Now we want to make the most of that value by improving, expanding, updating, and promoting the content.

Improve

When setting out to improve an old post that has good bones, it can be good to start with improvements on targeting and general writing and grammar. You want to make sure that your blog post has a clear point, is targeting a specific topic and terms, and is doing so in proper English (or whatever language your blog may be in).

Once the content itself is in good shape, make sure to add any technical improvements that the piece may need, such as relevant interlinking, alt text, or schema markup.

Then it’s time to make sure it’s pretty. Visual improvements such as adding line breaks, pull quotes, and imagery impact user experience and can keep people on the page longer.

Expand or update

Not all old blog posts are necessarily in poor shape, which can offer a great opportunity. Another way to get more value out of them is to repurpose or update the information that they contain to make old content fresh again. Data says that this is well worth the effort, with business bloggers that update older posts being 74% more likely to report strong results.

A few ways to expand or update a post are to explore a different take on the initial thesis, add newer data, or integrate more recent developments or changed opinions. Alternatively, you could expand on a piece of content by reinterpreting it in another medium, such as new imagery, engaging video, or even as audio content.

Promote

If you’ve invested resources in content creation and optimization, it only makes sense to try to get as many eyes as possible on the finished product. This can be done in a few different ways, such assharing and re-sharing on branded social channels, resurfacing posts to the front page of your blog, or even a bit of external promotion through outreach.

The follow-up

Once your blog has been pruned and you’re working on getting the most value out of your existing content, an important final step is to keep tabs on the effect these changes are having.

The most significant measure of success is organic organic traffic; even if your blog is designed for lead generation or other specific goals, the number of eyes on the page should have a strong correlation to the content’s success by other measures as well. For the best representation of traffic totals, I monitor organic sessions by landing page in Google Analytics.

I also like to keep an eye on organic rankings, as you can get an early glimpse of whether a piece is gaining traction around a particular topic before it's successful enough to earn organic traffic with those terms.

Remember that regardless of what changes you’ve made, it will usually take Google a few months to sort out the relevance and rankings of the updated content. So be patient, monitor, and keep expanding, updating, and promoting!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[joshmspicer]

lets get personal.

Nabbed from @pantherdaemon​ and somehow missed last week

1: 6 of the songs you listen to most? “One Foot”, “Voicemail Freestyle Mike Wiebe”, “A Walk Down the Trail” (though it’s been a bit), “First Time”, “It Ends Tonight”, and “Survival”

2: If you could meet anyone on this earth, who would it be? @pantherdaemon​ It’s about time bro

3: Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 23, give me line 17. “WWE maintained little interest in scouting, much less signing, Japanese or Mexican talent, widely considered the second and third points of the wrestling world’s triangle.”

4: What do you think about most? “So at what point...?”

5: What does your latest text message from someone else say? “Stopping for tear”

6: Do you sleep with or without clothes on? I gots pants

7: What’s your strangest talent? I can curve my tongue?

8: Girls… (finish the sentence); Boys… (finish the sentence) Girls deserve the fucking world but can go too far. Boys can be rude without knowing they are but can also be endearing.

9: Ever had a poem or song written about you? Not to my knowledge.

10: When is the last time you played the air guitar? A few moments ago when I was listening to “Undisputed”

11: Do you have any strange phobias? Not a fan of little bugs

12: Ever stuck a foreign object up your nose? Yes

13: What’s your religion? Agnostic Lutheran

14: If you are outside, what are you most likely doing? Going to my car or walking into somewhere

15: Do you prefer to be behind the camera or in front of it? In front

16: Simple but extremely complex. Favorite band? Breaking Benjamin, easy

17: What was the last lie you told? “I’m sick as a dog, can’t make it into class.”

18: Do you believe in karma? A form of it, yes

19: What does your URL mean? It’s my old OC from my Xiaolin Showdown days, Jack Spicer’s brother. Brought it with me during the brony days as my alias and it kind of became more than I ever though it would be.

20: What is your greatest weakness; your greatest strength? Weakness is my need to please everybody. Strength is my ability to listen to everybody and offer advice even if I’ve never personally been in that situation.

21: Who is your celebrity crush? Emily Blunt

22: Have you ever gone skinny dipping? Yes

23: How do you vent your anger? Either my listening to Linkin Park or venting in a text post

24: Do you have a collection of anything? Magazines, video game or animated posters, pictures, and t-shirts

25: Do you prefer talking on the phone or video chatting online? Phone, never done the latter

26: Are you happy with the person you’ve become? I’m just happy I’m not completely like my dad.

27: What’s a sound you hate; sound you love? I loathe that one stupid fucking bird from Iowa that always does that same rhythm all damn day. I love an animal chirping that isn’t a bird.

28: What’s your biggest “what if”? “What if you stayed in Minneapolis after Dad died?”

29: Do you believe in ghosts? How about aliens? Yes and yes

30: Stick your right arm out; what do you touch first? Do the same with your left arm. A pen and a water bottle

31: Smell the air. What do you smell? My usual media room. I’m used to it so it smells like normalty

32: What’s the worst place you have ever been to? High School Homecoming

33: Choose: East Coast or West Coast? East

34: Most attractive singer of your opposite gender? Sydney Sierota

35: To you, what is the meaning of life? Living and breathing in an attempt to survive.

36: Define Art. Creative outlet through various forms with an intent to tell a narrative, vent emotion, or for personal entertainment.

37: Do you believe in luck? Yes

38: What’s the weather like right now? Dark, clear, cold

39: What time is it? 10:47 PM mountain time

40: Do you drive? If so, have you ever crashed? Yes, YES

41: What was the last book you read? How WWE Should Have Booked The Book Vol. 1

42: Do you like the smell of gasoline? Yes

43: Do you have any nicknames? Toad, Toadman, Spicer

44: What was the last film you saw? Bad Times at El Royale

45: What’s the worst injury you’ve ever had? Worst pain at the time was a broken pinky. Worst pain over time was a fucked up shoulder that any movement caused it to just drive me into agony.

