Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Spring cleaning the inn

The spring sun has arrived and is relentlessly exposing the lack of window cleaning activities in my home. While the mothers of the neighbourhood are polishing frenetically, I shrug. I look at the grey shade on the window, thinking: “it isn’t too bad. After all it helps out to filter the annoying sun reflections so I get a better view on the screen.” Yeah. I’m a bad, bad woman.

But nevertheless: spring has arrived and that means that it’s about time to do some cleaning at The Ping Pigtail Inn as well. I’ve had my home in those premises for eleven months now, and it has become quite untidy in the corners. It isn’t anything revolutionary stuff going on, just small adjustments, so please keep enjoying your beer and posts and don’t worry too much about it.

If you’re curious about what’s been going on without your noticing I thought I’d point it out and also give some proper credit for the work.

The rescuing knight
The knight that has suddenly come to my rescue in this matter is the in every aspect outstanding, awesome WoW blogger Ixobelle. A little while ago he wrote to me and suggested that I should move the author names so that they come before the posts, in order to avoid confusion about who has written them, now that I have a bartender. I replied that I’d like to and that I had tried to, but that I for some reason couldn’t make it work, and that I unfortunately had no clue about html writing.

“I’ll help you out” he said. And so he did. And while he was still at it, he also helped me with an old issue, which has been bothering me since last autumn: the fact that whenever a Blogger based blog linked to my blog in a blogroll, the link went to an old post, unless they linked to my Feedburner address. Now that problem is solved and I don’t have to write individually to every single blogger who is kind enough to link to me, explaining why the link doesn’t work.

And as if this wasn’t enough he offered to help me to make a little icon for the blog. So if you look closely in the address field of the blog you’ll find a smallish pink pigtail.

Broken blogroll
Finally Ixobelle suggested that I should give the blog a proper domain name. I had thought it was rather complicated – it turned out that it wasn’t. So from now on you’ll find me at http://pinkpigtailinn.com/. The old address will continue to work though, so it’s no panic to change it.

As a side effect of this it seems as if my blogroll has disappeared. I don’t know if I’ll be able to restore it the way it was or if I’ll have to rebuild it manually. If it’s the later, it will take me some time, since I don’t read blogs through any reader, but through my blog roll. I’ll have to try to recall them all and probably I’ll fail on a few. So please, if you know that you were linked on my roll and don’t find your blog linked here again in a few days, please throw me a letter and I’ll put you back! Don’t take any offence. Some blogs have trade marks that I can recall without any help, some haven't, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t read and appreciate them.

By the way, Ixobelle did another great thing for The Pink Pigtail Inn and a bunch of other blogs on his blogroll. Instead of just providing a link, he has made personal, unique thumbnails for each one of the blog. I so proud and thrilled to see mine that I just have to publish it here so that you’ll all will see it, in case you’re not one of Ixobelle’s regular readers.
Did I tell you he is awesome? Not enough many times. So I say it again. Ixobelle, you are my hero.

The state of the blog
A few final words about the state of the blog. The last few weeks I’ve had a few posts which have been heavily commented, partly thanks to some link love from WoW Insider. It’s nice and very much appreciated; however it’s a little bit overwhelming. I’ve always tried to answer almost every single comment, and that works well when you have 5-10 comments at the most, but not as well when there’s 39 of them. If you have commented and not got a personal reply, it doesn’t mean that I didn’t read and appreciate the comment. I really, really do.

To be honest it feels a bit weird to get all this attention. Gaining a big audience has never been a big blogging motivator for me, but suddenly I find myself with over 500 subscribers. I guess it’s a sign of the time we’re living in. Established WoW bloggers are now quitting almost every day. Gnomeaggedon hasn’t quit yet, in spite of all the little pranks he’s currently playing us. But many others have and I guess that this means that their readers are looking for new blogs to get their daily dose of WoW-related blog reading. Some of them end up here.

To all of you who have started to frequent PPI recently, I can just say: welcome and have a seat! Feel free to poke around a bit among my old writings! I’ve written over 300 posts by now and actually most of them are rather timeless, since I don’t engage myself that much into news from the PTRs and such. When I look back at my first posts I can see that my perspective has shifted slightly, after I’ve gained more raiding experience. But the essence is pretty much the same and I don’t regret any of my earlier writings. So if you think that my posting is slower that you’d like, it could be an idea to try some of the vintage brews while waiting for the new ones to arrive.

