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It’s almost the new year and Heather and I have been discussing Live.Awake and where it should go for the upcoming year.

We have some ideas, but we really want to hear from our readers on it.

Some things I would like to see change this year:

1. A better balance on my part between heavier posts and lighter fare. I’m not an overly serious guy, but writing tends to bring out my more serious side.
2. More from Heather. She still kind of thinks of herself as a guest blogger.
3. Maybe some more “series” type things from Heather and I similar to the “What a Man/Woman Wants” articles we did.
4. A better mixture of short and sweet side-blog type posts and longer articles. Not everyone has time to read a book every day…

So, here’s your chance! All of you lurkers that never comment… chime in and give us some direction for the year. What do you like that we have done, what do you not like so much, and what would you like to see us do going forward.

We are thick skinned, so don’t hold back. PLEASE. We want to hear your opinions!

Just thought I’d mention that as of November 21st, this blog was one year old.

It’s been through some changes, but the first post was on November 21, 2006.

I’m curious… has anyone out there been reading this blog since that first post? I’d be REALLY surprised since things have changed so much since then.

Heather and I got picked for a couple blog carnivals this week.

Thanks to For Sale by Locals for choosing my article on How to Sell Your House in Over 6 Months.

And Heather was picked for the Carnival of Family Life hosted at Mom on Wheels for her Cooking Blunders post. Thanks!

And now back to your regularly scheduled programming…

After a puzzling database crash, Heather and I have decided to relaunch the blog together. As you can see the site is very different in addition to a name change.

The idea behind Live.awake is that it is so easy to cruise through life asleep at the wheel. It’s easy to be oblivious to the little moments when God is blessing us, or speaking to us, or just giving us grace. We get so busy with life, that we forget to LIVE.

That’s what Heather and I want this new blog to be about. We want to share our experiences, both good and bad with you in hopes that all of us will learn to live with our eyes wide open.

So, here’s the general plan:

• I’ll still do the Sunday Recaps and Friday videos.
• I’ll write something original on Wednesdays.
• Heather will cover Tuesdays and Thursdays. (She’s nervous about that “pressure”, but based on the times that she has written here in the past she will do much better than myself…)

I hope you enjoy it!

PS- you will notice a lot of posts missing. I had to revert back to a backup from June. I am still working on resurrecting most of the missing content, but it may take some time.

You may have noticed (or not), but I’ve been working on cleaning up the design of my blog lately. I’ve added a couple little features that should hopefully make things a little more usable as well as interesting.

Or maybe I’m just a geek having a geek spasm?

1. Got rid of the music player. I don’t think anyone used it, I quit using it, and the legality of it is questionable. And it slowed page load times. 4 strikes, you’re out…
2. Added a proper menu in the header. I’ve been putting that off for a while.
3. Added the “share this” plugin. It allows you to send the post to a friend via email, or submit it to a social networking site. Very cool. Look for at the end of each post.
4. Added a “Recent Comments” section to the sidebar to encourage commenting.
5. MyBlogLog “Recent Visitors” block added to the sidebar.
6. Welcome image added to the top to raise the hospitality factor a little.

Hopefully all these changes will be an improvement… ;-)

If you are interested in what blogging software I use, plugins, how something works, etc ask in the comments. I’m not putting all that here because I’m pretty sure no one cares but geeks like me…

Thanks for reading!

[tags]blogging, WordPress, plugins, themes, customization, blogging, blog[/tags]

I’ve had several people I know look at me like I’m a green Martian when I tell them they should get my blog by RSS Feed. “Huh? What’s that?” they say. Allow me to explain briefly.

RSS is an acronym that stands for “Real Simple Syndication”. An RSS feed is basically just a small .xml page that contains a list of articles and other content from the website. It usually will contain headings, post dates, images, etc as well. This page can be read by an RSS Reader. Whenever the site is updated, the RSS Feed is updated as well. You can collect feeds from all your favorite sites in your reader. Then you have all your favorite web content right there in one place. You know when your favorite sites have been updated, and often you don’t even have to visit the site at all! It’s your Favorites/Bookmarks on steroids.

I don’t have an RSS Reader.

Yes you do. You just don’t know it. There are TONS of them on the web.

Read more…