I have spent the last two days upgrading all of my sites to the latest version of WordPress 2.9, and for Kikolani, the upgrade for Thesis 1.6 as well.
Upgrades generally make me nervous, as you never know what kind of issues you are going to run into with various plugins and other customization work you have done. Fortunately, I had a lot of sites to mess around with before moving onto this site and my client sites. So here are my experiences in the magical world of upgrading.
WordPress Upgrades
Dofollow – from WordPress 2.8.4 to 2.9
My first attempt at upgrading was with my Dofollow Blog Directory. It was sitting at version 2.8.4, and I used the automatic upgrade option which went smoothly. No issues with my plugins, which I forgot to deactivate before upgrading.
It is official… as of May 14th, Kikolani celebrated it’s first year anniversary in the blogging world.
Year in Review
Beginnings
Kikolani began as a place for my poetry. The poems I published here in the beginning were love poems I had written when I met my husband. The first – Neighbors – was written a bit before I actually met him, and the second – Moonlight – was written the night I met him. Then came a continuation of poetry and the love story from the start of our relationship through the time we were engaged, which has since moved to my latest site, Soulmates Wedding.
Evolution
After the poetry came posts on dreams, artistic expression, self-discovery and photography. Sadly, my poetic creativity only comes in spurts, and the last bit was haiku. When my artistic side bowed out, with exception to photography which has been my main creative outlet for the past several months, my technical side emerged into the world of blogging articles and tips, starting with an article on blogging writer’s block, something I had been experiencing at the time. Then I was invited to a post as part of a blogging project on social media marketing practices, which was my start into the social media category.
On the one year anniversary of our first date, I have completed Soulmates Wedding, a website dedicated to wonderful love story my husband and I share. There you will find photos from our engagement session, wedding, and honeymoon, plus some stories.
As some of you may have noticed, there have been many changes around this site over the past few weeks. My goal is to take this blog to the next level, and coinciding perfectly with this is the start of Problogger’s 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge. If you have a blog, and want to get tips on how to improve your blog from one of the top bloggers, then I recommend you sign up for this project.
The first task in this challenge is to create an elevator pitch for your blog. I was already in the process of drafting a new concept for this site a couple of days ago, and have finally decided on the following:
Tagline: The Art of Blogging | Technically, Beautifully, Beneficially | Kikolani or The Art of Blogging | Technically Beautiful, Artfully Beneficial | Kikolani
Description: Kikolani is about the art of blogging – the technical aspects with blogging and social networking tips, the beauty with photography and poetry, and the benefits for writers and readers.
I came up with the first tagline and my hubby did the second one, so now I can have a little variety.
For the past two weeks, I have been working on creating the new look for Kikolani.com. I wanted to make the layout easier to follow, while adding more features, such as the email subscription option, recent posts & comments, plus an informative footer.