46: Have you ever caught a butterfly? No

47: Do you have any obsessions right now? Probably

48: What’s your sexual orientation? Rather not put a label on that right now

49: Ever had a rumour spread about you? Yes

50: Do you believe in magic? Yes

51: Do you tend to hold grudges against people who have done you wrong? Don’t forgive so easily, much harder to gain back trust

52: What is your astrological sign? Cancer

53: Do you save money or spend it? Spend

54: What’s the last thing you purchased? Technically it would be Patreon

55: Love or lust? Lust

56: In a relationship? Nope

57: How many relationships have you had? None

58: Can you touch your nose with your tongue? Nope

59: Where were you yesterday? At home

60: Is there anything pink within 10 feet of you? Yeah the envelope that came right My First Girlfriend is a Gal

61: Are you wearing socks right now? Nah

62: What’s your favourite animal? CAT

63: What is your secret weapon to get someone to like you? God I could not tell you

64: Where is your best friend? Probably at home or asleep in the Canadian wilderness of the BC

65: Give me your top 5 favourite blogs on Tumblr. I am not going to do that. Not sorry.

66: What is your heritage? A whole bunch of European countries. My dad’s side is known to be varied and my mom’s side is the same, but I’d assume mostly Germanic

67: What were you doing last night at 12AM? Reading fics in my bed

68: What do you think is Satan’s last name? Murphy

69: Be honest. Ever gotten yourself off? Of fucking course

70: Are you the kind of friend you would want to have as a friend? Yes

71: You are walking down the street on your way to work. There is a dog drowning in the canal on the side of the street. Your boss has told you if you are late one more time you get fired. What do you do? Save the fucking dog. If I’m that deep in my job that one more tardiness means I’m done than it’s not worth it. Plus, I can explain to them and my future jobs why I was late. I feel like people would understand.

72: You are at the doctor’s office and she has just informed you that you have approximately one month to live. a) Do you tell anyone/everyone you are going to die? b) What do you do with your remaining days? c) Would you be afraid? A. Yes B. If I can, travel places, see all the people I haven’t see in a while or at all, and actually finish things I haven’t ever finished. C. Of course

73: You can only have one of these things; trust or love. Trust

74: What’s a song that always makes you happy when you hear it? Fuck me for it but “"Crepuscularity” but it’s a sad kind of happy

75: What are the last four digits in your cell phone number? Nice

76: In your opinion, what makes a great relationship? Trust and the ability to talk to each other about anything and especially when it’s about that trust or about things that are hurting the other person

77: How can I win your heart? Show genuine interest in me and what I like.

78: Can insanity bring on more creativity? Yes

79: What is the single best decision you have made in your life so far? Oh god. Um...submitting that audition for “This is Why I Clop”. I wouldn’t know any of my online friends if it wasn’t for that.

80: What size shoes do you wear? 11 1/2

81: What would you want to be written on your tombstone? “RIP: This is empty because there’s no body in it, so feel free to go ham.”

82: What is your favourite word? Fuck

83: Give me the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word; heart. Alone

84: What is a saying you say a lot? “To be quite honest”, “everyone and their mother”, “to be fair”

85: What’s the last song you listened to? “POP/STARS”

86: Basic question; what’s your favourite colour/colours? Red/orange

87: What is your current desktop picture? Still the ME 2 collage

88: If you could press a button and make anyone in the world instantaneously explode, who would it be? I can’t answer that

89: What would be a question you’d be afraid to tell the truth on? What’s the one kink you hate liking?

90: One night you wake up because you heard a noise. You turn on the light to find that you are surrounded by MUMMIES. The mummies aren’t really doing anything, they’re just standing around your bed. What do you do? Ask if they can talk. If they can’t and are just looming, try to get back to sleep.

91: You accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what’s even cooler is that they endow you with the super-power of your choice! What is that power? Control time

92: You can re-live any point of time in your life. The time-span can only be a half-hour, though. What half-hour of your past would you like to experience again? Oh this is a good question. That last 30 minutes of the Jan. 2012 BronyCon where I modded the stream and heard “You Only Got One Life to Live”

93: You can erase any horrible experience from your past. What will it be? Goodbye that sexual assault in the common room

94: You have the opportunity to sleep with the music-celebrity of your choice. Who would it be? Always music huh? I’m gonna say Cher

95: You just got a free plane ticket to anywhere. You have to depart right now. Where are you gonna go? Los Angeles

96: Do you have any relatives in jail? Probably

97: Have you ever thrown up in the car? Nah

98: Ever been on a plane? Yep

99: If the whole world were listening to you right now, what would you say? It’s...it’s not easy anymore. And I know I make a lot of mistakes and whine a lot and am in no position to hate who I am or what I’ve done and I know that I don’t deserve everything I’ve gotten, but...it’s hard to want to live life and enjoy little things when you’ve been told that you’re great at a lot of things and end up never getting there because you didn’t put enough work in or you weren’t lucky enough to get it. And then you’ve got this great big old dream looming over you that you can escape in because it’s so much to imagine what it would be like. But you know that deep down you’ll end up back home working at Menards and ending up just like your father. Well guess what? If I’ll never be shit, duck? Than I’d least like to fucking know if I ever had a chance in the first place.

