Freud Plays a Hand

Well, for the second month in a row, I have not deleted the blogs that I had warned I would. Last month, I was really too sick to be dealing with this, and this month, I just let the time get by and the month ended before I thought about it. Nobody's fault but mine. I did think about deleting all of them a couple of days before the end of the month, but I wanted to give everyone as much time as possible to click on their voting links. It really pains me to think of losing close to 200 blogs in one fell swoop. Maybe the whole episode has been a Freudian slip. I don't know.

Anyway, I still have my list of who was warned to vote for themselves or lose membership, so I will be deleting these blogs during this month, without warning, IF they do not have at least one HIT IN.

And, why, do you ask, am I so determined to get rid of these blogs that do not vote for themselves? There are two main reasons. One - it means they are probably not ever looking at the TopList, which means they will not be reading any other Villager's blogs. Two - it means I would have to keep checking on all these blogs each month to see if they still have the BLOG VILLAGE voting link on the site. And that's just too hard to manage with so many people to check on. I'd rather be spending my time READING and COMMENTING on fellow Villager's blogs - not being the "banner police"!!

So, again I remind you that you are required to vote for yourself ONE TIME Each MONTH to keep your membership in our Community. Vote for yourself FROM YOUR BLOG, and then go vote for those Villagers you would hate to see deleted. Seems easy enough to me.

Interested in joining BLOG VILLAGE? Start HERE.

If you are interested in being the Featured Villager on our BLOG VILLAGE News blog, please contact Janey Loree, Kilroy, or the Gatekeeper, the members of our Village Interview Team.

BLOG VILLAGE Halloween Carnival is Coming HERE!!

Our Fall Fest is ONLINE NOW!!!

Share your Halloween posts about your easiest homemade costumes, funniest Halloween ever, or best homemade treats. Tell us a good spooky story, or a tale of haunted houses --- you name it.

Or maybe you'd rather tell us about what your family does, rather than go trick or treating.

You don't celebrate Halloween?? Not a problem... Just share your favorite thoughts about Autumn ... Fall color, Fall traditions, Fall crafts, family reunions, harvest recipes, handmade gifts, etc.

Come join us at Advertising for Success for a Fantastic Fall Festival.

DEADLINE for Submissions HAS BEEN EXTENDED SUNDAY, Oct. 28th

Submit HERE.

Please include your member ID. As always, our BLOG VILLAGE Carnivals are open to GUESTS, as long as they have a link on their blog to a Villager's blog. So, help us out, and encourage your readers to link to you, by inviting them to enter our Carnival, too.

PS. Some of you have already submitted entries to the MONEY Carnival that was originally planned for this month. I still have your entries, but I have postponed that one until December. If you are interested in hosting it, please email me.

Interested in joining BLOG VILLAGE? Start HERE.

If you are interested in being the Featured Villager on our BLOG VILLAGE News blog, please contact Janey Loree, Kilroy, or the Gatekeeper, the members of our Village Interview Team.

NEW - The FIRST BLOG VILLAGE WEBRING

Janey Loree has been busy setting up our FIRST BLOG VILLAGE WEBRING! Here's part of her announcement post:

I am pleased to announce that the new BLOG VILLAGE Equine Webring is ready for you to join! I need you to follow this link:

http://www.pjscorner.net/BV.equine.webring.htm

and click on the [join] button. If you have any questions just email me.

Tell your equine friends and family about this new service in BLOG VILLAGE! The more the merrier and with a Webring … we don’t have to worry about the pecking order…do we!

There are three different sizes to the Webring banner, and I just added the coding to the BLOG VILLAGE Equine Webring homepage for your convenience. The html code for each banner or button is set up to link to the BVEW homepage. And I posted an article about the Webring over at Mustang ‘n’ Cowboys. Once you join the Webring then I will send you a member code that you will need to add to your blog.

There still may be a few bugs to work out, so please bear with me as we get this BLOG VILLAGE Equine Webring up and running.

Thanks for your interest in the BLOG VILLAGE Equine Webring,

Janey Loree

Congrats, Janey Loree, and Best Wishes for an ACTIVE Webring!


Interested in joining BLOG VILLAGE? Start HERE.