12 comments:

Dwism said...

Looks and sound great, and yea ixobelle sounds like a true knight in shinning armor!

Tessy said...

I live by the device of "bättre lite skit i hörnen än ett rent helvete" (which sadly does not translate well into english) and it works wonderfully well for me, so you keep doing your spring cleaning where it matters to you and let the compulsory window cleaners do their thing :-P

Absolutely wonderful thumbnail btw!

Gevlon said...

Definitely people just come here because they have nowhere else to go and not because your blog is great.

It's seems you'll never give up underestimating yourself.

I also won't give up correcting these. :-)

HP said...

I love your icon, it's so cute! Ixobelle is really nice that he gave you all those tips and whatnot! I'm still trying to figure how to use Blogger

Frida said...

Even tho the changed things ain't that big, they make things look a little more shiny. Really wish I had a little knight like that myself, as I'm on the edge of retarded when it comes to html on my blog.

And am I the only one who's missed this blog being linked in Wow Insider btw? I've been reading for a little while, but must've missed that part. All good luck to you tho.

Klepsacovic said...

Get those silly ideas out of your head. Your blog isn't gaining in popularity because all the good blogs are disappearing, it's gaining because it is a good blog.

Now go clean that window and get some blinds if you have too much glare.

Stabs said...

Big thumbs up from me and nice to see members of the blogging community helping each other out.

If anyone from Blizzard is reading, bear in mind Ixobelle wants to work for you - you could do a lot worse than hiring that man.

Rich said...

I've got a lot of free time on my hands recently, while I'm in hurry-up-and-wait mode until my wife's visa clears and I'm ready to go back home in the states.

I could round up a bunch of the basic ideas (custom URL, little icon by the address, how to use feedburner) and do a blog tune up post, I guess? All the things I suggested to Larisa were just things I had fumbled around with and done on my own, save for one (moving the author name... it was hard coded in the HTML), but that wasn't too tough to figure out.

At any rate... my pleasure, glad to be of service. :)

Hatch said...

Yep those icons Ixo made for his blogroll are awesome. Cool of him to help you out so much!

I know I'd get some use out of those tips if you put them in a blog post Ixo. I've been loving Satrina Buff Frames, and I never would have tried them or mastered them without you.

M said...

Woot. I'm so happy the reader issue got fixed as I was always said that my site didn't appear to update your link appropriately (or even worse, my reader didn't get served). Now I'll never miss a post! (Save, when I leave for the weekend and come back to find that everyone and their mother decided to blog over the weekend).

In any case, great work.

Darraxus said...

Lol I remember when you were always at the bottom of my blogroll due to the way my blogroll linked you. It said "last updated 6 months ago".

Larísa said...

@Dw-redux: yep! I'm fortunate!

@Tessy: "better some crap in the corners than a pure hell?" Thank you for your support!

@Gevlon: Nope, it's like a hangup! Larísa is a failure and if anything good happens to her it's just by accident... Hm... It's not a good way of thinking, really. You're right.

@HP: I think Blogger is quite easy to use as long as you stick to the templates. At least I found it intuitively much easier to understand than Wordpress. But if I have to do some html coding, I'm afraid I'm lost. Haven't done that for over ten years...

@Consolea: it was my post about our fear of temporary changes. Stirred up quite a lot of feelings with those who either hated or loved the scourge invasion.

@Klepsacovic: hm... today is a holiday and the sun is shining. Maybe I should do as you say and it would give me some family rep as well I think.

@Stabs: oh, I wish there was some way we could get him into Blizzard. Make a petition where the blogging community could sign?

@Ixobelle: that's a good idea to reuse your work in a blog post. I think there are many other bloggers out there who could need some help. Those things you did for me may not be advanced, but it isn't exactly easy to find out on your own.

@Fulguralis & Darraxus: yeah, I'm so glad it works better now. I've always felt ashamed when it has seemed like I haven't updated in 6 months, even though I knew it wasn't true.