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Bzzzz February 6th, 2008

If you’re seeing this post, that means you’re also seeing the new Bumblebee Blog design!

As a beginning blogger I was happy to discover SquareSpace for hosting. Their intuitive interface was just what I needed to make me feel comfortable while I learned the basics. I also liked the fact that SquareSpace offered domain mapping–meaning that I could have my own unique URL rather than one that was part of the blog host’s name. But although I really loved the many designs that SquareSpace offered, they were–after all–just templates. The new design is uniquely mine.

See the woman gardening at the top? That’s me! (Don’t I look great?) The little dogs are, of course, my Papillons, Sophie and Sarah. The kitty cat is Miss P. (Pish, the fish, is still in the house. In his bowl.)

Please notice that when you click each page on the menu signs, the little bee follows you around. How cute is that? And for those of you who have visited before, do you recognize the white picket fence?

Hey! There’s a survey feature in the top right-hand corner! Now, I own a marketing research company and spend a good chunk of my time doing marketing research, so I’ll be the first to admit that this is what I call drive-by-shooting research. It’s not scientific. But it’s fun. And it might, over time, tell me a bit about the people who visit here.

Also, on the right is a random photo from the photo albums. These are photos of my garden as well as my travels to garden or other places. I also have a few family and friends shots. If you click on the photo, it’ll take you to a larger verison of the photo and more information about the shot. Well, to be honest, there’s not much in the way of information right now. But there will be!

My hope is that the new design better reflects who I am and what this blog is all about. Appreciating nature, good food, friends and travel. And I hope you can tell I appreciate fun and laughter!

Thank you to Lucia and Peter at The Blog Studio for plugging away at the design and technical pieces while we got this site launched. They’re the best!

Now, much of the content was imported from SquareSpace. I will be updating non-functional links and tweaking the fonts here and there. If you see any glaring issues or non-functionality, please let me know.Hey, even if you don’t see any glaring issues, let me know what you think!

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Tags: Blogging

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Bzzzz December 6th, 2007

Since I started looking at the statistics for Bumblebee Blog and the search terms that bring people here I have learned quite a lot.

For example, I have learned that if you post anything this time of year about Christmas gifts, even if it is about wacky gag gifts to your little brother, people will find you during the holidays with search terms such as “useful Christmas gifts,” “gifts for my bro” and “best Christmas gifts” and even “spiritual Christmas gifts for my mom.” My blog traffic has increased exponentially during this holiday season because of the goofy story about giving my brother gifts such as taxidermy and nose-picking garden trolls. I hope the silly gift exchange with my brother didn’t offend the folks looking for religious gifts!

I have also learned that if all you care about in blogging is the number of people clicking on your URL, make sure you use racy, sexy titles and phrases. You don’t have to use a lot. Just a few here and there will work just fine. After the comment exchange from my original post, People Google the Strangest Things, in which people mentioned some unintentionally provocative post titles such as “Wet and Wild” (about plants) and “Naked Gardening” (about the bareness of the garden), I started getting numerous hits for search terms such as “naked Greek people.”

Hoh! Not here!

Sue at the Balcony Garden attracted a Googler’s attention when they were looking for “Sex in the Beautiful Garden.” It landed that person at a story about the mating habits of the leopard slug!

Patrick at Bifurcated Carrots writes informative and detailed posts about such things as the foundation of his 325-year-old house in Amsterdam and weed burners. Nevertheless, the largest number of hits he has received was from a light hearted post about Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.

Carol at May Dream Gardens posted a Top Ten list of how people find her blog. It’s mostly plant related, but if you go back to the story she wrote around this time last year about blogging search terms, you’ll find some amusing search terms that landed them at her informative blog.

Thanks to fellow bloggers who posted related stories. Please visit them at:

Balcony Garden

Bifurcated Carrots

May Dream Gardens

On a related note, I was curious that some of the commenters on the original story said that they don’t know how to check their blog statistics or search terms. Although I am by no means an expert in this area, I will say that if your blog hosting service doesn’t provide this information you can probably add it fairly easily.

Two services I have tried are Google Analytics and StatCounter. I prefer StatCounter because it provides much more detailed information, including the geographic location of visitors, their paths through your blog, statistics about length of time visiting and repeated versus first-time visitors. The drawback of StatCounter is that if you get a significant traffic you may have to pay for additional storage.

To track statistics using either of these services takes a minimum of expertise to accomplish. To get started, generally you must sign up with the service, generate some HTML code and paste it into your blog in an HTML editor. I pasted mine into a widget in the menu bar so that it is automatically inserted into each page someone visits. Then you simply log into the service to see how things are going.

Happy blogging!

Posted In: Blogging