Although Thanksgiving is not an international holiday, I think it is one during which everyone can celebrate the spirit of thankfulness in three easy ways that is applicable to your personal and blogging lives.

What Are You Thankful For

The first way is by asking yourself what you are thankful for. This is a great question to contemplate the answer to because it will help you see what progress you have made this year. Maybe you don’t feel like you have accomplished everything you wanted to do in 2010. But with this question, you should stop thinking about what you didn’t accomplish, and be thankful for what you did accomplish.

Who Are You Thankful For

The second way is to ask yourself who you are thankful for. Has your family been extra supportive of all of your goals and intentions? Have you had a mentor that has helped guide you to finding what you need to become successful? Have you found a partner to work with to help you achieve your goals?

Show Them Your Gratitude

Finally, take time today to show gratitude to those who have helped and supported you. Share your thankfulness by email, in a blog post, via Twitter, on Facebook walls, and so on. Let people know that you appreciate them for everything they have done, whether they know they have or not.

What am I Thankful For?

I’m thankful for many things this year. I couldn’t list them all, but the highlights include having:

• An amazing husband who is always encouraging me to work towards my goals and helps me with them everyday, whether it is by giving me a dance lesson at the end of the longest day of the week, helping me improve my tennis game by practicing with me, coming up with great business plans and financial forecasts, or simply helping calm me down when I’m feeling overwhelmed.
• A supportive family to share everything with, from the little victories (like beating my nemesis at tennis) to holidays gatherings.
• A chance at Blog World to connect with some awesome people that I had only known online before.
• The BEST blogging community to engage with in the comments, on social media, via IM, and by email.

As far as accomplishments, I am thankful that I have been able to:

• Find a relatively healthy balance between being on the computer for an average of 10 – 12 hours a day and being active in tennis (breaking into the 3.5 NTRP rating) and ballroom dancing (performing in my first competition in 2 weeks).
• Contribute to authority sites that I consider home to only the best of the best in the industry.
• Finally break through the barrier of earning more than I spend on my online endeavors.
• Develop (thanks to my hubby) my first five year business plan EVER.

So, I Ask You…

What are you thankful for today?

Holiday update: Don’t worry, Fetching Friday is on as always for tomorrow. In fact, it will be a special edition that will go live shortly after midnight MST that you don’t want to miss!

You're reading What Are You Thankful For?, originally posted on Kikolani and copyrighted by Kristi Hines, freelance writer and professional blogger. Be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

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It’s that time again – yet another guest blogging contest is full speed an underway over at Blog Engage, the social bookmarking and voting community dedicated to bloggers.

About the Contest

This contest is through October 31st, and to enter, simply write one post (or more) between 450 to 1,000 words on topics that are interesting to the blogging niche, including social media, SEO, and making money online. Learn more about the contest on the first official post, tips and answers, finer details, updates, best entries so far, how to be a winner, and latest updates.

My Entry

I really can’t resist these contests! My entry for this contest is the Truth About Making Money Online. This post was inspired by a simple status update by Danny Brown. It takes a look at the expenses that come with making money online, aka the flip side of the all of the monthly income reports that you see on various blogs, and poses an important question:

Is your making money online strategy profitable? Are you actually making money blogging, barely breaking even, or simply losing money online?

You will find out how to find the answer to this question, why you should not be discouraged if it is not the answer you wanted to find, and how to determine what monetization projects and ideas you have for the future will be the most effective based on the amount of effort they will take and the associated costs to implement them.

So if you are into making money online and turning your blogging into a successful business, this post is definitely for you!

If you enjoy it, please be sure to support it with your comments (dofollow and CommentLuv enabled), shares, likes, votes, and retweets using the buttons above!

Sponsors

Last but not least, the sponsors for this contest include the following awesome bloggers, companies, and individuals!

