Week in Review – December 25, 2016

Merry Christmas! This is the final Week in Review of the year, though next weekend’s will be about the final week of the year. A lot has happened, most of it in the last 24 hours. Well, it was Christmas! Unfortunately, I think a lot of my free time will be taken up by NHL 17 and Final Fantasy XV. Yeah, we got an Xbox One S. Also, I received something from Google AdSense. Turns out it’s just a PIN so I can claim my income. It felt oddly official, even though I haven’t made enough to claim any of it yet. So, what else happened?

Reading

I’m now at 51% in The Martian, by Andy Weir. I hope to finish it in the next week, but we’ll see. I work a lot, though I may drive instead of taking the bus sometimes.

Writing

Still feeling that inspiration, but no privacy.

Videos

I posted 7 videos on my main channel since the last Week in Review, including a lot of tag videos. However, my latest video was a special Christmas one. My vlog channel has been silent, but it’ll return! I also experienced the subscription glitch. I lost a few subscribers on my main channel, and someone told me they were unsubbed from me. Wonderful.

Patreon

Nothing. Major revamp coming very soon!

Languages

Again, nothing.

The Blog

Nothing really special has happened, other than annoyance about WordPress changing some things again. Also, Authors Answer has been getting popular on YouTube. That’s right, people are doing videos now!

Studying

Nothing.

The Next Week’s Goals

I’ll be working a lot over the next couple weeks. However, I hope to do the usual work on the blog, as well as on my channels. The biggest thing I need to do is some new channel trailers, as well as setting up the new science channel, which still needs a name!

How was your week?

WordPress Changes Things Again

A while back, WordPress completely changed the Stats page. The old stats page was still accessible, and I had it bookmarked. What I needed was the summaries page that gave me weekly, monthly, and yearly numbers, as well as daily averages for each month and a complete list of the month’s daily views. I use that for my Month in Review posts.

Well, that’s all gone, as far as I can tell. My bookmark just takes me to the newer stats page. However, I found a workaround that takes me to an even older stats page. Just go to the wp-admin page (That’s https:// (yourblog).wordpress.com/wp-admin/) and then Site Stats, and click on Summaries. That’s what I use, but it’s the old old version. It still works for me, though.

Another thing that’s disappeared is the Notifications page! I never liked using the Notifications menu (the button at the top right with the bell) because it never showed if I’d replied to the comment or not. The Notifications page showed me all of that, and it gave me a lot of options. But much to my surprise, the bell-button-notifications menu now gives me all those options and tells me if I’d replied! Okay, that is a step forward.

So, one step back for the stats, one step forward for the notifications. Unfortunately, WordPress is trying to cater more to mobile users than computer users. Mobile stats and other features are extremely limited, though. And I do not like writing posts with the app. Computer only.

Anyone else notice the changes? What do you think?

WordPress Now Difficult to Use With Firefox

Firefox has been increasingly difficult for me to use in the past few months. I am constantly getting errors saying Firefox cannot run scripts. So, today, as I’m trying to look at my WordPress stats, I got this:

Unresponsive script. It’s not only made the script unresponsive, but made Firefox unresponsive.

I’ve now switched to Chrome, which I’m using to post this.

Anyone else have issues with Firefox? Let me know in the comments below.

How Did You Find Me?

You found me somehow. I know I found some of you. But how did you find me?

Judging from my referrers, the most common way people read my blog is through WordPress, Facebook, Twitter, other blogs, HarsH ReaLiTy, Critique Circle, Goodreads, Duolingo, Google search, other blogs, and more.

So, how did you find my blog? I’m really interested in seeing how most people find my blog. Let me know in the comments below.

A Look Back at 2015

Every year, WordPress gives each blog a year in blogging page. It’s not as thorough as my monthly reviews, but it’s interesting nevertheless. Take a look at my 2015 year in blogging.

So, I had around 37,000 views, and my best day had 250 views. And there have been posts every single day of the year. Not only that, 2 posts a day at least! What I set out to do this year, I achieved in terms of blogging. It was my biggest year in terms of views, comments, and posts.

I always make a monthly post on my top commenters. Well, looking at the year in blogging, the top commenters are stomperdad (467), Joanne Corey (345), S. R. Carrillo (313), Thomas Weaver (208), and H. Anthe Davis (166).

