A few updates to the reader...

whew!

I'm sorry I haven't made too many changes and updates to the reader since last fall.  I guess with the EPs stalled and no TCs, it was a bit saddening to post no news and letting this reader lay fallow.

MOVEMENT!!!  EPs have started up again so I am excited about making a new category: HOME IN 2012.
I already moved them out of IN PROCESS and into their new home even though they haven't gotten their TCs, simply with the expectation that the WILL BE HOME SOON!!!  I hope the EPs keep flowing and the TCs get posted  soon!!
(FYI: EP = exit permits; TC - travel call)

MOVED BLOGS:  Lots of blogs have gone private or moved addresses.  I try to keep up with the new addresses, but there's been a lotta of moving going on!!!  We plan to move our family blog soon too.  Also, a few families have shifted their adoptive efforts from international to domestic, which is an

NEW BLOGS:  With the craziness of life, I haven't had a much time to scour the www for new blogs.   I'm not in the habit of adding new blogs anymore since I haven't the time to contact families if they want to be added to the reader.  But I'm glad that new blogs have found us and asked us to join and so I've added them today!  I'm happy to oblige when a family contacts me by leaving a comment.

FUTURE of the READER?:  I wonder that too myself as our journey progresses and we hope to be in the 2012 crowd.

How to go sorta private on blogspot

Privacy is a concern for many families who blog or post about their personal lives on public forums. You've probably wondered about sharing too much. On blogspot, in order to take your blog private or password protected, you take the whole thing private. Wordpress, on the other hand, allows you to choose which posts you want to password protect while the rest of the blog remains open, which is really nice if you want to just share pics with a few close friends and family, but not the whole wide webbed world. There's pros and cons to each blog host (not to mention the other blog hosters like tumbler, typepad, etc.)

I'm still committed to blogspot/blogger especially since it's hard to not stay with the whole host of google products (Gmail, Reader, Picasa, Documents, etc) AND I have a gazillion blogs on 2 different accounts.  I'm hoping that blogger will eventually listen to the whole gaggle of bloggers who have jumped ship simply due to this single blog post protected/password/private feature.  But until they do....

... I'm going to try something ...GO PSEUDO-PRIVATE, which is what Blogger FAQ/HELP people suggest: Create another new blog.

I'm going to keep our family blog public and create a new blog that is invite only.  My private blog will be for close friends and family.  I've started it as a photo journal of our journey to EJ (backdating a few entries to catch up).  I can quickly post pictures from my iphone (easily, daily and frequently) through Bloggers email to blog feature or through the blogpress app.  And I can import a few of the important "journey" blog posts from our family blog to the private blog easily since it's all with blogger.  Eventually, I can turn the private blog into a book for EJ as it will record even the piddliest moments of her adoption journey.

Well, I'm going to try it.  And if you see me jump ship, then you'll know that my experiment didn't work and then I'll declare Wordpress to be THE ultimate bloghost.

How to blog from your iphone

I do some blogging from my iphone but I have a hard time typing in correct grammar, X ing out the dangautocorrect and using proper upper case and lower case and punctuation. But somehow, this blogger does. And she shows you how at Rage Against the Minivan. I'm lucky if I get a photo in a blog post. But she makes them look all fancy and nice.

Tracking your "traffic"

If at any point you would like to be taken off this blog-reader, please email me at koreamkids dot gmail dot com.

My hope in creating this "blog reader of blogs" would be a dynamic way for other Korean Adoptive families to connect, encourage, learn, support, sojourn, etc together.  The intention for this blog-reader is to be used by other Korean adoptive families and maybe those considering Korean adoption and those who simply want to learn more about Korean adoption.  

I have set the blogspot setting such that it is not searchable blog in that someone googling "blog reader" or even "korean adoption blogs" or something random like "turkey day" should not come to this blog reader and find your blog.

As I have not asked each blog that I subscribed to whether I could follow your blog on this reader, I am sorry if this blog-reader brings you unwanted traffic to your blog. If you feel uncomfortable that this blog-reader is bringing you too many readers, please let me know by email.

TRACKING YOUR TRAFFIC

Some families want to be "read" and some families really only want their friends and family to read about their family.  Some families care about who is reading their blogs and how many people are reading their blog.  Others don't.  There are several ways that you can check how many people are following, subscribing or reading your blog:

• In blogspot, wordpress or whatever your blog-platform is, your dashboard will tell you the "STATS" of your blog.  You can see how and when people come to your blog.  You may also have "followers" from other readers with blogger profiles.
• You can also add a free widget to your sidebar like feedjit to your blog so you can see where your readers are coming from.  When I read this blog, I notice that a visitor from Los Angeles, CA is visiting the blog (that's me!)
• I've also noticed many bloggers are using Google Friend Connect.
• If you use Google reader or another RSS feed reader application, then you may realize that you can read all the entries of a blog without ever actually visiting their page, which means "your visit" doesn't get counted into the STATS of the pageviews.  This is how I have "subscribed" to all the Korean-Adopion blogs, via RSS feed for this blog.  If you would like to see how many people have subscribed to your blog today, Google's Feedburner tool gives you that number (but it doesn't tell you who).  If you have 1 subscriber...that's me!

A little disclaimer: I'm just learning about this blogging stuff as I go, there are blogging experts out there that make a living out blogging.  I'm not one of them. I just thought I'd pass along stuff to y'all.