Missing Something?

1st March will be for many bloggers remembered as a dark day in blogging history. Imagine suddenly losing the company of half of your visitors. This is what happened to many of my blogging friends, using the Wordpress platform to blog, express themselves and communicate with you. A week today, Google removed 'GFC Connect' for blogs not hosted by Google/Blogger. I have yet to understand why Google decided to do that but the direct impact is that all the Wordpress blogs that you love and follow, and which you've been following through GFC Connect, the very popular susbcription service, have not been working well.





If you have been using Google Dashboard for example to keep up to date with your blogs subscriptions and read your blogs, chances are the wordpress blogs you've been following are no longer appearing on your dashboard and that they have been gone totally. If their name is still on the Google Dashboard, you might not be receiving notifications of their latest posts. I am not very good at explaining technical things but let me try. you can compare GFC Connect as Royal Mail in England. Imagine that you've been relying on Royal Mail to have your post delivered every day (when there is post) to your door and that suddenly they are on strike and you can't get your mail. This is what has been happening for a week, only that the strike is permanent.


My blog is hosted on Blogger. I am fortunate, I can let a sigh of relief out, wash my hands and forget that this has been happening. After all, I am not concerned. But I cannot help but feeling deeply concerned for my blogging friends, who are blogging on Wordpress. My friend Charlotte, from lipglossiping.com, has been a victim of the disappearance of GFC Connect Widget and this is what she noticed shortly after GFC disappeared:





How do you get to know easily if you are still receiving all the updates of your blogs, as you should do? Of all the blogs you follow, which ones are Blogger Blogs, which ones are Wordpress Blogs, you may ask. This is the tricky part, but please keep on reading:


I keep in touch with all my blogs subscriptions with Google Reader (I will do a separate post on this, on why I love it so much) and Google Reader tells me that I follow 427 blogs. Google Reader doesn't tell me which ones uses Wordpress or Bloggers so I've painstakingly gone through each of my subscriptions and found out that 26 of my subscriptions (is that 6%?) are hosted on Wordpress and that I might be missing their updates.


Am I suggesting you to go through this long process? No. But Lipglossiping and I have done some of the leg work for you, and with the power of twitter, we've managed to start creating a list, listing some of you who have been affected by the disappearance of GFC Connect: http://bit.ly/gfcexiled.


The list is obviously not exhaustive and we do not pretend to know of everyone who has been affected by the loss of GFC. But it's a small step towards building that link between those unfortunate bloggers and their readers, link which Google broke for ever, one week ago when they got rid of the infamous GFC Connect button.


Somewhere in the world, a Wordpress blogger is asking themselves what they are doing wrong, and if their blog posts are rubbish as their readership/traffic has dramatically gone for about a week. Can you help? Here are 5 ways you can help:



1) Spread the message that the GFC Connect service has gone from non-blogger posts

2) Tweet about #goodbyeGFC. For your convenience, you can download the ready-made 'goodbye GFC awareness' picture that Lipglossing created. You can obviously choose your own words for tweeting about this but if you're stuck trying to fit it all in 140 characters, fell free to use the suggestions below:

Your readers might not you've been affected by #goodbyeGFC. Please help spread the message. http://bit.ly/gfcplea

The removal of GFC for many bloggers has had tragic consequences. Please help us spread the word: http://bit.ly/gfcplea #goodbyeGFC thank you

#goodbyeGFC #hellosupport Let's help our blogging friends reconnect with their lost readers. http://bit.ly/gfcplea.

The 'gfcplea' address is a shortened address linking to the post Lipglossiping wrote to start the awareness movement but feel free to naturally substitute it by another address you might feel is appropriate, or a link to your own post, if you have written something about it.

3) Post the 'goodbye GFC awareness' picture on your tumblr / pinterest account

4) Promote alternative ways to follow blogs other than Google Dashboard (bloglovin, facebook, hellocotton, email subscriptions, google reader etc.. {I will devote a post to this when I have more time}

5) Check the 'Bloggers in Exile' list to see if one of the blogs you read are in there, and renew your subscription to them. (For me, this means, adding manually again, some blog addresses in my google reader, but I'll go through all that in a separate post, and why you need google reader in your life)

Essential Reading:
- Missing updates in Dashboard? – It's due to Google Friend Connect! http://t.co/Kg2Q9Gc
A post by @michelledh
- The post where everything started. A plea by Lipglossiping.com: http://www.bit.ly/gfcplea
- Where to download easy tweetable pictures about the disappearance of GFC connect: http://www.bit.ly/gfcplea
- List of some bloggers affected the GFC removal, and their contact details: http://bit.ly/gfcexiled


Thank you so much for your help.

p.s what is the most important here is that the message passes accross. If you want to take part in the awareness movement, by all means you can liberally copy and paste as much as you want from this post. Not that it's very well written, but there you go, haha.

liloo xx

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Interlude: What I get up to when I'm upset or bored...