It was a slow year for reading, though. I only finished 10 books. I’ll do another post regarding these after I’m no longer in the company of in-laws. But the last two days proved that I can read more than 10% of a long book in just a couple hours. So, there’s no reason why I can’t make 2016 a much bigger year in reading. All I need to do is spend an hour or two reading every day, which I think I could easily do. We’ll see how that goes.

I had a big writing event this year, and that was the A to Z Challenge. I completed it successfully, writing a very short story for each letter of the alphabet in the Ariadne universe early after colonisation. I even made it into a chronological series of loosely connected stories. I think I’ll collect them all and put them on my official author’s page in the new year.

And so, this post marks the final post of 2015. May 2016 bring another few hundred posts and even bigger things. And I have some big things coming up. I have an international book project to start up in January, an interview on a podcast sometime in the new year, an international move in March, and a big return to writing after April. So, look forward to it!

How was your 2015?

Authors Answer 58 – Author Online Hangouts

In the past, long before the internet, it was difficult to interact with authors. They could be contacted by mail, and maybe you could see them at an event, but it was not easy to seek them out otherwise. These days, the internet has provided both authors and readers a way to communicate easily. Some authors are very involved with the public, others are not. So, where can you find us online?

Question 58 – What are some online forums or websites you use to have discussions with other authors?

D. T. Nova

Honestly, the most interaction I have with other authors is probably actually in the comment sections for authors’ blogs.

Aside from that, I spend some time on Goodreads’s forums.

Gregory S. Close

Although it’s as much with readers as authors, I find the r/fantasy community of Reddit the best outlet for all things fantasy.  Good discussion.  Honest (mostly polite) disagreement.  Great interactions.  Otherwise, I interact with a few of my author friends and acquaintances on Facebook or by email.

Paul B. Spence

I don’t.

Caren Rich

I use Critique Circle- that a good place to get basic critiques of a story. I am also a member of several FaceBook author groups. The most useful ones are Clean Indie Authors and Indie Authors. You have to be careful with Facebook groups some of them are just out to promote what they write and aren’t good for troubleshooting. I’m also a member of Sisters in Crime, a mystery writers group. I highly recommend them. You have to pay to be a member but it is worth it. They offer classes every month that well worth the money.

Allen Tiffany

CritiqueCircle is where I spend 97% of my time online ref my writing. In addition to cycling stories through, I’m active on the boards there and enjoy the discussions. Other than that, there are a few blogs I’ll post to – this being one of them.

H. Anthe Davis

I’m kind of reclusive, alas — I know I should reach out more, but I’d rather stay in my little writing-cave, ignoring the world.  That said, I hang out a bit on the Fantasy Faction forums, though not frequently; I tend to go months between actual posts.

Eric Wood

As of right now the only site I use to converse with other authors is WordPress where I blog.

Elizabeth Rhodes

Year-round I use CritiqueCircle.  Even though I only frequent a few of the threads there are enough familiar faces to make me feel comfortable opening up.  Around November I go to National Novel Writing Month’s site, but I don’t know people there as well.  For a while I used to go to the writing forums on Gaia Online, and it was a good place to talk about writing once you found where the regulars stayed.  But it was difficult for me to keep up with three places at once and I haven’t been as active there.

S. R. Carrillo

Honestly? The blog and, sometimes, YouTube. I need to find some, I suppose. I didn’t know that was a thing.

Jean Davis

The website I use most to connect with other writers is Critique Circle.

Tracey Lynn Tobin

The biggest one for me is the NaNoWriMo website/forums. There are tons of awesome people on there. You can talk to people from one side of the planet to the other, or you can hunt down people who live right down the road from you pretty damn easily. Plus there are tons of resources (there’s an entire forum dedicated just to helping each other answer weird questions that you need for plot reasons), and lots of fun stuff to keep you busy when you need a few moments to procrastinate. Not to mention, in recent years lots of big companies have gotten into supporting NaNoWriMo, so you’ll find all kinds of software developers offering trials of their writing programs, companies offering big discounts on things like editing and cover design, and lots and lots of writers sharing info on who is accepting submissions right now or which website is having a big contest at the moment. It’s got a little bit of everything, and all of it is helpful. 🙂

Jay Dee Archer

You’ll find me online in several places, though I haven’t always been very active in some of them. Of course, you’ll find me on WordPress, including this blog and a few others I frequent. Outside of blogging, I’m regularly on Critique Circle, though I could be more active there. Once I get back to writing and posting Journey to Ariadne, I’ll be active there again. I’m also around on Goodreads sometimes. I’ve been meaning to take advantage of Reddit’s fantasy and science fiction groups. And I’m also on Youtube.

