So I made a few changes

I’m so tired of going into my dashboard wanting to write a post and couldn’t because they are not planned out enough, not cohesive enough, and not substantial enough for my blog aesthetic. That’s the thing with having a magazine-like layout – if what I wanna write is a little bit unusual than my blog niche, then I deem it unsuitable for my blog and I end up putting only one or two posts a month – at most – and that’s on my good blogging month.

Blogging used to be fun for me.

And then I found Etsy and discovered many theme developers which resulted in my having more than 10 WordPress themes to date. Let’s see; I have one theme from Kotryna Bass Design, three themes from Pipdig, four themes from Underline Designs, one theme from Station Seven, one theme from Luxi Bee Design, and one theme from 17th Avenue. Look at all the money spent that could’ve been put towards an Airpods Pro or a new mirrorless camera. Yikes.

I customised my blog as perfect and as beautiful as I could just like how the polished demo blog caught my eyes and sucked me into buying them. Everything needs to be aligned. I dot the i’s and cross the t’s. Nothing has to be left out. The font needs to be perfect. It turned out that the more perfect I make my blog, the more I am discouraged to write. My blog has turned into something fragile that I am scared I might break. Nice to see, but too bad it’s terrifying to hold.

So I made up my mind – I need to revamp my blog. Not just the aesthetic, but the whole blogging system. I need to make my blog look less like it’s designed for digital magazine and more like it’s made for me. My blog is supposed to encourage me to write not discourage me more and what good does come from having a pretty blog if it’d only uninspire me?

I picked out a theme (out of my many, many themes) that would suit the type of blog I had in mind. I ended up picking the Charlotte theme by 17th Avenue just because I like the whole look although it wasn’t the easiest to install.

I want my homepage to be as simple as it can without any unnecessary elements that might clutter it. I have top navigation menu, header, five latest posts, and an Instagram feed.

I put the Contact link below the About link to make room for my five categories. I have beauty, blogging, lifestyle, personal, and 3 am thoughts. I used to have many sub categories under one big category (for example; I have makeup, skincare, haul, and reviews under beauty but now I categorise everything under beauty). To separate the post into specific category, I use tags.

I updated my about page as well as contact page. I removed the contact form because nothing good comes out of it. I received loads of spam emails. To reach me, people can either contact me through social media or email me.

I made my header on Canva! I initially wanted a simple header with just the text but then I saw the hijabi girl sipping on a cup image on Canva and I thought it’d be perfect for my blog.

If you click on the 3 horizontal lines at the top left of my blog, it’ll open a tab where I have my photo, a little bit about me, a Bloglovin’ widget, and archives menu.

If you can see at the end of this post, I have a post signature too. Just a simple xo, erin matching my header font.

And I finally deactivated Yoast SEO plugin! That plugin overwhelmed me with the long list of things I should be doing to get my post at the top of Google result and I’m just not having it. I’m not about that life anymore.

Just like that… I am more inspired to write!