There are hundreds of things I need to blog about. I am really behind with my blogging but tonight I am not in  the best of predispositions to blog. My day was ok, nothing bad happened bad at work. I went to my first class of  Zumba tonight, and let's just say that I was left pretty disappointed, with a deflated self confidence. Even  letting it all out on twitter didn't help.

When I feel a bit under the weather, it's actually doing a little  something for someone and hopefully making them smile which brightens my mood. I find that focusing on someone  else, instead of just myself, helps forget my own miseries, a little bit anyway…





So tonight, even if I have a backlog of emails and hundreds of things to do, I just wanted to play with my paint  shop pro (I can't work with Photoshop to save my life) and do something a little bit creative: a little banner  for my friend Catherine. Her blog is called Perfectly Polished. I think she likes as she has just adopted it :) 


This is the before:




and this is the after:


 


I am still a bit  mift about the whole zumba trauma and probably won't go to one of these zumba classes in  a hurry but I feel a little chirpier.


While I'm showing off, this a simple banner I did for  LouLou’s Blog. The brief was something simple, which goes with the existing background and with flowers and a bit of pink.



 





and this is a little banner/header I did for Miss Lori.
Again, this nothing special, very simple but different. It matches her love of pink, zebra and features one of my favourite pictures of her. I had so  much fun playing around with her banner.








I can't imagine why she didn't pick this one, can you? ;) Love you sweetie xx





Fancy a header for your blog?  I am not the best with taking photos but I can cook up something basic and simple  for you if you don't have a banner/header at all or if you fancy a change. Let me know.

Have you had a good day?

Liloo xx

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Help! My Google Friend Connect box has gone. How to create an alternative GFC button

Blogger has been a right pain in the bum working not very well lately. As if Blogger being down on Thursday 12 and Friday 13 May  was not bad enough, users have been experiencing trouble with leaving comments on blogs and even responding to  the comments left by others on their blog. Blogger is aware of it and they're trying to fix it. I hope they're sweating hard to fix it, as the temptation to move to wordpress is getting bigger.

There is another  glitch happening at the moment which Blogger has yet to acknowledge and I am left to wonder whether it's meant to  be like that from now on: The Google Friend Connect box seems to have disappeared. Whether this is going to be a  permanent feature, I don't know but what I do know is that lots of you are quite upset about it.


Personally I couldn't  wait to get rid of my Google Friend Connect box: I just hated being judged on the number of Google Friend Connect  followers I had. I know that people can still find out how many followers I have but it is not as  straightforward as before and I feel happier about it.


My lovely friend Bicky has written a lovely post about why she hates is not a fan of that contentious GFC box and thanks to her  video and help on twitter I was able to do an alternative GFC button and still allow new visitors to follow me  through Google Friend Connect.


Do you need that Google Friend Connect box anyway? People can still follow you through Google Friend Connect  thanks to the navbar at the top, right?


That box is not compulsory for people to be able to follow you. And yes, people can start following your blog using the navbar but not everyone is  aware of that bar and what it can do for you. At the end of the day, you need to give people what they want.  Getting more readers / followers is hard work and you don't want to put them off because their preferred option of following your blog is not showing. If your readers want to have a button to click on and that is all it takes  for them to follow your blog, GIVE THEM A BUTTON. Make it easy for them. Also, some Blogger users may have had  their navbar removed for aesthetic purposes, so you can't always rely on that navbar to be there. Sometimes,  even when the navbar is on, the 'follow' link is not even there!!! {I am looking at you Internet Explorer}

So how do you get/install/create an alternative Google Friend Connect button?


It's not too much hard work actually and follows a very simple concept:

1. Grabbing from the navbar the short line of code which, when clicked on, enables your visitors to follow your blog
2. Creating a picture which could say for example 'click here to follow me on Google Friend Connect’
3. Creating a widget/gadget where you are going to insert that picture with the 'follow' link. No need to tinker too much with your main template and have great knowledge of html. woop.

Need more help? Read on. The following explains in baby language the 3 steps you need to follow and it is not meant to be patronising.
I'm going to assume you have not removed your navbar. If you have purposefully removed it, I am going to assume  that you know what you're doing and that you will remember how to get it back. 