[darhwolf]

all

1: 6 of the songs you listen to most?dunno lol probably any of the 4 songs from Courtney Barnett that I have on my phone (Elevator Operator, Depreston, Nobody Really Cares if You Don’t go to the Party, and Debbie Downer). Dunno lol

2: If you could meet anyone on this earth, who would it be?Well there’s a few people so... @lifecankindofsuck @annoyinglyoptimisticbread @gerards-slutty-jacket, or Markimoo 

3: Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 23, give me line 17.The moat surrounds your fortress, preventing enemies from

4: What do you think about most?Uhhh such a fucking odd queston I honestly have no clue my mind jumps around a lot

5: What does your latest text message from someone else say?Imma not include group chats so... some shit from sprint about texting in the UK. I don’t get texted a lot :/

6: Do you sleep with or without clothes on?I prefer without but I usually wear pajamas

7: What’s your strangest talent?I can slap my thighs really fast I dunno lol

8: Girls… (finish the sentence); Boys… (finish the sentence)With the first thing that comes to my head?Girls just wanna have funBoys will be boys

9: Ever had a poem or song written about you?Nope and it’ll probs never happen so whatever ¯\_(:/)_/¯

10: When is the last time you played the air guitar?Never rip

11: Do you have any strange phobias?None that are out of the ordinary

12: Ever stuck a foreign object up your nose?A Q-Tip with vaseline

13: What’s your religion?I don’t have one

14: If you are outside, what are you most likely doing?prbably sitting on a bench alone being lonely lol

15: Do you prefer to be behind the camera or in front of it?behind

16: Simple but extremely complex. Favorite band?The Beatles

17: What was the last lie you told?I think it was something my dad got angry at me for and then a waiter came up and I faked a smile for the waiter if you call that lying

18: Do you believe in karma?Sometimes

19: What does your URL mean?Absolutely fucking nothing lmao

20: What is your greatest weakness; your greatest strength?Weakness? my cripplingly low self esteem. Strength? My desire to help people

21: Who is your celebrity crush?Probably Maisie Williams. Used to be Ariana Grande cuz she’s absolutely adorable

22: Have you ever gone skinny dipping?No but it sounds like fun

23: How do you vent your anger?profane language lmao

24: Do you have a collection of anything?not really no. but I do have all 50 state coins

25: Do you prefer talking on the phone or video chatting online?Video chatting as long as the other person can hold the conversation

26: Are you happy with the person you’ve become?physically? hell fucking no. Mentally? nope. Emotionally? still no rip. But I am happy that I can help people with their problems.

27: What’s a sound you hate; sound you love?hate? crying. (human crying not baby crying) it makes me cry too ;-;Love? uhhhhhhh rain

28: What’s your biggest “what if”?What if I never actually find an s/o?

29: Do you believe in ghosts? How about aliens?I want to believe

30: Stick your right arm out; what do you touch first? Do the same with your left arm.The wall. A rocking chair

31: Smell the air. What do you smell?Cotton (from my blanket)

32: What’s the worst place you have ever been to?I dunno lol

33: Choose: East Coast or West Coast?West coast, but I’m going to the East coast for College. West cost is more progressive I believe

34: Most attractive singer of your opposite gender?Ariana Grande I guess

35: To you, what is the meaning of life?It’s 42. I’m too lazy to give a full explanation or something like that

36: Define Art.Uhh I dunno lmao

37: Do you believe in luck?Yeah. Either Luck or RNGesus

38: What’s the weather like right now?Sunny

39: What time is it?6:33 PM

40: Do you drive? If so, have you ever crashed?Yes. No

41: What was the last book you read?Pet Semetary

42: Do you like the smell of gasoline?it’s OK. Too much and I hate it.

43: Do you have any nicknames?Mom, Dad, A-Dog (from my uncle)

44: What was the last film you saw?Gremlins. In theaters? A Quiet Place

45: What’s the worst injury you’ve ever had?Smacking my head on a piano bench corner (3 stitches needed)

46: Have you ever caught a butterfly?yes

47: Do you have any obsessions right now?nope

48: What’s your sexual orientation?Sexual orientation? Het. but romantic orientation is bi

49: Ever had a rumour spread about you?Nope

50: Do you believe in magic?Hell yeah or something like that

51: Do you tend to hold grudges against people who have done you wrong?Nah. Unless they were especially awful

52: What is your astrological sign?Aquarius or Aries

53: Do you save money or spend it?Save

54: What’s the last thing you purchased?some micro transaction

55: Love or lust?Love

56: In a relationship?I feckin wish

57: How many relationships have you had?technically, none. One was long distance puppy love, the other wasn’t a relationship

58: Can you touch your nose with your tongue?yes

59: Where were you yesterday?In Heathrow airport

60: Is there anything pink within 10 feet of you?Eraser tops

61: Are you wearing socks right now?nope

62: What’s your favourite animal?DOGGOS

63: What is your secret weapon to get someone to like you?Wait I have a secret weapon? oooh tell me

64: Where is your best friend?I uhhhhhh @annoyinglyoptimisticbread and @lifecankindofsuck and @gerards-slutty-jacket hey where are you

65: Give me your top 5 favourite blogs on Tumblr.NO SPECIFIC ORDER @annoyinglyoptimisticbread @lifecankindofsuck @gerards-slutty-jacket @umbrellas-and-raincoats @30-minute-memes

66: What is your heritage?Germany I think or something

67: What were you doing last night at 12AM?Sleeping lmao

68: What do you think is Satan’s last name?Phillips. I dunno some casual last name

69: Be honest. Ever gotten yourself off?Yes many times lmao. Has anybody else gotten me off? nah. never probably gonna happen either lmao

70: Are you the kind of friend you would want to have as a friend?yesssssss somebody I could actually like pull aside to talk about shit in my life

71: You are walking down the street on your way to work. There is a dog drowning in the canal on the side of the street. Your boss has told you if you are late one more time you get fired. What do you do?Fuck yeah the doggo and I are in this shit together now

72: You are at the doctor’s office and she has just informed you that you have approximately one month to live. a) Do you tell anyone/everyone you are going to die? b) What do you do with your remaining days? c) Would you be afraid?a. Yes.b. I don’t know ;-;c. yes

