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LFCA Latest Issue: Friday, September 25, 2009.

Latest Post on BlogHer: Parenting after Infertility.

My Status: Fed Josh's almonds to the squirrels. They needed them very badly.

Monday, May 25, 2009

Perfect Moment Monday and the Blogroll Changes

children mentioned...

Queenie and Bluebird both wanted to know more about how we're raising the kids with an equal voice in the family and while I am actually working on a serious post about emotional ahimsa and family equality, I also want to state that when it boils down to it, despite all the touchy-feely ideology, the way our family runs is putting them to work.

Those tiny fingers are perfect for cleaning all the nooks and crannies of our cars. I took a break Sunday morning from writing to peek out the window and saw Josh teaching them how to wash our cars. It started with towels. It ended with a full-body experience. It was camera-worthy--I ran outside in my pyjamas to capture it.

Since my post about family politics isn't that long, I'm open to answering other questions you may have about me from how much coffee I drink per day to whether I wear white in winter. You can email me your questions and I'll choose a few for the post.

See what others noticed for Perfect Moment Monday.

You may have noticed that the blogroll has undergone a huge change. It was simply too large to be usable anymore and updating it took a long time because I was constantly scrolling through 1800+ blogs in order to find where to place a new blog. Therefore, the post you know and love and link to has become the table of contents and I've created nine smaller posts that contain a few sections of the larger blogroll.

So think of it like a house with the table of contents the foyer and then there are now nine rooms.

Underneath each of the nine red, hyperlinked room titles are the smaller categories that appear within that room. For example:

Diagnostics Room
Azoospermia
CBAVD and CAVD
Clotting and Immunology
Endometriosis
Female Factor
Male Factor
PCOS
Translocation and Chromosomal Issues
Unexplained Infertility
Uterine Anomalies
Varicocele

So you click on the red "Diagnostics Room" and it will take you to blogs that are in any of those categories below it. At the top of each room is a link to the main menu so you can always go back and enter a different room. Please link only to the main menu and not the individual rooms to enable people search for blogs to find the whole list.

It was hard to keep it to a few rooms, so everything may not be placed perfectly. And if you prefer to be able to search the entire blogroll at once, you can still do so by clicking here to access all of the blogroll rooms on the screen at one time. That's also the way you can search the entire blogroll to see which room you're in or check that you're on (the old program sometimes dropped blogs if it couldn't find the feed for a few hours so check that you're on there now because I stopped using that program and it shouldn't happen again).

So now, I will only update the table of contents when a new category is created. But I will update the rooms every week as I add new blogs. It may take a bit to get used to it, but I think it will help keep things organized and usable well into the future. That list of 1800+ blogs simply took too long to load and people didn't know all the categories.

I'm sad that everyone is not on the same post anymore--that we're not one long list--but the house analogy hopefully keeps us together. Your opinion on the change? Feedback? Good/bad?

35 comments:

Eden Riley said...

Awesome work on the new-look blogroll. Just had a squiz at a few rooms in the new house, looks great, very user-friendly.

RANDOM: When you wrote "I took a break Sunday morning from writing to peek out the window ..." - I thought you wrote PEE out the window.

For about a nanosecond I thought, ohhhh, so THAT'S how Mel gets everything done. She pees out the window to save time.

Kristin said...

I think its a wonderful solution to bring the blogroll back to a more usable resource.

JW Moxie said...

I like the new arrangement. I also like the idea that we're a "house" of people. We all fit in our own little rooms, but we're all still under the same roof.

Nic said...

It looks great, well organised, well done. Must have taken you ages!

Delenn said...

I like the new blogroll idea.

I also have been bringing up our children in the family is a team philosophy.

White Picket Fences said...

Everyday Blessings ...my favorite family equality book ever...

LupronGirl said...

I'm amazed that you do all of this. It's a great support group.

caitsmom said...

The arrangement looks good, and it's very manageable. I wonder if you would consider changing (Parenting) to (Living Children) in the loss room. When you lose your only child, you have a sense of the loss of the role as a parent and your identity as a parent is shaken. Though that relationship is not dead even though my child is--I remain a mother though I don't parent a living child. As I scrolled down the loss list, it felt like others earned the label "Parent" and I once again have been stripped of it. I know you've done a lot of work here, and it's helped so much to have a way to connect to other bereaved parents, so I'm hoping you'll consider it. Thanks. Peace.

Lollipop Goldstein said...

Absolutely, Caitsmom, I just switched the whole list to "living children." Thank you for pointing that out.