Houston SEO Best Travel Websites Denver Web Design James Brown 2 year free hosting (3 GB space/15 GB bandwith) + 1 free domain Leading Travel Directory for Travel Websites One year membership at Elegant Themes From Nick Chicago Web Design Golf School

Content Marketing Virtual Assistant Newark Airport Parking Atlanta Internet Marketing Platinum Package ” $125 value + stationery design “Business Cards, Letterhead and Envelopes” 100$ value My Guest Blog Media Sponsor Simply Fresh WordPress theme Free Blog Review at Bloggeries Blog Forum One Year Free of HostGator’s Business Web Hosting Plan (a $179.40 value)

You're reading Are You In It To Win It?, originally posted on Kikolani and copyrighted by Kristi Hines, freelance writer and professional blogger. Be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

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In the last few months, I entered into the world of writing product reviews. My first was the Income Blogging Course Review and, most recently, the Copywriting Scorecard for Bloggers Review. I find that it’s really easy to write them under one condition: that I have used and truly love the product.

Since I don’t see Kikolani as being the right platform for writing reviews all of the time, and would rather use this site for strictly blog marketing strategies, blogging tips, and social media, I decided to start off a new site.

Rockin Affiliate is going to be my home for honest, comprehensive product reviews, as well as a focus on affiliate marketing and money saving tips.

Why product reviews?

Sure, it seems like everyone is doing them. But I have found that anytime I am searching for a product review that is going to really tell me what I can expect from said product, all I come up with are the “canned” reviews provided by product creators that have been edited with an image or two, and are really nothing beyond a sales pitch.

So I decided to create the kind of product reviews that I normally search for. Instead of just saying whether I like it or don’t, I’m essentially going to give you a walk through of what you get, how to use it, and any available alternatives to consider before purchasing. Because who doesn’t like to checkout all of the options?

First Reviews

I’m opening the site with a real bang – not one, but two reviews. This week, Popup Domination and Subscribers Magnet both re-opened their doors with some time sensitive savings.

You may wonder why I have decided to write about Popup Domination after writing the case for and against popups. The truth is, in the long run, it works. Reading all of the pros, cons, and commenter feedback proved that most people see more results over losses using it. And after taking it for a spin, it’s really simple to use and really has the best designs of all of the opt-in plugins.

That being said, for those who are not fans of adding popups to their site, I also decided to do the review for Subscribers Magnet as well. This way, you can see the inside mechanics of what you would get with both when it comes to helping boost your mailing list subscribers.

So if you are hearing about all of the deals and looking for more than a sales pitch, check out my Popup Domination Review and Subscribers Magnet Review to see which ones may be more suitable for your needs. And be sure to subscribe to Rockin Affiliate for only the best product reviews and affiliate marketing tips from someone who only will share what I truly believe will be helpful to you.

You're reading Who Do You Trust for Product Reviews?, originally posted on Kikolani and copyrighted by Kristi Hines, freelance writer and professional blogger. Be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

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*Update – Click here for the WordPress 2.9.1 Update Notes*

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 my 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.

Soulmates Wedding – from WordPress 2.7.1 to 2.9
This was definitely my most challenging of upgrades, as I had never upgraded this site to WordPress 2.8. The automatic upgrade absolutely did not work, and after it failed, Soulmates Wedding was left as a blank white screen with nothing but a favicon.

After a bit of reading around forums and WordPress documents, I ended up doing a manual upgrade to WordPress 2.8.6 using the files in the WordPress Release Archive. This included:

• Deleting the wp-admin and wp-includes folders
• Uploading the WordPress 2.8.6 wp-admin and wp-includes folders
• Uploading the main files WordPress 2.8.6 files
• Uploading the index.php files in the wp-content and wp-content/plugins folders

When I checked the site, it was back up again (thank goodness). I went to login, and WordPress asked me to update the database, which worked successfully, and now that the site was at 2.8.6, I was able to use the automatic upgrade feature to move it to WordPress 2.9.

101 Things – from WordPress 2.7.1 to 2.9
It has been awhile since I have done work on my 101 things list. So it was nice to not only run the upgrade manually to 2.8.6 and then automatically to 2.9, but also to see that I have made some progress towards my goals. It was a good reminder to get back to working on those for next year.

Malshi – from WordPress 2.8.2 to 2.9
Another site that is desperate need of updating, one I created for my love of the Malshis, a hybrid / designer dog breed mix between Shih-Tzu and Maltese, was an easy automatic upgrade from 2.8.2 to 2.9.