73: You can only have one of these things; trust or love.Can I not fucking choose this kinda question is hard on me

74: What’s a song that always makes you happy when you hear it?I dunno

75: What are the last four digits in your cell phone number?8119

76: In your opinion, what makes a great relationship?Trust, communication (bitches fucking love communication), and actual love between the two (or more) partners

77: How can I win your heart?I don’t know this is too difficult of a question I guess just talk to me I don’t fucking know

78: Can insanity bring on more creativity?kinda maybe

79: What is the single best decision you have made in your life so far?I dunno lmao

80: What size shoes do you wear?don’t remember too lazy to check

81: What would you want to be written on your tombstone?I dunno leave it up to my family

82: What is your favourite word?Banana

83: Give me the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word; heart.love

84: What is a saying you say a lot?I dunno lmao

85: What’s the last song you listened to?Probably Elevator Operator

86: Basic question; what’s your favourite colour/colours?a dark blue like rain I don’t know what shade exactly it is

87: What is your current desktop picture?EEVEES!

88: If you could press a button and make anyone in the world instantaneously explode, who would it be?Some shit named Diego. He was a dick to me all throughout middle school and never apologized once

89: What would be a question you’d be afraid to tell the truth on?Do you have depression?

90: One night you wake up because you heard a noise. You turn on the light to find that you are surrounded by MUMMIES. The mummies aren’t really doing anything, they’re just standing around your bed. What do you do?Sit and wait, but get ready for something to happen

91: You accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what’s even cooler is that they endow you with the super-power of your choice! What is that power?Invisibility. You can actually do a LOT of good with invisibility like if somebody tries to rob a bank, you walk in, invisible, with a gun and reveal yourself only to shoot them or something like that

92: You can re-live any point of time in your life. The time-span can only be a half-hour, though. What half-hour of your past would you like to experience again?Eating a birthday cake I guess I dunno :/

93: You can erase any horrible experience from your past. What will it be?FUCKING EVERYTHING ABOUT MY DEPRESSION AND SHIT

94: You have the opportunity to sleep with the music-celebrity of your choice. Who would it be?Why music celeb?But it would be Ariana Grande

95: You just got a free plane ticket to anywhere. You have to depart right now. Where are you gonna go?Fuckin Japan cuz it’s so cool

96: Do you have any relatives in jail?nope

97: Have you ever thrown up in the car?yeah lol

98: Ever been on a plane?many many times

99: If the whole world were listening to you right now, what would you say?“Hey stop fucking each other over and lets focus on not fucking making the human race go extinct mmkay?”@annoyinglyoptimisticbread THANKS FOR THE ASK

[acekatherineplumber]

Questions! Yay questions!

1: 6 of the songs you listen to most? Out Tonight (RENT), Tightrope (The Greatest Showman), Candy Store (Heathers), Delicate (Taylor Swift), Gorgeous (Taylor Swift), So Much Better (Legally Blonde)

2: If you could meet anyone on this earth, who would it be? Taylor Swift. It would be so nice.

3: Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 23, give me line 17. You will have to pay for excess baggage.

4: What do you think about most? How much cleaning I constantly have to do

5: What does your latest text message from someone else say? “I once again work until [private information], but I hope you have a great day”

6: Do you sleep with or without clothes on? It depends. 

7: What’s your strangest talent? I’m doubled jointed in three places

8: Girls… (finish the sentence); Boys… (finish the sentence)Girls are wonderful. Boys can choke.

9: Ever had a poem or song written about you? No.

10: When is the last time you played the air guitar? No idea.

11: Do you have any strange phobias? I’m afraid of stairs

12: Ever stuck a foreign object up your nose? When I was like 5. It was a bead.

13: What’s your religion? Atheist

14: If you are outside, what are you most likely doing? Taking a walk

15: Do you prefer to be behind the camera or in front of it? Behind it

16: Simple but extremely complex. Favorite band? I like solo artists more

17: What was the last lie you told? I don’t remember

18: Do you believe in karma? Kind of? I believe that the way you treat people affects how they treat you.

19: What does your URL mean? Katherine Plumber is ace. Fite me.

20: What is your greatest weakness; your greatest strength? Perfectionism, passion

21: Who is your celebrity crush? Emma Watson? I just think she’s pretty, but I’m not sure I want to date her because I don’t even know her, and I’m not sure she would like that.

22: Have you ever gone skinny dipping? I have a hot tub, so regularly.

23: How do you vent your anger? I like to vent it through art

24: Do you have a collection of anything? I used to collect state quarters, but nothing current

25: Do you prefer talking on the phone or video chatting online? Phone

26: Are you happy with the person you’ve become? Sometimes yes, sometimes no

27: What’s a sound you hate; sound you love? I hate windshield wipers, I love cats meowing

28: What’s your biggest “what if”? Everything is a what if for me

29: Do you believe in ghosts? How about aliens? Yes to both

30: Stick your right arm out; what do you touch first? Do the same with your left arm. My earbuds, one of my cats

31: Smell the air. What do you smell? I have a stuffed nose today, so nothing

32: What’s the worst place you have ever been to? Probably my old private school

33: Choose: East Coast or West Coast? East

34: Most attractive singer of your opposite gender? No.

35: To you, what is the meaning of life? Finding and pursuing your own happiness

36: Define Art. Anything that makes you think (except Modern Art, because that is fucking elitist and pretentious and terrible)

37: Do you believe in luck? I believe in making your own through hard work, but sometimes shitty things just happen.

38: What’s the weather like right now? Cloudy, slightly rainy

39: What time is it? 10:07 am

40: Do you drive? If so, have you ever crashed? Yes, and unfortunately yes.