	Grabbing the 'follow' code from your navbar Sometimes Blogger (on internet explorer) goes off on one and won't display the 'follow' link. You'll have to refresh the page, or log in again, or open your blog with a different browser until you see your navbar display the 'follow' link properly as shown below: -- Click on FOLLOW. This will in turn display a line of code in the address bar of your browser (at this stage you don't have to follow your blog  if you don't want to) we're only doing this to see the line of code. -- Select that line of code, copy and paste it in a word document or text document (right click on the link to copy the code)
	Creating or choosing a picture for your alternative Google Friend Connect button If you have no skills whatsoever in Photoshop or similar programme, by all means feel free to pinch one of the pictures below, or all of them if you want. Although they are not the nicest pictures.  Bicky has done her DIY button to match her template and is just so pretty. transparent on white background:       transparent on dark background:        You don't have to have that Google logo in there, but the Google logo will make people feel at home  and immediately recognise it. If you are going to create a picture, and if you want to put this picture in your  sidebar, please make sure that the width of the picture is not bigger than the width of your actual sidebar. If  it is blogger will shrink it like a bastard find a way to shrink it no matter what and it will look horrible and you won’t be able to sleep at night.
	Add the widget/gadget -- Click on design, then page elements, then ADD A GADGET and choose to add the PICTURE gadget. The rest is pretty self explanatory: -- Where it says 'link' paste that line of code you retrieved before and pasted into a temporary document -- Upload your picture (if you choose to use one of my pictures, please be considerate to my bandwidth. Download the  picture first, save it on your drive and upload it on your server, thank you) -- No need to add a title, but if you must, you can type 'follow my blog' with Google Friend Connect or something  like that. Click on SAVE and voila.

Please note this ‘new’ DIY button won't display the number of GFC followers you have. This will be perfect for smaller bloggers who are a bit embarrassed about the number of followers they have. Bloggers with a bigger readership might get upset that they can’t show off their numbers.
If you like this 'tutorial' feel free to share it to your friends, family and pets.


Personally and on a selfish note, I am really happy that the box is gone (I have yet to ascertain whether it’s coming back) and I can’t help myself from being influenced by the number it shows. A low number will make think ‘aww, that little blogger and its 14 followers, bless her little cotton socks’. A high number will make me think ‘how did she got all of those, I am so crap in comparison wow this blogger is doing really well. And if I think like that, it’s only understandable that *some* beauty companies regrettably and frustratringly might think the same too and approach you or not accordingly.


Do you know what would be funny in an ironic way? That the wretched Google Friend Connect box reappears the minute I publish this post.

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False Lash Report – Part Une

I am doing my best not to jump up and down too much as I'm writing this. I've been given the chance to write a post for British Beauty Blogger, about my favourite makeup item in the world: false eye lashes. Part One of this mini series entitled 'False Lash Report' has been published today on British Beauty Blogger.  Today I'm writing about Japonesque Lashes.




How many parts will there be?
When is episode 2 going to be published?
Hehe, you'll just have to wait and see…
For now, pop over to British Beauty Blogger to see part 1 :) x

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Behind the Scenes of Blogging - Commenting Resolutions and Google Reader Readability

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I am still overwhelmed and buzzing from all the responses and feedback you left me on the poll on 'Blog Commenting'. Thank you very much again for your valuable contributions. Not only did it open my eyes but it inspired me to try to become a better blog commenter: I want to leave more comments and show my appreciation to blog posts I've enjoyed reading. I am going to check my Google reader a few times a day, mark my favourites ones and make an effort to leave some time at the end of the day to comment on these posts which caught my attention during the day and which I favorited/starred throughout the day. This was my sytem before, it worked very well, I just need to stick to it.


A few people have asked me to explain how Google reader works so I thought this post could be a good opportunity to do that. I am sorry if the following sounds a bit too baby-ish or if you already know the following information.
If you've never accessed Google Reader, this is how you could access it.
If you are using Blogger/BlogSpot, go to http://www.blogger.com/ to access your dashboard and click on the 'View in Google Reader'






Your screen should now look more or less like this. Note that I have chosen to display all my unread blog posts in a LIST format.






To read the post, simply click on the title of the post, and the whole post should open itself within the same window of Google reader. However, it's not possible to comment on a post within Google reader. For this, you'll have to click on the actual blog post as usual and do your thing there.








However, there are certain posts who only appear in a summary format within Google Reader, and need you to click on that little arrow to read the full post, and you see this to be happening, which is a little bit annoying as it defeats the object of Google Reader really:






How do you know if your blog is set up to be shown as a summary on Google reader or if your readers can read your full posts within Google Reader. Well, you could follow your own blog and see how it shows up on Google Reader or you can check the 'Site Feed Settings'.
To check/change your site feed settings
open your dashboard again,
Then SETTINGS, SITE FEED.