Artistic Gemini and My Portfolio – from WordPress 2.8.6 to 2.9
Artistic Gemini and my WordPress Customization portfolio were both automatically upgraded to 2.9. WordPress 2.9 caused a nice error with a Post Template plugin that I needed for a previous theme on my portfolio, so it wasn’t too great of a loss when I had to leave it deactivated.

Kikolani – from WordPress 2.7.1 to 2.9
Finally, the biggest, most nerve racking update – this site. I did everything as by the book as possible, including:

• Deactivating all plugins
• Deleting the wp-admin and wp-includes folders
• Uploading the WordPress 2.8.6 wp-admin and wp-includes folders
• Uploading the main files WordPress 2.8.6 files
• Uploading the index.php files in the wp-content and wp-content/plugins folders
• Updating database
• Running automatic upgrade to 2.9
• Activated necessary plugins, one by one

There was one moment where my heart sank during this process, as the database upgrade (after the 2.8.6 update) never displayed the successful message. I had to refresh the page, hit the update again, and then wait until it went to the login page. From there the automatic upgrade worked fine.

So far, the only issues I’ve noticed is the loss of my Meet Your Commenters plugin, which showed any social and blog links related to your most recent commenters in the dashboard, and an error message of “RSS Error: The data could not be converted to UTF-8″ on the Incoming Links section of the dashboard.

Also, due to popular demand, I finally added the threaded functionality to the comments section.

Thesis 1.6 Upgrade

Oes tsetnoc – Thesis 1.5.1 to 1.6
I experimented with the Thesis 1.6 upgrade on my oes tsetnoc site first, prior to doing Kikolani. I didn’t follow the directions well from the DIY Themes site, as I missed the important key of not trying to upload the 1.6 files into the 1.5 directory, and suffered the consequences of losing my CSS styles, menu, and 3 column layout.

For some reason, the directions on Thesis Tools about how to upgrade Thesis 1.5 to Thesis 1.6 made a little more sense to me, and I successfully installed the new Thesis version. I uploaded the new Thesis 1.6 files to my website, changed the custom_sample folder to custom, and then uploaded my custom.css and custom-functions.php files to the new custom folder. Finally, I changed the permissions on the layout.css, and my site went back to normal again.

Kikolani – Thesis 1.5 to 1.6
So now that I had a bit of experience with the upgrade and better directions, I made a much easier upgrade from Thesis 1.5 to 1.6 with no problems. Now I will be able to update my Thesis customization articles soon with the new Thesis 1.6 changes.

UPDATE: WordPress 2.9.1

Hot on the heels of the 2.9 release is the 2.9.1 update with some bug fixes. I did a direct upgrade of my poetry site from 2.8.4 to 2.9.1 using the automatic upgrade with no issues.

I also have updated a few of my sites listed above directly from 2.9 to 2.9.1. If your site is already updated to 2.9, and you use the automatic upgrade to 2.9.1, it will also notify you if you have some plugins that are also due to be updated, and gives you the option to select those to be upgraded at the same time as you upgrade WordPress. Personally, I’m going to do the plugins separately. In case there are problems, you can at least know what caused it – the WordPress upgrade or the plugins.

One little issue I ran into doing the auto upgrade from 2.9 to 2.9.1 was a time out error. While doing the upgrade, I also opened another website that was having trouble loading. The installation failed due to the error, but when I went to do the upgrade again, this time without simultaneously messing with anything else, it worked just fine.

The only bug I noticed after upgrading to 2.9 on Kikolani was I lost my incoming links in the WordPress dashboard due to a RSS error, and that is now working again with the 2.9.1 update.

Your Upgrade Successes and Issues

So now that I’ve shared my upgrading experiences, it is your turn. Is there any advice or troubleshooting tips you would like to share when upgrading WordPress to its latest version?

You're reading Upgrading WordPress 2.9 and Thesis 1.6, originally posted on Kikolani and copyrighted by Kristi Hines, freelance writer and professional blogger. Be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

• WordPress Thesis Theme Customization Part Two: Plugins
• WordPress Thesis Theme Customization Part One: Options
• WordPress Thesis Theme Customization Part Three A: Custom Coding
• Thesis vs Genesis – Comparing Premium WordPress Themes
• WordPress Thesis Theme Customization Part Three B: Posts & Social Bookmarking

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.