41: What was the last book you read? The Count of Monte Cristo

42: Do you like the smell of gasoline? I don’t hate it, but I don’t love it

43: Do you have any nicknames? Yes, but it’s personal

44: What was the last film you saw? The Princess Bride

45: What’s the worst injury you’ve ever had? I’ve had a lot of bad sprains. Also a concussion.

46: Have you ever caught a butterfly? Yes

47: Do you have any obsessions right now? Bubble tea. Don’t judge me

48: What’s your sexual orientation? Asexual

49: Ever had a rumour spread about you? I used to be bullied really badly, so yes

50: Do you believe in magic? Yes

51: Do you tend to hold grudges against people who have done you wrong? Yes.

52: What is your astrological sign? Leo/Virgo

53: Do you save money or spend it? I try to save it

54: What’s the last thing you purchased? A stuffed cat

55: Love or lust? Love

56: In a relationship? Yes

57: How many relationships have you had? Technically 5, but only 2 of them have been really serious

58: Can you touch your nose with your tongue?No

59: Where were you yesterday? At home for most of the day

60: Is there anything pink within 10 feet of you? My cat’s nose

61: Are you wearing socks right now? No

62: What’s your favourite animal? Cat

63: What is your secret weapon to get someone to like you? Honesty and passion

64: Where is your best friend? At her school. She has a summer class. The other one is at work.

65: Give me your top 5 favourite blogs on Tumblr. @hoogwoorts @schmackarys, @keepers-quaffles-and-old-clocks, @berrykikwi, and @purplerainbowsrachel

66: What is your heritage? German, English, Irish. Very white.

67: What were you doing last night at 12AM? Browsing the Internet.

68: What do you think is Satan’s last . It’name? I don’t give out the last names of real people.

69: Be honest. Ever gotten yourself off? Yes. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, and is actually really healthy. It’s good for anxiety.

70: Are you the kind of friend you would want to have as a friend? I hope so.

71: You are walking down the street on your way to work. There is a dog drowning in the canal on the side of the street. Your boss has told you if you are late one more time you get fired. What do you do? I call someone else over and head on my way.

72: You are at the doctor’s office and she has just informed you that you have approximately one month to live. a) Do you tell anyone/everyone you are going to die? b) What do you do with your remaining days? c) Would you be afraid? I would probably wait until my last two weeks to tell people. I would travel. Yes, I would be afraid.

73: You can only have one of these things; trust or love. I don’t trust people anyway, so love

74: What’s a song that always makes you happy when you hear it? Love Song by Sara Bareilles

75: What are the last four digits in your cell phone number? Not giving that out.

76: In your opinion, what makes a great relationship? Honesty, kindness, and common interests.

77: How can I win your heart?You can’t! You can have eggs and you can have bacon, but you can’t have Elphie because they are taken!

78: Can insanity bring on more creativity? Yes, but it should still be medicated

79: What is the single best decision you have made in your life so far? Going to London.

80: What size shoes do you wear? 7.5-8

81: What would you want to be written on your tombstone? I don’t know, but I think it should be in French.

82: What is your favourite word? At the moment? Princesa.

83: Give me the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word; heart. The color blue.

84: What is a saying you say a lot? It’s amazing what you find when you clean up.

85: What’s the last song you listened to? Delicate

86: Basic question; what’s your favourite colour/colours? Aqua

87: What is your current desktop picture? Liberty Leading the People

88: If you could press a button and make anyone in the world instantaneously explode, who would it be? Mike Pence. I hate Trump, but Pence is scary and would be harder to impeach.

89: What would be a question you’d be afraid to tell the truth on? Everything that is wrong with my brain.

90: One night you wake up because you heard a noise. You turn on the light to find that you are surrounded by MUMMIES. The mummies aren’t really doing anything, they’re just standing around your bed. What do you do? Run and lock the door.

91: You accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what’s even cooler is that they endow you with the super-power of your choice! What is that power? Invisibility

92: You can re-live any point of time in your life. The time-span can only be a half-hour, though. What half-hour of your past would you like to experience again? Probably the latter half of the first act of Les Mis in London.

93: You can erase any horrible experience from your past. What will it be? The thing that caused my PTSD.

94: You have the opportunity to sleep with the music-celebrity of your choice. Who would it be? I don’t really want to do that. I don’t know of trust them.

95: You just got a free plane ticket to anywhere. You have to depart right now. Where are you gonna go? Berlin.

96: Do you have any relatives in jail? No

97: Have you ever thrown up in the car?Yes

98: Ever been on a plane? Yes

99: If the whole world were listening to you right now, what would you say? Something about education rights for all.

[suzanneshannon]

The Thirteenth Fourth

Well boy howdy. The 13th birthday of CSS-Tricks has rolled around. A proper teenager now, howabouthat? I always take the opportunity to do a bit of a state of the union address at this time, so let’s get to it!

Design

Technically, we’re still on v17 of the site design. This was the first design that I hired first-class help to do, and I’m still loving it, so I haven’t had much of an itch to do massive changes to it. Although it is quite different¹ today than it was on launch day.

For example…

The search experience is totally different, as it is powered by Jetpack’s Instant Search now.

The Almanac pages (e.g. background-blend-mode) have an additional sidebar that helps you navigate between pages

I re-did the typography using Hoefler&Co. Sentinel and Ringside. The monospace font code snippets are in Operator Mono and the logo has long-been Gotham Rounded, so it feels like one big happy family of typefaces.

Maybe next year we’ll do something different again. My list is starting to grow for some behind-the-scenes tech stuff I wanna re-jigger, and sometimes that goes hand in hand with redesign work.

Closed Forums

The forums on this site have been a mental weight on me for literally years. Earlier this year I finally turned them off. They are still there, and probably always will be (so the URLs are maintained), but nobody can post new threads or replies.

It was a painful move. Even as I did it, there was still some regular daily activity there and I’m sure it didn’t feel good to those people to have a place they have invested time in shut down. Here’s why I did it:

Nobody here, including me, checked in on the forums with any regularity. Unmoderated public forums on the internet are not acceptable to me.