 





Within SITE FEED, select 'full' if you want your readers to be able the entirety of your posts within Google Reader. This is a valuable tip from Louise from Get Lippie.com who I am extremely grateful for. Thank you very much again. And then voila, your readers should be able to read your (blogger) subscriptions posts without any problems on Google Reader



What are the advantages?

- My blog is not very accessible to readers. It has white text on black background which some viewers might find straining on the eyes. Allowing readers to see my site on Reader gives them to see them on white background, without me having to give up my beloved dark background.
- Lots and Lots of people use Google Reader to view your posts: very easy, very quick and for me the best way to keep on top of the content of my 250+ subscriptions. If your site appears in 'summary only', it's one click further away from being read and people sometimes have so many subscriptions, they sometimes don't bother reading it, if they need clicking

Disadvantages


As I see it, unfortunately viewing posts in Google readers doesn't allow you to comment on posts. If you were on the actual blog itself, you would just go the comments box at the bottom and do your thing. Readers are already on your site, so if they want to comment, it's already there for them. However, if you read post onto Google reader, the commenting page is one click away and sometimes people have got so many subscriptions to keep track, they carry on reading the unread post below, next in line, and never click on your actual blog and leave your post.

Full? Summary? Which option is the best I don't know. For some obscure reason, my site feed was on 'summary' before but I have noticed an increase in my pages views since I have changed the settings to 'full'


This post is dedicated to lovely Ann from Girl in the City in Glasgow Blog and I hope to be able to read her posts very soon, in their gorgeous entirety in my Google reader. I hope this has been useful to some of you and that you have not found this too beginner's level or baby-ish.


If you like Google reader, make sure to save it in your favourite bar (if your browser support it) .





Then next time, you open your browser, just click the little symbol of ‘Google Reader’ and you are straight into Google Reader.





Happy Blog reading xx
liloo/@tsunimee

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Poll: Why is YOUR blog post not getting ‘enough’ comments?

People can say what they want: that they blog primarily for the passion of blogging, sharing but ultimately, the more positive comments you receive on your posts,  the happier you are. And you can't help but  feeling a little bit sad or discouraged when some of your cherished posts gets very few comments or in some cases zero comments at all.






2 of my beauty bloggers friends were noticing  yesterday how the number of comments left on their blog posts had decreased, whilst the number of  visits had stayed the same. Why is that? What are they doing differently? What has changed? One thing led to another, this set my twitter timeline on fire and I found myself in the  middle of a very passionate debate:

When bloggers experienced a decrease in comments  is it because  they've lost 'their touch' and not engaging their audience as they have in the past or could there  other factors explaining the decrease of comments left

As a blog reader, do you personally feel you comment enough on the blog you read?
If not, what is preventing you from
commenting more?

And this is what you had to say on the topic:

Interesting, no?

So we have readers who don't feel their comment would bring valuable contribution to the debate,  others put off by the dreaded 'captchas' and technicalities associated with posting comments, on top of everyone who feel that they are simply not enough hours in the day to comment as much as they would  like to. The general consensus is that most of you feel they don't comment and wish they left more  more comments on blog posts.


Where do I belong? In every category really.  Since I have been reading blogs through Google reader, I find  myself managing to read blogs very fast: Google reader makes it very easy for me to read, as its  name suggests but it's definitely not intended to leave comments, which is my problem starts. I tend  to 'star' the blogs which I prefer and would definitely comment on 'later' but am put off to click  on the actual blog, and start the technical nightmare of commenting:

Like captchas was not bad enough (most of the blogs I follow - mine included - are on blogger) I  find myself to press the 'send' button many times, cos the first time I pressed it it didn't send  and having to wait everytime I pressed send for the confirmation from my blogger that message has  successfully, confirmation which needs me to scroll up and down the page like a loonie. Even  sometimes when I comment on my blog, I am having to log on again, press send, check to see if has  been sent, a red button appear, I press send again, a second red button appear, then some weird  stuff appears, asking me to preview (I don't want to preview the f*ckin thing god dammit, just send  the wretched thing already, will you blogger, and then after the 4th time I pressed SEND I see that it had  been sent ok. Needless to say that from now on, I always make sure to copy my comment before running  the risk of losing in the process. Like everyone, I wish I had more time, but commenting was easier,  then I would think I would spend more time commenting and make the most of it.

