How important are search boxes, navigation and labels?

Revamping, redesigning or reconstructing blog
Pick a word....:-)
Any one of them and that's what I'm trying to do on my blog pages. Its not so easy...

After being a judge for the Really Good Stuff blog contest I learned a few things and I wanted to started fixing my own blog.
Oh and by the way...my work on judging was done a week early! It seems that my fellow judges and I had picked so many of the same blogs as our top five that we didn't need to deliberate any further! Awesome!

Anyway...I learned a few things and after looking a few times at 28 blogs in the catagory I was judging, here are the top 3 things that I found that were most important:
1) "SEARCH" box -
 It's very, very important to have a "search" box on your blog, some of your visitors may only have short spans of times and are looking for something in particular. The search box makes it easier for them to find those things in the pages of your blog.
2) "NAVIGATION" -
A clearly defined "menu" at the top of your page makes it easier for visitors to see what your blog pages are all about, its vital in fact. Sometimes that "blog archive" feature is confusing, especially for visitors that aren't used to how a certain brand of blog sites work.
Having that menu bar going across the top really helps.
Also helpful is having a "recent page update" box which shows the pages of your blog, the title's of the most recent posts and the dates posted.
3) "LABELS" -
This is similiar to the search box feature - this feature gives you a block or menu of those labels and also having the option of how many posts mention those subject tags. The labels themselves are that list at the bottom of blog posts that you tag the subject or subjects mentioned in your blog postings.

There were a few others that we important as well - such as too many graphics, too many color's, not having a clearly defined theme or color palette. That too many graphics one is number four on the list I would have to say, there were a few sites that I visited that I thought were nice but after looking at them for a bit those graphics really hurt the eyes. They were too busy and confusing and if they blinked or changed images it was very distracting while reading posts.
If you are hosting a blog hop or something else that links a lot of those button images for other blogs, it would be better to have the preview of the blog as a shorter snippet - one that doesn't start showing all those image buttons on your landing page. Once the visitor hits the link to the full blog post then its fine to have all the buttons show up but its much better visually on the landing page to only see a title and information on the blog post in a small paragraph. Even a small picture graphic of the "official" blog hop is fine, it would clearly show that you are part of the blog hop but not be annoying to your visitors. There were a few pages that I visited and so many of the posts were blog hops that it was just a long, long, long busy page of images which interferred with finding the educational posts in between.

In the end, it all has me fixing my own blog to make it easier to navigate. My blog pages will be changing over the next couple of weeks as I flip things around and add extra dedicated pages, mostly to the homeschooling pages. Now its time to put my labels at the bottom of this post!


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September Reviews, Giveaways and Discounts!!

It looks like on top of homeschooling that I'll be very busy reviewing this month. Which is cool, because it means some pretty great give-aways and discounts from some places for all of you!
Most of them are related to education and will be featured on my "Homeschooling" tab, one (so far) will be featured here on this page.

So far, for September reviews we have:

MATHBLASTER ~ Currently going on and ending on September 17th, 2011 from the makers of JumpStart. Please check out my review and all the details for the free 3-month full membership to their website!

Upcoming reviews include;
* Vocabulary and Spelling City
* Click-n-kids (Click-n-Read, Click-n-Spell and Looney Tunes Phonics), this one will be a recurring monthly give-away!
* Weigl/AV2 Publishers
* My Memories Suite (for scrapbooking)

These websites will be offering give-aways, discounts and in some cases both things.
There maybe other websites, offerings coming this month as well...please check back for them as well as these upcoming reviews.
Most of these sites are websites we were already using or discovered at a recent education conference. I'm very happy to work with these companies on getting their products out to my homeschooling friends and to families and teachers as well.


Join the HOP - No Ordinary Blog Hop

Okay...Life....Uncle already!

Remember that stress free life I was going to have......

I'm still trying to find it...meanwhile those wrenches and other assorted tools keep getting thrown in our path....watch out! That was a hammer I'm sure of it! If I see a chainsaw I'm going back to bed....
The good thing about all of this is how I'm personally handling it (I think), I'm trying to not get as upset as I used to. I'm succeeding more times than not....that's a plus, right? I'm determined though, okay except for the chainsaw...I have my limits, so I keep plugging along. I'd scream sometimes but my voice still hasn't come back all the way from being sick, and just what the he-double hockey sticks WAS this bug we had anyway. The Red Ranger bounced back okay even though it really got to him too but my husband and I....Uncle, Uncle, UNCLE!

Let's see right now I'm working on finding the rest of the house after holidays and being sick for months. Even purchased more plastic drawers for the ever expanding homeschool piles. Bought clothes for The Red Ranger because he's 8 next month and 51" tall.....that's 4'3"....just one foot shorter than his mother here!! He is now out of the car seat! Where is this right in the world?! Where is my baby?! Do you realize I can't even reach back now and tickle knee-caps at traffic lights? Yet, another fun thing taken away from mom...jeez....what did I do, anyway? I'm trying to decide about a Thomas Jefferson Education for our son, so I'm reading up on it but I've sorta added some aspects already such as the reading of classics's. You can read more about that over on the Reading tab. Red Ranger went to Lowe's this Saturday and did another project which we then went over to his friend's house to play with, along with numerous other things. We loved spending the day at our friend's house, it was relaxing and enjoyable.
We have been watching Lily & Hope again this winter and there are (at last count last night) 2 more baby bear cubs in the den. Thankfully, sort of, I missed the birth's this time because last year when little Hope was born I was grunting and groaning for Lily, poor thing all alone in a dark, cold den having her baby all alone. The Red Ranger loves checking in on them and hearing the cubs, he's even started to name them (Bruce and Rocko) but I tried explaining that we don't know yet if the new cubs are boy's or girl's or one of each.
There has been so much going on that I can't even think of it all to post here.....it just boggles the mind.

I'm tired and weary and this Twister like path of destruction in front of me is getting a bit old BUT my attitude is better...that's half the battle right?!
So now off I go to organize homeschool stuff yet again, back to lesson's, take care of the hermit crabs, our cats inside and the poor feral ones outside, wait...was that a chainsaw going by? Is my bed calling me back?
Darn it.....nope guess not, back to my list....cleaning, dinner plans (what the devil am I making?), etc., etc., and so on....

Hope everyone has a lovely day!
We sure are going to try!!!

The Red Ranger with new duds and haircut...what's with the posing?

The Red Ranger and Kid Jedi

Over at Kid Jedi's house playing with the Lowe's project they made