New Concept
Because of this new focus, I could no longer go with my previous Kikolani – Poetry, Photography, Blogging tagline. My husband came up with my new tagline / concept – Kikolani | The Art of Blogging | Technically Beautiful, Artfully Beneficial. This covered the topics of beautiful and artistic photography, as well as the technical blogging and social media articles, and the posts on the beneficial side of blogging and using Web 2.0 for everyone, not just bloggers.

Highlights

Community and Commentators
I would say that the things I consider the biggest highlights of my first year in blogging is developing a community of regular readers. I welcome new visitors, and have no complaints about the ones that come in for one article in particular. But seeing familiar names over and over again in the comments makes me feel like I’m doing something right. As a thank you for commenting on this site, I use DoFollow, CommentLuv, and the Top Commentator list so that everyone gets the benefits of link love with each comment.

Guest Blogging and Interviews
I was also offered some guest blogger and interview opportunities. Unfortunately, as excited and honored as I was to receive them, I haven’t been able to write all of them yet. One thing that many people do not know about me is that my articles take a good bit of time to construct. I am a bit too much of a perfectionist for my own good, so if something doesn’t seem near perfect, it doesn’t make the cut. And doing spots on other sites makes me that much more picky about what I write about.

My first guest post was featured at Life As I Know It, about how the way you admit problems to yourself can make a big difference in how you will handle them. My next two guest posts were both for Techjaws. Both were in relation to my site’s first hack – a script injection that infected more than 3,000 websites during the month of May. These articles came quite easily, as I wrote them right after cleaning them both up.

My first interview about my definition of happiness came a few months after I started blogging at Smile My Day. The second is a comprehensive one about my blogging experience that posted just yesterday at ATM Multimedia.

Fetching Fridays
I decided to do a weekly series that highlighted the best articles I came across throughout the week, and also covered #FollowFriday on Twitter, related site news, previews for the following week’s articles, and more. Fetching Friday has since taken off, and nothing makes me happier than reading about the people who plan on visiting each Friday for the latest.

Popular Posts

Here are the top 20 posts during my first year blogging:

• Haiku Poems: Examples, Tools, and a Contest – the spark of my interest in writing haiku through a contest on Twitter.
• People Come Into Your Life for a Reason – a story that I was sent via email once about the different people who become a part of your life, either temporarily or permanently.
• Twitter Lingo & Tips for New Twitter and Facebook Users – also my most Tweeted post
• 9 Ways to Use Social Networking for Blog Promotion – also most commetned and most Dugg
• How Artistic Types Express Themselves – a personal favorite about the different ways artists express their feelings to the world.
• Using Demotivators to Find Motivation Again – written at a time when I was lacking the motivation department.
• Comprehensive Guide to RSS – covers many uses of RSS subscriptions for anyone.
• 8 Reasons to Use Delicious Social Bookmarking – saving and sharing great finds on the web, creating action plans, and more ways to use social bookmarking with Delicious.
• 25 Social Bookmarking & Link Sharing Browser Bookmarklets – great for anyone looking for a faster way to bookmark and share links with others without the hassle of add-ons and multiple toolbars.
• Hummingbird Nest with Babies – Photography and Nature Haiku – definitely the accelerator of my interest in photography – the discovery of hummingbird nest right outside my office.
• Fetching Friday – Inspirational Blogging Resources, and more
• Self Discovery Through Blogging – how anyone can use blogging to strengthen their writing skills, interests, education and more.
• Explaining Web 2.0 Features on Your Blog – the benefits to bloggers of clearly explaining the ways that visitors can interact with you on your blog.
• Hummingbird Baby Photos
• My Flickr Meme – Creating a Mosaic
• Dobby’s First Miniature Schnauzer Haircut – our puppy’s first haircut.
• How to Make Social Promotion Easy
• The Blogging Process – an article about what goes on beyond just posting articles in the blogging process.
• Vacation Proofing Your Blogs and Social Networks – how to make sure your site and social networks thrive while you are offline.
• Fetching Friday – Design Inspiration, Blogging Resources, and more

Personal Favorites

On a personal note, even though they haven’t ranked high in the most traffic list, these are still my favorite articles:

• A Tribute to My Grandmother – written after my Grandmother passed away in October.
• The Life of an Emotional Sponge – how some people can read emotions from others, and those emotions become a part of them.
• Beyond Sight – Appreciating Beauty – ways to appreciate and share beauty in this world.
• Wedding Photos at Soulmateswedding.com – the announcement of the site dedicated to my modern fairytale romance, complete with photos, stories and the love poems that began this site.
• Blogging, Goals, and 101 Things – announcement of the site I created for my participation in the 101 things to do in 1001 days project.