The spam volume was going up. There were periods where most posts, even after the automatic spam blocking I get from Akismet, where spam that required manual removal. Even if we had a dedicated forums employee, that’s no fun, and since we didn’t, it was just a random job for me and I don’t need a time sink like that.

The forums represent a certain level of technical debt. They need to be updated. Their design needs to be functional in the context of this site. At one point I ripped out all custom styles and left it be the default theme, which was a good step toward reducing technical debt, but in the end it wasn’t enough.

I can handle some work and some technical debt, of course. But when you combine those things with the fact that the forums don’t contribute much to what I consider to be the success of the site. They don’t exactly drive page views or advertising demand. There isn’t really money to hire help specifically for the forums. But that’s a small part of it. I want this site to help people. I think we can do that best if we focus on publishing with as little divided attention as possible. I think there are places on the internet that are better for forum-like discourse.

Now that they’ve been off a number of months, I can report that the lifting of the mental weight feels very good to me and there has been little if any major negatives.

Social

Here’s another mental weight I lifted: I stopped hand-managing the Twitter account (@css). I still think it’s good that we have a Twitter account (and that we have that cool handle), but I just don’t spend any time on it directly like I used to.

In the past, I’d queue up special articles with commentary and graphics and stuff and make sure the days were full with a spread of what I thought would be interesting tweets about web design and development. That’s fine and all, but it began to feel like a job without a paycheck.

We don’t get (or seem to drive) a lot of traffic from Twitter. Google Analytics shows social media accounts for less than 1% of our traffic. Investing time in “growing” Twitter just doesn’t have enough of an upside for me. Not to mention the obvious: Twitter can be terribly toxic and mentally draining.

So now, all our posts to Twitter are automated through the Jetpack social media connection (we really use Jetpack for tons of stuff). We hit publish on the site and the article is auto-tweeted. So if you use Twitter like an RSS feed of sorts (just show me the news!), you got it.

The result? Our follower count goes up at the same rate it always did. Engagement there is the same, or higher, than it ever was. What a relief. Do ten times less work for the same benefit.

When I have the urge to share a link with commentary I use the same system we’ve always had here: I write it up as a link blog post instead. Now we’re getting even more benefit: long-term content building, which is good for the thing that we actually have on our side: SEO.

Someday we could improve things by hand-writing the auto-tweet text with a bit more joie de vivre, crediting the author more clearly, and, #stretchgoal, a custom or fancy-generated social media graphic.

Opened Up Design Possibilities

One aspect of this site that I’ve been happy with is the opportunity to do custom design on content. Here are some examples of that infrastructure.

On any given blog post, we can pick a template. Some of those templates are very specific. For example, my essay The Great Divide is a template all to itself.

In the code base, I have a PHP template and a CSS file that are entirely dedicated to that post. I think that’s a fine way to handle a post you want to give extra attention to, although the existence of those two files is a bit of technical debt.

I learned something in the creation of that particular essay: what I really need to open up the art direction/design possibility on a post is a simple, stripped-down template to start from. So that’s what we call a “Fancy Post” now, another template choice for any particular post. Fancy Posts have a hero image and a centered column for the content of the post. From there, we can use custom CSS to style things right within WordPress itself.

For example, my recent post on DX is styled as a Fancy Post with Custom CSS applied right within the block editor.

The Block Editor itself is a huge deal for us. That was one of my goals for the year, and we’ve really exceeded how far we’d get with it. I think writing and editing posts in the block editor is a million miles ahead of the old editor.

The hardest challenge was (and still is really) getting the block transforms set up for legacy content. But once you have the power to build and customize blocks, that alone opens up a ton of design possibility within posts that is too big of a pain in the butt and too heavy on technical debt otherwise.

Another door we opened for design possibilities is a classic one: using categories. A sort of freebie you get in WordPress is the ability to create templates for all sorts of things that just sort of automatically work if they are named correctly. So for example I have a file called category-2019-end-of-year-thoughts.php and that fully gives me control over making landing pages for groups of posts, like our end-of-year thoughts homepage. Not to mention our “Guide Collection” pages which are another way to programmatically build collections of pages.

That’s a lot of tools to do custom work with, and I’m really happy with that. It feels like we’ve given ourselves lots of potential with these tools, and only started taking advantage of it.

Speaking of which, another aspect of custom design we have available is the new book format…

eCommerce

We’re using WooCommerce here on the site now again. I just got done singing the praises of the Block Editor and how useful that has been… WooCommerce is in the same boat. I feel like I’m getting all this powerful functionality with very little effort, at a low cost, and with little technical debt. It makes me very happy to have this site on WordPress and using so much of suite of functionality that offers.

So for one thing, I can sell products with it, and we have products now! Lynn Fisher designed a poster for our CSS Flexbox guide and designed a poster for our CSS Grid guide, which you can now buy and ship anywhere in the world for $25 each. Look, with the Block Editor I can put a block for a poster right here in this post:

CSS Flexbox Poster

Find yourself constantly looking up the properties and values for CSS flexbox? Why not pin this beautiful poster up to the wall of your office so you can just glance over at it?

$25.00

Shop now

Another thing we’re using WooCommerce for is to sell our new book, The Greatest CSS Tricks Vol. I. If we actually made it into a proper eBook format, WooCommerce could absolutely deliver those files digitally to you, but we haven’t done that yet. We’ve take another path, which is publishing the book as chapters here on the site behind a membership paywall we’re calling MVP supporters. The book is just one of the benefits of that.

WooCommerce helps:

Build a membership system and sell memberships. Membership can lock certain pages to members-only as has programmatic hooks I can use for things like removing ads.

Sell subscriptions to those memberships, with recurring billing.

