I recently re-vamped my blog and took down my book shelf. I can't decide if it's been a helpful thing or not. I took it away so when I put it back up again, it will be more noticable.
I like to change things up every now and then…keeps life interesting.

Weighing in on the comments widget:
Don't like it. But I see how non-bloggers would?

Clutter? Oh my I need help with this? (I also need a whole re-design…)

I am featuring my past commentors this month and it's GREAT if they have a button code I can grab easily. Otherwise I'm trying to 'steal' their header.

Also WAY agree with the slow loading pages, get skipped. I love to read a TON of blogs and only my true favorites will I wait very long for! So for sure, if twitter or another widget is slowing it down think real hard about keeping it!

I'd love feedback on my blog…I can take it!

I really like to find something about the writer. A name, a picture, anything so I don't have to write a comment thinking "hey,…you…" if I don't know whom I'm writing to.

I think sharing a button for other people to support your site is useful. I liked having yours available when I wanted to write a quick post with a link back to Simple Mom.

My Flickr badge seems to be adding value. It gets a lot of clicks, and I think it helps build relationships with readers. Plus I like it!

I love my Recent Comments plugin and keep it pretty high in the sidebar. I find it encourages more conversation, because readers see what posts are being talked about. They can also see when I've responded to their questions with a comment of my own.

I love clean sidebars, but I also love *information* too. I'm a fan of the nearcircle widgets that show post excerpts from blogs in a topic-themed circle. I go back and forth as to whether these feeds make my sidebars too busy, but I have readers from some widely variant audiences (homeschoolers, kid lit bloggers), and I think the post excerpts help expose readers from one demographic to blogs they might not ordinarily encounter.

At Typepad I had lots of recommended-books lists in my sidebar. When I switched to Wordpress, I left all those behind (with a note at the new blog about how to access them at the old site). Reader feedback showed that they really miss those booklists, so I'm slowly recreating them. (Booklists were so easy at Typepad.)

Since so much of my content is about my family, I love my Flickr widget for helping put a real face on this family you're reading about!

I put a new sidebar up but now I'm having the same feelings again…I'm sending my traffic to their sites…however, a bit part of what I do is push traffic and I'm known for being a blogger who does this.
I think it's part of what my readers look for me to do. I don't mind this as long as they are pushing people to my site and as long as it helps me to sell illustrations.

BUT, I need to sell my illustrations…this is where I have my problem! I try to put an illustration into almost every post that I create, along with one of my rhymes and I always link it to my online shop.

I need to find a balance. Everyone is interested in my Mother and the fact that she has alzheimers. They are interested in the fact that I can point them towards other blogs…and they like my darling little illustrations. I'm selling them, but I'm not selling enough.

Do I have the wrong audience? What's the answer?

I'm finding your blog very helpful and very encouraging.

Every picture, button, sparkly thing, do-dad, line pic between paragraphs, everything ~~ is treated as a picture to load, by computers. Every one.

And I hate to wait for a blogger's Jazzzzzzz to load.

So please… If you don't want people to give up and move on, before ever reading what you post… Because they got tired of waiting for all your "pretties" to load… Please heed simple, where you can do so.

'Miss' Mari-Nanci