Traffic Notes

For those curious about what has worked for my site in terms of traffic generation, here are some interesting stats about where my traffic comes from:

Traffic from social networks

• StumbleUpon
• Twitter
• Facebook
• BlogCatalog
• Digg

Traffic from search engines

• Google
• Yahoo
• Google Image Search
• AOL
• MSN

Traffic from other blogs

• Lifehacker.com – simply from commenting on a few articles a week.
• 1stwebdesigner.com – also from commenting.
• Kimwoodbridge.com – from commenting and being featured in several of her always useful anti-social lists.
• Wassupblog.com – from commenting and being featured in the blogroll.
• Techjaws.com – from commenting, blogroll, and guest postings.

Future Plans

The main plan for Kikolani is to continue providing articles that are informative, useful, and beneficial to any readers who visit this site. I want to open the floor to more guest authors for posts on blogging, social media, personal development and motivational articles, which will in turn give me more time to accept guest blogger opportunities on other sites. I am toying with the idea of continuing the weekly photography posts here, but also having a separate site specifically dedicated to photography as I would like to do more with my photography, such as publish it in a coffee table style book.

Special Thanks

I would like to say a special thanks to my husband, who has been extremely wonderful and supportive of my blogging, not only putting up with my endless hours of pitter patter on the keyboard but also coming up with my current tagline, thinking of new ideas on how to market my site & photography, and sharing helpful design critiques and suggestions.

I also want to thank all of my readers, the ones that have been with the site from the beginning and the newer readers that I gain every week. Thanks to all of those who comment, and who share my posts on their blog or on the social networks.

Your Thoughts

Now, the floor is open to you. What brought you to this site? What were your favorite articles? What would you like to see on Kikolani in the next year?

You're reading Kikolani – The First Year, originally posted on Kikolani and copyrighted by Kristi Hines, freelance writer and professional blogger. Be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

• A New Concept for Kikolani
• New Look for Kikolani.com
• Best of Blogging on Kikolani in 2009
• Top 25 Blogging and Social Media Posts on Kikolani
• Fetching Friday – Web 2.0 At the Bookstore, Twitter Resources

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.

Future plans include adding some wedding video (once the editing work gets done), and maybe a blog with relationship advice. But for now, I hope you take a look and enjoy the photo galleries, stories, and little extras.

You're reading Wedding Photos and More at SoulmatesWedding.com, originally posted on Kikolani and copyrighted by Kristi Hines, freelance writer and professional blogger. Be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

• Kikolani – The First Year

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. I believe these incorporate most of what this site has to offer – the technical articles about blogging and social networking, the beneficial articles on motivation and how blogging can help develop a person, and the beautiful articles of photography and poetry that I still plan to include. I believe that everyone needs a break from heavy business and technical articles every now and then.

Over the next 31 days, if you have any feedback about the new concept and any other on-going changes, please let me know in the comments.

You're reading A New Concept for Kikolani, originally posted on Kikolani and copyrighted by Kristi Hines, freelance writer and professional blogger. Be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

• Kikolani – The First Year
• Best of Blogging on Kikolani in 2009
• New Look for Kikolani.com
• Top 25 Blogging and Social Media Posts on Kikolani
• 31 Days to Build a Better Blog

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. I hope everyone enjoys the new look! Please feel free to leave any feedback or suggestions in the comments, or email me at webmaster at kikolani.com.


Credits:
Arthemia theme by Michael Jubel
RSS Icon by Matt Forsythe
Social media icons by Web Took Kit 4 Me.

You're reading New Look for Kikolani.com, originally posted on Kikolani and copyrighted by Kristi Hines, freelance writer and professional blogger. Be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

• Kikolani – The First Year
• A New Concept for Kikolani