If you are interested in being the Featured Villager on our BLOG VILLAGE News blog, please contact Janey Loree, Kilroy, or the Gatekeeper, the members of our Village Interview Team.

New BLOG VILLAGE Chat Room

At Jackie's suggestion, I've added a simple chat room to the Gateway page. You will need to register there, and the Login is there, as well. Maybe we should try to set a certain day for folks to come by and say "Hi!" What do you think?

A forum would probably be more useful, but this will have to do for now, as I don't think I know enough to set one up, nor have the time to moderate it. If anyone has these skills, and would like to help me set up a forum, I'd love to talk to you.

Added 9/26
I DID it! I found an easy to set up forum for us, so now you can come visit at the Village Fountain any time you please. You'll find the link on the Gateway page, too.


Interested in joining BLOG VILLAGE? Start HERE.

If you are interested in being the Featured Villager on our BLOG VILLAGE News blog, please contact Janey Loree, Kilroy, or the Gatekeeper, the members of our Village Interview Team.

VOTE FOR YOURSELF This Week

If you want to remain part of the BLOG VILLAGE community, then you must show your involvement by voting for your blog FROM THE VOTING LINK ON YOUR OWN BLOG in the first week of each month. So, it's time to click on your banner on your blog. Don't have the banner on your blog? Then add it from the code in the left hand column of your control panel. Can't find the code? Email me, and I'll send it to you.

Many Villagers have received an email warning that their blog would be deleted, if they did not make a new post or add the voting link to their blog. Those blogs are shown on the TopList with as asterisk at the beginning of their title. I have no desire to delete anyone, but I also have no desire to carry blogs who are not participating in our community. So, I have set a deadline of Sept. 15 before I delete any who have not complied.

If blogs you enjoy are in danger of being dropped from BLOG VILLAGE, please encourage your blog friends to fix the problem, vote for themselves this week, and once at the beginning of each month, and become an Active participant. And, of course, YOU can vote for any blog you like from the banner on their blog, too. It only takes ONE HIT IN to keep a blog showing on the Village.

Right now, all the blogs are showing to give these blogs in danger of being dropped extra time to fix their situation, but after Sept. 15, only those with a HIT IN will show.

I know some of you are getting dizzy with all the changes I seem to be making lately, but they are all done to accomplish one thing. And that is to get our Village down to a list of blogs who are genuinely interested in belonging and being involved. Those are the bloggers who will take the time to read and comment on what you have posted. Without participation, the others just don't belong here.

I do appreciate those expressions of thanks many of you have sent me, as this does take a good bit of my time. But I truly believe our Village is worth the effort, and I hope you agree.

Interested in joining BLOG VILLAGE? Start HERE.

If you are interested in being the Featured Villager on our BLOG VILLAGE News blog, please contact Janey Loree, Kilroy, or the Gatekeeper, the members of our Village Interview Team.

Something NEW! - BLOG VILLAGE Equine Webring

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In an attempt to connect with bloggers who have the same interests and give blog readers a way to connect to all of the Villagers on their favorite subject, an internal webring sounded like just the ticket! Thanks to our BLOG VILLAGE Host, Rosemary, aka Dirty Butter, the BV Webring Banners will be centralized on the BLOG VILLAGE News page.

Since horses are a huge part of my life, I decided to start with an Equine Webring. I was tickled to find out that we have so many blogs in the VILLAGE that share their knowledge, stories, pictures and interest in horses. So far, with the help of the new search system and Rosemary, I have compiled the following list of “Equine” related blogs:

Brave New World

petArtistWithPeaches

MiKael's Mania - Arabian Horses

On the Shores of Carpenter Creek

Every Rider.com

Pony Tail Club

ClickonCowboy

Equine Spirit

A Laughing Gypsy

Simply Marvelous

S. Nicholas Originals

EQUUS

There Is A Season

Mustang Diaries

Mustang ‘n’ Cowboys


I would appreciate you letting me know if you have an equine related blog or know of a blog that I have inadvertently left off of this list. It goes without saying that these blogs need to be a part of BLOG VILLAGE. As the owner of one of these blogs, please contact me to let me know that you want to be a part of the BLOG VILLAGE Equine Webring.

Janey Loree

Let's Get Creative!!

I will add the banner to the right sidebar, as soon as the Equine Webring is active.