 


Time is definitely an issue and I feel some people (well I do anyway) after commenting on a certain  amount of posts (let's say 10) get tired. So whilst they found your post a very interesting  read, it might have come up at the wrong timing in their reading sequence: they are either reading  from their phone (can you actually comment from a phone) or have already commented on other posts. So your  post, however great it is, suffers that day from not being part of this selected few. This is  my theory anyway. Whilst your content is amazing and comment worthy, people follow more and more  blogs so your blog finds yourself in a big competition of hundreds of others popping up in your email / RSS  reader / dashboard …


Also your devoted readers, inspired by their readings feel like they can bring more to the 'beauty  pot' with starting their own blog as a result and find themselves to have less time to comment.  Whilst I am writing all this non sense and it's 1.45am, I could have been commenting on all the  blogs I've starred/favorited today, and promised myself to comment on. Sadly, I know I won't have reached my  target and would have probably tweeted about your post rather than commenting on it directly.


And then you have this mismatch, as observed by jadlgw above, about the amount of comments she  leaves (because she wants to and enjoys it) versus the amount of comments she gets on her blog  posts. Is it fair to expect a 'satisfying' amount of comment, when you, yourself don't leave many  comments? But then again, are you going to expect the girl behind Temptalia to go and comment on  your blog? When would she find the time? You'd rather she kept the beauty world up to date, as it  happens with the latest Mac collections rather than commenting on lots of blogs, right?


How many comments should we be expecting per blog post anyway? Whatever this desirable or expected  number might be, we need to find ways to cheer ourselves up. If you are a blogger, and reading this  and haven't already done so, I would strongly strongly urge you to subscribe some website which  helps you tracking the amount of traffic your blog is generating. I only opened a free account to  Google analytics a month ago, but if I hadn't opened an account at Sitemeter.com, I would have given  up blogging a long time ago. Being able to see how many visits your blog is getting, even though  it's not very much, allows to see that at least people are reading the fruit of your labour, even  though the comments are not always there to show it.


Thank you so so so so so much to everyone who gave me their views on the topic. I feel it has opened  my eyes. Will it stop me from being upset if a post dear to me doesn't trigger my idea of what a satisfying amount of comments is? Of course not but I am now reassured that we are all in the same boat, doing our thing, in a growing beauty  blogging community.


Please cherish every comment you get, even if it's just a brief and simple one. I do. If you’re still upset, go follow @loulou699, she’ll cheer you up, in less time it would take you to decipher a captcha

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My first love

When little girls dreamt of being air hostesses, fashion designer or vets, my wildest dream when I was younger was to become fluent in English. My first love before anything else was the English language and even before being learning it officially in school, I had already asked people around me to teach me words. Exposure to the English language being obviously being very limited being born and living in France, I used to give myself extra homework and make up my own lists of vocabulary to learn because I thought 3 hours of English at school was not enough. All foreign films would be dubbed in French but the very rare times they would be shown in original version, i would embrace the opportunity with both hands and watch the film with a pen and paper to write down words and expressions which caught my attention.



At bath time, I would look out for bottle of shampoos and shower gels, with the list of ingredients translated in English and would read them out. When I came to live to England, my little habits carried on, but this time, I would read out loud stuff in the bath to practise my spoken English. One thing led to another, I ended up knowing by heart the ingredients and mode of use of Aussie Shampoo and Conditioner, the “Luscious Long” 'flavour' and the “Miracle Moist”. Not only I loved washing my hair with those shampoos but I really developed a soft spot for those in particular as the whole English of it was so different from anything I'd 'studied' in the bath before: humorous, light hearted and very friendly, yet not as 'childish' as Innocent Smoothies or as slightly adult orientated as Herbal Essences hair care range
So when Aussie Shampoos contacted me, after they've seen my very young blog to invite me to become an Aussie Angel, I was just over the moon.
'Would you like to be An Aussie Angel?” They asked me.
"Hell yeah”, I replied. “I am sooooo into your shampoos, I could recite the whole description of a bottle, on the spot”, I added.

What does it mean in practice to be an Aussie Angel: Well, I'm not quite sure as this is all new but from what I gather, I am part of a little network of beauty bloggers and I get invited to Aussie Bloggers' events when there are some.

One of my first 'assignments' was to choose which tribe I wanted to be in, as in choosing which shampoo I liked the best. Tough to choose at first between The Miracle Moist and the Luscious Long, but then the answer struck me as being obvious and I thought 'my hair had gone a long way for me, so it's normal to repay it' :) I told you I knew it by heart! So this my badge :)


Makeup being a hobby of mine, I wanted to create a look for the occasion and dedicate it to the lovely team at Aussie. Thank you for inviting me, and for my welcome pack.
I am super stoked!



What did I learn from doing this makeup? Well, always shave your armpits, ‘cos you never know... ;)

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