Sell one-off products

And I’m just scratching the surface of course. WooCommerce can do anything eCommerce wise.

Analytics

They are fine. Ha! That’s how much I worry about our general site analytics. I like to check in on them from time to time to make sure we’re not tanking or anything scary, but we never are (knock on wood). We’re in the vicinity of 8m page views a month, and year-over-year traffic is a bit of a dance.

Sponsors

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU

That’s what I have to say to all our sponsors. We’re so damn lucky to work with a lineup of sponsors that I wholeheartedly endorse as well as literally use their products. We have different sponsors all the time, but these are the biggest and those who have been with us the longest.

Automattic: Thanks for building great software for the WordPress ecosystem. This site is made possible by a heaping helping of that software.

Netlify: Thanks for bringing the Jamstack world to life. I’m also a big fan of this way of building websites, and think that Jamstack should be the foundation for most websites. Beyond that, you’ve redefined modern developer experience.

Flywheel: Thank you for hosting this website, being a high-quality host I can trust and who has been helpful to me countless times. This is what high-quality WordPress hosting looks like.

Frontend Masters: Thank you for being an education partner that does things right and helps me have the best possible answer for people when they are searching a more structured formal education about doing web work: go try Frontend Masters.

If you’re trying to reach front-end developers with your products, that’s literally how I make a living and can help.

My Other Projects

CodePen is no spring chicken either, being over 8 years old itself. I repeat myself a lot with this particular aspect of talking about CodePen: we’ve got a ton of ideas, a ton of work to do, and we can’t wait to show you the CodePen of tomorrow. 2020 for CodePen has been a lot different than the last 2-3 years of CodePen. Some technical choices we’ve made have been starting to pay off. The team is vibing very well and absolutely tearing through work faster than I would have thought possible a few years ago, and we haven’t even unlocked some of the biggest doors yet. I know that’s vague, but we talk in more detail about stuff on CodePen Radio.

ShopTalk, as ever, is going strong. That’s 420 episodes this week, friends. Dave has me convinced that our format as it is, is good. We aren’t an instruction manual. You don’t listen to any particular episode because we’re going to teach you some specific subject that we’ve explicitly listed out. It’s more like water cooler talk between real world developers who develop totally different things in totally different situations, but agree on more than we disagree. We might evolve what ShopTalk show is over time, but this format will live on because there is value in discussion in this format.

Life

My wife Miranda and I are still in Bend, Oregon and our Daughter Ruby is two and a half. She’s taking a nap and I’m looking at the monitor as I type.

We have the virus here like everywhere else. It’s sad to think that we’re this far into it and our local hospital is pleading with people to be careful this holiday weekend because they are very near capacity and can’t take much more. Here’s hoping we can get past this painful period. Stay safe and stay cool, friends, thanks for reading.

I always feel bad when I make design changes away from an actual professional designer’s work. Is the site design better today than Kylie‘s original? Uhm probably not (sorry for wrecking it Kylie!), but sometimes I just have an itch to fiddle with things and give things a fresh look. But the biggest driver of change is the evolving needs of the site and my desire to manage things with as little technical debt as possible, and sometimes simplifying design things helps me get there.

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The Thirteenth Fourth published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

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Google’s May 2020 Core Update: What You Need to Know

On May 4th, Google started to roll out a major update to its algorithm. They call it a “core” update because it’s a large change to their algorithm, which means it impacts a lot of sites.

To give you an idea of how big the update is, just look at the image above. It’s from SEMrush Sensor, which monitors the movement of results on Google.

The chart tracks Google on a daily basis and when it shows green or blue for the day, it means there isn’t much movement going on. But when things turn red, it means there is volatility in the rankings.

Now the real question is, what happened to your traffic?

If you already haven’t, you should go and check your rankings to see if they have gone up or down. If you aren’t tracking your rankings, you can set up a project on Ubersuggest for free and track up to 25 keywords.

You should also log into your Google Analytics account and check to see what’s happening to your traffic.

Hopefully, your traffic has gone up. If it hasn’t, don’t panic. I have some information that will help you out.

Let’s first start off by going over the industries that have been most impacted…

So what industries were affected?

Here are the industries that got affected.

As you can see, travel, real estate, health, pets & animals, and people & society saw the biggest fluctuations with rankings.

Other industries were also affected… the ones at the bottom of the list were the least affected, such as “news.”

There was also a shakeup in local SEO results, but that started before the core update.

One big misconception that I hear from people new to SEO is that if you have a high domain authority or domain score (if you aren’t sure what yours is, go here and put in your URL), you’ll continually get more traffic and won’t be affected by updates. That is false.

To give you an idea, here are some well-known sites that saw their rankings dip according to our index at Ubersuggest:

Spotify.com

Creditkarma.com

LinkedIn.com

Legoland.com

Nypost.com

Ny.gov

Burlington.com

More importantly, we saw some trends on sites that got affected versus ones that didn’t.

Update your content frequently

I publish 4 articles a month on this blog. Pretty early every Tuesday like clockwork, I publish a new post.

But do you know how often I update my old content?

Take a guess?

Technically, I don’t update my own content, but I have 3 people who work for me and all they do is go through old blog posts and update them.

On any given month, my team updates at least 90 articles. And when I say update, I am not talking about just adjusting a sentence or adding an image. I am talking about adding a handful of new paragraphs, deleting irrelevant information, and sometimes even re-writing entire articles.

They do whatever it takes to keep articles up to date and valuable for the readers. Just like how Wikipedia is constantly updating its content.

Here’s an interesting stat for you: We know for certain that 641 sites that we are tracking are updating old content on a daily basis.

Can you guess how many of them saw a search traffic dip of 10% or more?

Only 38! That’s 5.92%, which is extremely low.

What’s crazy, though, is that 187 sites saw an increase in their search traffic of 10% or more.