Create a banner, using the BLOG VILLAGE logo, as Janey did, write your invitation post, and email it to me, and I'll do what I can to help any Villager run their own Webring.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!!

Dirty Butter

Interested in joining BLOG VILLAGE? Start HERE.

If you are interested in being the Featured Villager on our BLOG VILLAGE News blog, please contact Janey Loree, Kilroy, or the Gatekeeper, the members of our Village Interview Team.

SEARCH Has Been IMPROVED!!!

The owners of the gotop100 service have been very responsive to suggestions I have made over the last year, and they have just installed another one of my ideas!

I feel like celebrating, because now you can search for blogs by the words in their descriptions, as well as by name, EVEN IF THEY ARE NOT SHOWING CURRENTLY ON THE LIST! Only blogs with at least one vote IN, from the voting link ON the blog, are showing at this time, while I weed out the inActive members. So, now you can find that favorite blog of yours, even if that person hasn't voted for themselves. Oh, and while you're on their site, how about voting FOR them, so their blog WILL show!?!

Now, here's why I'm so excited about this new feature. If you will take some time to think about what Categories your blog might fit in, you could add some keywords to your description, and more people of similar interests would be able to easily find you.

Here's a start on a list, but please add more via comments, as you think of them.

HEALTH, SPORTS, FAMILY, COMPUTERS, BUSINESS, FOOD .............


I just tried looking for all the blogs about horses, and up they popped!! I'm really excited about this, and I hope you take full advantage of it.

Speaking of horses, Janey Loree is in the process of putting together an Equine Webring for BLOG VILLAGERS, so if you would like to be included, by all means let her know. If someone wants to start a webring for some other group of Villagers, I'll be glad to post your banner and publicize yours, too.


Interested in joining BLOG VILLAGE? Start HERE.

If you are interested in being the Featured Villager on our BLOG VILLAGE News blog, please contact Janey Loree, Kilroy, or the Gatekeeper, the members of our Village Interview Team.

How to Be an ACTIVE Member of BLOG VILLAGE

I really do appreciate those of you who took the time to vote on the two polls I listed, and particularly those who commented about them. I'm not seeing an overwhelming consensus, so, as administrator, I have decided how I will proceed with our Village.

Just so you will understand where I'm coming from, that word Village was chosen as part of our name for a very important reason. I did NOT want our TopList to become just another blog directory, but rather, a community of bloggers with similar ideas about what is appropriate for a Family Friendly blog, regardless of the topics discussed.

I am NOT going to put a limit of 500 members, but I AM going to set some criteria for continued membership.

I'm going to manually reset the list at the FIRST of AUGUST, so that it will reset at the beginning of each month. For the first week after the reset each month, all the blogs will show. I will give everyone ONE WEEK before I change the settings each month, and then only those blogs with at least 1 vote IN will show on the TopList.(This didn't turn out to be such a good idea, and I now leave all blogs showing, but delete any blogs that have not received at least 1 HIT IN by the end of the month.) If you really want to be part of our community, asking you to vote for your own blog once a month is reasonable. If that's too much trouble for you, then it's time for you to let me know, so I can delete your blog. Any member who does not have at least one HIT IN by the end of the month will be deleted.

I will, however, continue to RANK the list by HITS OUT, as it encourages interaction with the TopList itself. Ranking doesn't really seem to be that important to most of you, but the importance of community is a value that many of you share with me. Please continue to vote for blogs you appreciate and comment on the TopList about the blog, itself, as this is one of the ways you can encourage your fellow Villagers.

With a large membership, it will take me about 3 months to comfortably take a look at each blog. I will warn any member who has not posted in the last 3 months or who does not have the BLOG VILLAGE Banner or link prominently displayed. If the problem is not corrected within two weeks, I will delete that blog.

As always, if you see a post on any Villager's blog that you find objectionable, please email me as soon as possible, so I can deal with the situation as I see fit.

With your active participation, I am confident that we can maintain the community ethic no matter what size our VILLAGE is!

Looking forward to visiting each of you over the next few months.




Interested in joining BLOG VILLAGE? Start HERE.

If you are interested in being the Featured Villager on our BLOG VILLAGE News blog, please contact Janey Loree, Kilroy, or the Gatekeeper, the members of our Village Interview Team.