How about you?

If you’re an author, where do you spend time online talking with other authors and readers? If you’re not an author, where do you like to talk to authors?

There’s a New Post Editor!

I’d been using the old editor for quite some time. Then last year, a new editor appeared that lacked the functionality of the old one, and for some reason, only gave me the ability to see three lines in the text field. It was irritating. It only gave me a full view when I edited existing posts. It was fine for that, but not for making new posts. So, I continued using the old editor which is available on the old WP Admin Dashboard.

Well, there’s a new editor! And how does it look? It actually looks pretty good.  I like it. I may actually use it. I’m using it right now just to test it. Improvements over the previous “new” editor include a full list of categories and how they’re structured, larger visual editor, cleaner appearance, and far easier to use.

But, there’s a problem. There’s no option for adding a poll. I wonder why it hasn’t been included. I guess it’s time to visit WordPress forums and ask about it!

What do you think of the new editor?

Who Has the WordPress Dashboard?

After looking at my sister’s WordPress account, and having heard from a couple other people, I’m a bit curious about this. Take a look at this picture.

If you have WordPress, go My Sites and look at the left column. Do you have the WP Admin link? That’s where the red arrow is. This link leads to the Dashboard for your blog. It’s completely missing from my sister’s account and from some others I’ve heard from. I have it, though. In fact, I always use it. I never use any of the options below in this column shown in the image. There are so many menu options missing. Honestly, I don’t think I can fully utilise my blog without the Dashboard.

So, if you don’t have that link, here’s how to get to your Dashboard: type in your blog’s URL and add wp-admin/ after it. So, for example, it could be https: //yourblogurl.wordpress.com/wp-admin/

Give it a try, and let me know if it works. And just so you know, that’s where you can access the old editor, which is far more useful than the new one, if you ask me. Can’t stand the Beep Beep Boop editor.

The New Reader and Page Views

Some of you may have noticed that the WordPress Reader has changed again. This time, it gives you fewer options to view blog posts on the actual blog. This is a problem for those who run blogs and want to keep track of view and visitor stats. I know I do.

As a default, the Reader allows people to read the full blog post in the Reader. This does not count toward the views, so you never know if someone actually read it. Also, you may notice that a lot of short posts tend to have more likes than views. Why? They just liked it through the Reader.

Well, there’s a way you can force your readers to visit the post on your blog. What you want is this:

You see where that red arrow is pointing? If that appears in the Reader, that means that you cannot read the full post in the Reader. Click on that link and you go directly to the blog post on the blog. This allows the blogger to have the views registered, and it also encourages the reader to explore the blog more, instead of just skimming through in the Reader.

So, how do you do it? Go into your Dashboard. If you’ve been using the newer interface, you need to go to My Sites, then click on WP Admin. This takes you to your Dashboard.  Then go down to the Settings option on the left-hand side. Hover your mouse over it and then click on Reading. You should see an option called For each article in a feed, show. Change it from Full text to Summary. This will force the Reader or any feed to only display the first few lines of your blog post, and require everyone to click on the link to your actual blog post.

Just one word of warning, on the My Sites page, there is a Settings option on the left-hand side.  That does not allow you to change many settings. You want the full version in WP Admin.

I hope you found this useful.

New WordPress Stats Insights Are Nice, but…

I like the new Insights part for the WordPress stats page. It shows which day of the week you’re most active, and what time of day you get the most views. That’s quite helpful. It also finally shows you the total stats, not just daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly. I can finally see the total number of views.

But you know what? There’s something missing.  There’s one thing from the old stats page that I want back, and that’s the tables with the averages.  You know, you can see the average number of views you received for each month, and it’s in a nice table that shows you the progression of the numbers. Extremely useful for me.  But it’s nowhere in the new stats. They had a link to the old stats page up until yesterday, but now that’s gone.  Well, if you want to see the tables I’m talking about, you can go here. And this is the old stats page, in case you can’t find it.

And while I’m at it, I’d like to mention notifications.  In the top right corner, WordPress users can see the notifications. They’re neatly organised now, and they finally added something I’ve been wanting them to do for such a long time, I always used the old notifications page. Now it shows you what you’ve replied to. Up until recently, I saw nothing like that.  Nice to see it’s in the new notifications now.

So, WordPress bloggers, what do you think of the new stats page?