One thing to note is when we are calculating organic search traffic estimates, we look at the average monthly volume of a keyword as well as click-through rates based on ranking. So holidays such as May 1, which is Labor Day for most of the word, didn’t skew the results.

Now, to clarify, I am not talking about producing new content on a daily or even weekly basis. These sites are doing what I do on NeilPatel.com… they are constantly updating their old content.

Again, there is no “rubric” on how to update your old content as it varies per article, but the key is to do whatever it takes to keep it relevant for your readers and ensure that it is better than the competition.

If you still want some guidance on updating old content, here is what I tell my team:

If the content is no longer relevant to a reader, either delete the page and 301 redirect it to the most relevant URL on the site or update it to make it relevant.

Are there ways to make the content more actionable and useful? Such as, would adding infographics, step-by-step instructions, or videos to the article make it more useful? If so, add them.

Check to see if there are any dead links and fix them. Dead links create a poor user experience.

If the article is a translated article (I have a big global audience), make sure the images and videos make sense to anyone reading the content in that language.

Look to see the 5 main terms each article ranks for and then Google those terms. What do the pages ranking in the top 10 do really well that we aren’t?

Can you make the article simpler? Remove fluff and avoid using complex words that very few people can understand.

Does the article discuss a specific year or time frame? If possible, make the article evergreen by avoiding the usage of dates or specific time ranges.

If the article covers a specific problem people are facing, make sure you look at Quora first before updating the article. Look to see popular answers on Quora as it will give you a sense of what people are ideally looking for.

Is this article a duplicate? Not form a wording perspective, but are you pretty much covering the exact same concept as another article on your site. If so, consider merging them and 301 redirect one URL to the other.

Fix your thin content

Here’s another interesting stat for you. On average, Ubersuggest crawls 71 websites every minute. And when I mean crawl, users are putting in URLs to check for SEO errors.

One error that our system looks at is thin content (pages with low-word counts).

On average, 46% of the websites we analyze have at least one page that is thin in content. Can you guess how many of those sites got impacted by the latest algorithm update?

We don’t have enough data on all of the URLs as the majority of those sites get very little to no search traffic as they are either new sites or haven’t done much SEO.

But when we look at the last 400 sites in our system that were flagged with thin content warnings for pages other than their contact page, about page, or home page, and had at least 1,000 visitors a month from Google, they saw a massive shift in rankings.

127 of the sites saw a decrease in search traffic by at least 10% while 41 saw an increase in search traffic by at least 10%.

Sites with thin content saw a roughly 3 times higher likelihood of being affected in a negative way than a positive one. Of course, the majority of the sites with thin content saw little to no change at all, but still, a whopping 31.75% saw a decrease.

If you don’t know if you have thin content, go here and put in your URL.

You’ll see a report that looks something like this:

I want you to click on the “Critical Errors” box.

You’ll now see a report that looks like:

Look to see if there are any “low word count” errors. If there is, click on the number and it will take you to a page that shows you all of the pages with a low word count.

You won’t be able to fix them all, as some pages like your contact page or category pages, which may not need thousands of words.

And in other cases, you may be able to get the point across to a website visitor in a few hundred words or even through images. An example would be if you have an article on how to tie a tie, you may not have too many words because it’s easier to show people how to do so through a video or a series of images.

But for the pages that should be more in-depth, you should fix them. Here are the three main questions to consider when fixing thin content pages:

Do you really need to add more words – if you can get the message across in a few hundred words or through images or videos, it may be enough. Don’t add words when it isn’t needed. Think of the user experience instead. People would rather have the answer to their question in a few seconds than to wait minutes.

How does your page compare to the competition – look at similar pages that are ranking on page 1. Do they have more content than you or less? This will give you an idea if you need to expand your page, especially if everyone who ranks on page 1 has at least a few thousand words on their page.

Does it even make sense to keep the page – if it provides little to no value to a reader and you can’t make it better by updating it, you may want to consider deleting it and 301 redirect the URL to another similar page on your site.

Fix your SEO errors

Another interesting finding that we noticed when digging through our Ubersuggest data is that sites with more SEO errors got impacted greatly.

Now, this doesn’t mean that if you have a ton of SEO errors you can’t rank or you are going to get hit by an algorithm update.

More so it was one type of error that hurt sites more than others. It was sites with duplicate title tags and meta descriptions.

One thing to note was that many sites have duplicate meta tags, but when a large portion of your pages have duplicate meta tags, it usually creates problems.

So we dug up sites that contained duplicate meta tags and title tags for 20% or more of their pages.

Most of these sites didn’t get much traffic in general, but for the 363 that we could dig up that generated at least 1,000 visits a month from Google, 151 saw a decrease in traffic by at least 10%.

89 of them also saw increases in traffic by 10% or more, but still, 41.59% of sites with duplicate meta tags saw a huge dip. If you have duplicate meta tags you should get this fix.

To double check if you do, put your URL in here again. It will load this report again:

And then click on the critical errors again. You’ll see a report that looks like this:

Look for any errors that say duplicate meta description or title tag. If you see it, click on the number and it will take you to a page that breaks down the duplicates.

Again, your site doesn’t have to be perfect and you’ll find in some cases that you have duplicates that don’t need to be fixed, such as category pages with pagination.

But in most cases, you should fix and avoid having duplicate meta description and title tags.

Conclusion

Even if you do everything I discussed above, there is no guarantee that you will be impacted by an algorithm update. Each one is different, and Google’s goal is to create the best experience for searchers.

If you look at the above issues, you’ll notice that fixing them should create a better user experience and that should always be your goal.

It isn’t about winning on Google. SEO is about providing a better experience than your competition. If that’s your core focus, in the long run, you’ll find that you’ll do better than your competition when it comes to algorithm updates.

So how was your traffic during the last update? Did it go up or down, or just stay flat?

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