BLOG VILLAGE'S First Annual RECREATION Carnival

Whether your idea of recreation is to sweat or meditate, travel or read, this carnival is bound to be one you have already posted about at some point, or one you could easily write just to enter our newest carnival.

Our own BLOG VILLAGER, Texas RV Travel Blog, is going to host this one on Monday, July 30th, so how about taking a little time to find that suitable post for this event. You must submit your entry to BlogCarnival by Midnight, Friday, July 27.

Help us promote the Carnival by using the banner on your own blog, if you like.


Interested in joining BLOG VILLAGE? Start HERE.

If you are interested in being the Featured Villager on our BLOG VILLAGE News blog, please contact Janey Loree, Kilroy, or the Gatekeeper, the members of our Village Interview Team.

Meet LYNDA - Our Newest FEATURED VILLAGER

It’s about time I introduced you to another BLOG VILLAGER.

Her name is Lynda, and she teaches Pilates & Reiki as an American Ex-pat in the Turks & Caicos Islands. In her July 10, 2007 post on her blog, Pilates in Paradise, you will see that she enjoys blogging and is setting up several more blogs! She has a pet peeve concerning people that are unduly licensed to teach Pilates & Reiki and has made a couple of You Tube Videos available on her blog that explain Pilates & Reiki. To start off the interview I asked her to tell us who Lynda is and to share something about herself that she hasn't posted in her blog!

Lynda replied: “As a child & teen I was very interested in mysticism and spirituality. I studied Tarot, meditation, Ouija boards, astral travel, energy healing, etc. Then I went to college and got into western philosophy and went straight into a PhD program.

In traditional western philosophy the soul and anything mystical is completely frowned upon. Nobody believes in god, religion is silly and in a different department, and something like Reiki energy healing would be laughable. So I taught Pilates part time and just closed off my spiritual side.

When I left academia to open my first Pilates studio in 1995, I was suddenly inundated with alternative people, practices, ideas. And within a few years I was back to practicing Judaism, meditating, and exploring energy healing.

Now I've realized that contradiction is OK. As Schopenhauer explained many moons ago, faith is a leap we take knowing full well that we cannot logically explain everything. Sometimes when I teach Reiki I am struck by how silly some of it still sounds to me; yet it works and I cannot fault what works!”

To my question “What prompted you to start blogging in the first place?”, Lynda exclaimed, “I love to write and wanted to share some of my stories and knowledge with the entire world. Once I realized how easy it is to blog, it became a habit. Now I have readers from all over and my blog produces some income from advertising. I have considered splitting my blog into Pilates specific, Reiki specific, and expat specific sites, but people have told me that they like the variety in my posts so for now I am going to leave it as is.”

The next question should have been “When do you find time to blog?”, however I asked, “When do you find time to read other blogs?"

Lynda stated, “Not often enough! That's why I love places like Blog Village or Blog Her where there is a group of blogs that I like to read. I read other blogs throughout my day/week. Some don't update regularly so it's a quick pass through.

I find that Google alerts help. I receive blog alerts daily for Pilates, Reiki, Turks & Caicos and that connects me with blogs I never would see otherwise.”

When asked, “Where or through whom did you hear about BLOG VILLAGE?”, Lynda’s answer was, “One of the blogs I visited through a Google alert was Rosemary's (Day By Day with PD & PN), and I clicked through to join."

To continue the interview I wanted to know, “Why do you blog? Is your blog personal, business, therapeutic, or just plain fun?”

“All of the above! I have received writing & teaching offers from my blog. Advertisers like my blog. My clients read the blog, and I have gained clients from having a blog. Plus, I get to write and have fun, not knowing who will be reading!” was Lynda’s enthusiastic reply.

I was glad to hear that Lynda sometimes explores BLOG VILLAGE when I asked, “How many BLOG VILLAGE blogs do you read?”, because she said, “There are about 8 that I cycle through regularly. But sometimes I go in and just click different ones to see what's out there.”

The last question helps me with the answer to “Who do I pick for the next interview?” Lynda would like to recommend Eric of Erixgraphy, so he will be added to my list of BLOG VILLAGERS to get to know a little bit more!

Interested in joining BLOG VILLAGE? Start HERE.

