I’ve been meaning to update my self help blog for ages, and I finally did it. I went through each one of the blog posts, deleted some, updated many, and put a good number in draft mode so I can fix them later). And my self help blog is finally mobile friendly!
What took me so long?
Well, it’s a BIG blog. It had almost 250 posts, and I wanted to make sure everything was safely backed up before I started messing with it.
Well, thanks to my trusty backup software, I was able to back it up.
Making My Self Help Blog Mobile Friendly
And then, I held my breath and updated the ancient version of WP to the current one. Everything went well.
But in order to make it mobile friendly, I had to change the theme too. That was part of the hold up. I really liked the old theme. I mean, it has been the familiar theme for about 9 years!
Alas, that theme didn’t have any recent versions, and it was decidedly not mobile friendly.
So I did what I had to do, and, well, I was surprised at how much I like the result. I was able to create a header image that maintains the overall feel of the previous theme: A serene beach house scene on Hawaii’s Big Island. In fact, I find it striking just how similar to the original it is.
Updating My Self Help Blog
Once I had the frame updated, it was time to deal with the content. I had written almost 250 blog posts, some of them lengthy, some of them not so lengthy. Either way, I had to take a close look at every one of them and do one of three things: Keep (usually with fixes and updates), delete, or put in draft mode for later editing.
So I started with the oldest post and worked my way forward. Some of my earlier posts were more like extended Facebook posts, so I deleted quite a few. But then, I shared information I was really pleased with, and that I wanted to save.
But some of the links were no longer working. So I fixed them all. If there was a complicated case where I needed to do some research, I put the post into draft mode.
And I kept moving, and moving, and moving, and voila!
I went from 246 original published posts to 139 published posts, 60 in trash and 47 in “draft” mode.
Next Step For My Favorite Self Help Blog
So what’s next? Now that I have overhauled the whole blog, I’m ready to post again, lots. I’m also working on getting it found again. I’ll be posting on my Favorite Self Help Stuff Facebook page and running promoted posts…
And as time permits, I’ll go through the drafts, this time from the newest to the older ones, and make sure everything works. And then I publish those too, for the most part.
I’ll also go back through all those categories and try to reduce them to a more manageable number. When I first started this blog, I was really new to the online world, and didn’t know how categories worked, or keywords for that matter.
Now, I realize that my blog posts will be much more effective if they’re more focused on fewer keywords. And so I’m going to check on my keywords and delete a few.
Finally, I’m going to link to some of my older posts from the newer ones, to help my readers find related content.
Please Visit My Updated Self Help Blog
In the meantime, I’d like to invite you to visit my newly updated Self Help Blog and look around. I hope you’ll enjoy it!
Let me know what you think!
Elisabeth