VA Blondie said...

Love the changes to the blogroll. I think it will make things easier to find. I like the rooms. As others have said, we are all a little different, but still under the same roof.

Lori Lavender Luz said...

Where do I line up for a car wash?

I bet your kids felt great about contributing their hard work to the running of the family.

Yeah, I didn't think so.

Yay on the blogroll re-work. Love the concept!

HereWeGoAJen said...

I think you found the perfect solution to the blogroll.

That is my philosophy for children too. My children will be taught how to do all kinds of work.

Clare said...

I think it's a great idea, and the house analogy works perfectly. It will be much more user-friendly now. And I've always taken advantage of the fact that kids see chores that we think of us as dull and boring - as exciting and challenging. Though that doesn't last forever. They soon catch on ;)

Baby Smiling In Back Seat said...

The blogroll house is a great idea, but where's the Orals, Injectibles, and Suppositories Oh My category?

Shannon said...

LOVE IT!

Alana said...

Cute car wash photo!

The new blogroll layout is wonderful...I truly admire all the time and effort you put into organizing all the fetures on your blog. It's super! And like other comments before mine, I think the "house" analogy is very fitting. :)

Anonymous said...

Thanks for all you do for this community. Looks great.

PerfectMomentProject said...

Whoa! You had me at Azoospermia. =)

Tigger said...

I like it. One big list was hard for me to search through - too many breakdowns, too many options. Also, I like the "house" idea. It's like I can "wander" from room to room, to see what's in there today, if I so choose. It's also in an easy-to-see format!

Busted Tube said...

I love the new blogroll! Good job!

caitsmom said...

Many thanks, Mel. You mended my heart a bit today. Peace.

MLO said...

A quick UI suggestion. If you want, someone could create a site map so people can click on the room to get to the list they want.

Not a necessary change, but it might make things accessible a little faster.

Eve said...

Whoa! That was a lot of work...thanks so much to all who put in hours and hours to sort through all these bloghouses!

I'm a HUGE fan of child labor! My son helps me put the wet clothes from the washer to the dryer, throw random items of trash away for us, feed the dog, help sweep the floors, and even pick the stems off of the weekly grape bunches and help wash them.

And he doesn't think ANY of it is work yet! He just has fun with it and is SOOOO proud of himself when he accomplishes something!

Sunny said...

The car wash picture is great!! I haven't had my car washed since we moved to Seattle in November 2007. I wonder if 14 months old is too young to put our little one to work...

The blogroll looks great!

Coffeegrljapan said...

The blogroll looks beautiful!

ColourYourWorld said...

The blopgroll is fantastic and really easy to navigate.

I love that pic!

LJ said...

Those fingers are also amazingly good at picking blueberries. Mmmmchildlaborsotasty!

Pamela T. said...

marvelously creative and organized as always. nice work! kymberli said it best...

elizabeth said...

LOVE the reorganized House of Blogroll! I've already been using it in the new format and it really is much, much easier to navigate.

Jill said...

Honestly, I have no idea how you do everything that you do and still have time for your family. Great work on the blogroll :)

Billy said...

Wow! You're amazing :-).

Tiger said...

WOW!! That is AWESOME!!

Happy Memorial Day weekend

battynurse said...

Looks awesome. I'm so amazed at how much work and time you put into this Mel. Thanks so much for all that you do.

Aurelia said...

Excellent work on the blogroll, and thank you for the bit about living children.

As for the rest, I'm glad to hear that the kids do some work and it isn't just a one way street with the voice in decisions.

I have met waaaay too many kids who get to tell the adults what they want, but have absolutely no responsibilities in exchange. The do no chores, barely study, don't volunteer, and then grow up thinking that the world owes them. Drives me nuts.

As for us, we have chores and responsibilities, and we listen to the kids opinions on issues, but I tend to also want them to know that we the adults will make the final decision but certainly take them into account. Mostly because as they grow older, they have gone through periods where they really have made some terrible choices. Part of that is ADHD, but a good chunk of it is maturity. Drives me a bit batty. Plus, there are constraints like money and schedules, because as they grow older, they want more expensive things and want to go more expensive places. Which introduces the idea of budgets and explaining money to them.

Anyway, it all works out in the end as long as we use a bit of flexibility.

I find that I had a lot of ideals in the beginning about how I was going to raise my kids, and things did not quite work out the way I thought over the years, you know?

Geohde said...

How do you get such an impressive amount of stuff done in any one day?

In awe...

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