If you are interested in being the Featured Villager on our BLOG VILLAGE News blog, please contact Janey Loree, Kilroy, or the Gatekeeper, the members of our Village Interview Team.

HITS OUT for Ranking - Like It of Not???

Since the HITS OUT score indicates how many times, since the last reset, someone has gone to read your blog FROM our TopList, and almost every Villager has at least one Hit Out, I thought it might be interesting to use that number for ranking our members.

I'll leave it this way for awhile, but I'd really appreciate your feedback about this way of ranking. Do you like it or not??

Interested in joining BLOG VILLAGE? Start HERE.

If you are interested in being the Featured Villager on our BLOG VILLAGE News blog, please contact Janey Loree, Kilroy, or the Gatekeeper, the members of our Village Interview Team.

Hits IN ---- Hits OUT

If I find this confusing, I'm sure there are others who do, too. So I decided to do a search on the gotop100 forum for administrators, and I found this very simple explanation:

Incoming hits are how many visitors a site has sent to your top list using their link code. Outgoing hits are how many visitors your top list has sent to the site.

I've been rather discouraged that I haven't been able to interest our Villagers in voting for each other, but I must admit that finally understanding HITS OUT makes me feel a little bit better about BLOG VILLAGE and my goals for our Village. I checked to see just what our statistics are at the moment, and I'm feeling better.

Out of the 364 members who are currently showing on the blog, only 98 have a vote, since the reset on May 9. That's very discouraging, as I thought for sure that putting all the blogs back on with the new SEARCH box would encourage more participation.

But then I got to wondering about how many blogs were being clicked on from our toplist, whether they got votes or not, and that made me feel a WHOLE lot better! Out of those same 364 members, there are 320 that have been viewed by someone who found them on BLOG VILLAGE!!! That's what the Hits Out number means, and that's impressive. People may not be taking the time to vote, but they are taking the time to read, and that's what really counts, isn't it??

May 23 will be our ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY. In that time, we have had a total of 512 Villagers, many of whom I have deleted for not keeping the BLOG VILLAGE voting banner on their blogs. Only a handful have been asked to take the banner off, because of their unwillingness to edit posts or pictures that were not appropriate for our community.

We have actually grown to be one of the larger toplists on gotop100, which speaks well of all of you, as other bloggers are constantly asking to join. In fact, I have 6 blogs waiting for me to look at them right now. So, I guess I'd better quit rambling and get busy checking them out, right??

I've met a lot of interesting people, become good blog friends with some of you, and enjoyed reading about a lot of places and lives that I would never have know about otherwise. All in all, I think it's been a good year, and the number of Hits Out makes me feel like my efforts have born some good fruit. I hope you feel the same way.


Interested in joining BLOG VILLAGE? Start HERE.

If you are interested in being the Featured Villager on our BLOG VILLAGE News blog, please contact Janey Loree, Kilroy, or the Gatekeeper, the members of our Village Interview Team.

You Are Invited to Join BLOG VILLAGE - Our Brand New Family Friendly Blog TopList

One of the ways we have found to promote our blogs and increase traffic and readers has been through joining TopLists, where readers vote for our blogs daily to help move our banners up to the top of the list of sites.

The problem for us with these TopLists has always been that most of the blogs that get most of the votes are sites that feature a lot of skin, or use profanity or crudity in their blog titles. We tried to find a TopList we felt comfortable joining and couldn't find one, so we made one ourselves!

That's how BLOG VILLAGE was born.

Our goal is to have a full mix of all kinds of blogs - political, personal, business, hobby, all religions, all viewpoints, you name it.

Here's the only Rule:

There will be no blog titles or post titles containing profanity, or pictures of a sexual or suggestive nature.

This should make any blog on BLOG VILLAGE family friendly, so that you would not have to be concerned about anything that would pop up on the screen when clicking on any blog from our TopList.

We know there are many blogs that would qualify for our TopList, and we'd like to invite you to join us, and make our list THE place to go to find a family friendly place to surf for quality blogs. Please wait until you have been blogging for more than one month, with at least 10 posts or so, before applying.

We have added some policies about being an ACTIVE Villager, and maintaining your membership in BLOG VILLAGE. Before you apply, please read this post. If this sounds like the community you can support, then by all means, apply!


Apply HERE