Doreen Michele

Before I was a blogger, I was a talented moderator on a homeschooling list. This year, I have kind of taken that back up again via Reddit.

This is my current list of Reddits (yes, I sort of randomly added some spaces to the List to make it matchup some with the image on my laptop): r/ClothingStartups
r/GigWorksr/CitizenPlanners
r/aberdeenwar/UrbanForestry
r/Sewardr/HousingWorks
r/pocketputerr/frenchwardrobe
r/Walkabler/CoastalWA
r/HealthWorksr/Knits
r/SolanoRailr/NorthToAlaskar/NorthToAlsaskar/Relor/TheCrescent

I created Urban Forestry just days ago and until today it had one member, me. I announced it on r/UrbanPlanning today and it was up to 27 members as I began this post, which makes it larger than about three-quarters of the Reddits I own.

I am not even done with putting this post together and that figure is already out of date. It's continuing to pick up members owing to the size of r/UrbanPlanning and it being a topic of genuine interest to planners.

Some of my reddits …

Labels can be useful for organizing information on your site and making it more discoverable and transparent for your audience. They show up and read an article about a particular topic and if they like it and it has a good label, they can click on the label to find other articles on the same subject which may be of interest to them.

But sometimes when I reorganize a site, I don't like the labels I have been using. Then, when you go to pick a label, Blogger gives you a drop down list of all the labels you have ever used and it includes labels only found on draft posts.

So if you have done a major reorganization and don't want those labels cluttering up your drop down list, you have to go back through all your draft posts and either delete or update all appearances of any labels you would like to permanently retire. That's the only way I know to get them out of your list.

It's annoying, but it usually only takes a few minutes. It can be well worth the reductio…

People often stress about picking a business name, especially if they are new to doing business. On the one hand, that's not unreasonable. On the other hand, you really shouldn't overthink it at this stage. First, An Anecdote I worked at Aflac for a few years. I've never personally tripped across an official telling of this story anywhere, though I have tried to tell it on various blogs (probably all redacted) and in forum comments.

Aflac's actual name is American Family Life Assurance Company. Aflac is really an acronym for their legal name.

So it's sort of like going by your initials or a nickname. Everyone knows Bill is short for William, so no one acts like you are trying to fool people or deceive them if you introduce yourself as Bill and go by that name socially, even though your bank account says William

They were originally incorporated under the name American Family Life Insurance Company. According to stories I heard internally while I worked ther…

Until a few days ago, this site -- doreenmichele.blogspot.com -- was my personal blog and I had a separate site at DoreenTraylor.com that I thought of as my professional site where I had information on how to hire me to do resume work and the like. About three days ago, I fairly spontaneously redacted all the personal blog posts from this site and set about merging the two sites into one.

Now, DoreenTraylor.com redirects here. Most of the content was moved over from the other site. The only content I kept from my personal blog were the pages called Me, My Websites and References.

I also took design elements from both. I kept the pink and white template from my personal blog but added a pinned (permanent) Featured Post with the same photo from the other site. I also substantially edited a lot of the content from both sites to make everything more polished.


DoreenTraylor.com


Updated DoreenMichele.blogspot.com

I have no idea if I will end up making a new personal blog elsewhere, b…

The four newest BlogSpot themes are: Contempo, Soho, Emporio and Notable. Unlike previous themes, they are mobile optimized, so I no longer use the older themes.

You can just use a default design package, but you can also easily insert an image of your choosing to customize your site. You can add your own image in a variety ways, such as in place of the Background, in an Image Widget or behind the Header.


My sample Image for this post

For simplicity's sake, all these screenshots are from a desktop PC. I am not including any screenshots from a smartphone. But if you are doing design work, always check both anytime you change anything.

Contempo
The background image for this theme is placed behind the header. The samples below are the second version of Contempo.


Blogger Admin Panel


Default


With sample background image


Using an Image widget above posts instead of a Background image


As a Header background image


Header background image paired with the default Background Soho
This is th…

If you aren't very internet savvy and you are putting together a list of email addresses in order to keep people in the loop about something, you might think "I'll just add everyone's email to the To: field." Or, worse, you might decide to BCC a bunch of folks to help protect their privacy so you aren't sharing everyone's email address with everyone else. For the sake of convenience, you may also be adding attachments to these emails.

These practices can get your email flagged as spam. It can also result in your email address being blacklisted.

Adding attachments is not only a red flag that you might be a spammer who should be blacklisted, it also increases the risk of spreading viruses and malware. It is a best practice to not routinely use attachments. Training people to open attachments from just anywhere is potentially training them to open malware.

If you send something to a bad email address and it doesn't go through, you will get a…

Most of my earned income is made on the internet. I do some website work for local clients in the small town where I live, but most of it comes from resume editing, freelance writing and blogging and all of that gets done online.

Trying to monetize creative work online, like blogging, is a constant challenge. One of the biggest stumbling blocks I keep running into is just trying to make it easy for people to give me money.

It's surprisingly hard to make sure people can readily find that information.

This post was written because I had someone email me and tell me they couldn't find that information ANYWHERE. They had looked!

I verified my payment info for them and asked which of my many websites they had been on while looking for that information and they said it was my personal blog. I thought it was very prominently displayed on my personal blog.

Well, maybe if you are on a PC with a big screen. Not so much if you are on a laptop, tablet or smartphone.

They were on a…