Hi everyone! Just wanted to take a moment to catch everyone up on some bloggy news.  (Like my cute little icon? I just made it – go me!)  So anyway, I’ve got a few things to report, so here goes…

Blog Redesign

So far the response to the new design has been super positive so thanks for all your nice comments.  It has been a bit overwhelming because I am impatient and a perfectionist, not a good combination.  But overall I am super pleased with how things have gone.  Just some notes:

  •  I am still working out the bugs and slowly making my way through the ENORMOUS pile of posts that need various tweaks (you may notice most of the old posts have weird carats at the title and top of the post).  As I make my way through the olds posts you should start to see more things show up under the Reviews by… menu.  I’ll also be transitioning the million and one categories to tags instead so that mess should get cleaned up too.  Expect that to take a couple of weeks at least.
  • I added two additional features based on some reader requests.  First, all posts now now have Share icons at the bottom to allow you to tweet, like on Facebook, etc.  You can now also subscribe to comments on a post, both with or without subscribing yourself.  If anyone has other features they’d like to see, just give a holler.
  • Now the problem area — my old blogspot links aren’t redirecting correctly.  Sadly, despite HOURS of work on this (not to mention an outrageous cost estimate to hire someone) I have been unable to fix it.  So basically links between posts that went live before I switched to the joyfullyjay.com URL won’t go to the right post, they go to the home page instead (pretty much anything before mid-April).  This also affects people who linked to my blogspot URL posts from their own sites.  So I am going to attempt to manually correct as many of these as possible.  I will also attempt to reach out to whomever I can track down who is linking to the older URLs.  But if you have a link to a Joyfully Jay URL with blogspot in it, you will need to update your links to get it to work correctly.  All you need to do is remove the words “blogspot” from the URL and it should work.  If you are linking to my home page, however, either URL will get you there.

Spectacular Series Week!

So I was chatting with my reviewers about some upcoming reviews and guest posts, and out of nowhere grew a new theme week!  This will probably be “theme week light” as I will be out of the country for most of it (yes, I am crazy).  But I am super excited about and think it is going to be a lot of fun. We will be sharing our own thoughts about series books as well as hosting guest posts on writing a series from an author perspective from the fabulous Katey Hawthorne and Ava March.  There will also be lots of Series Spotlights and other reviews.   And I’ll be compiling a list of Favorite M/M Series and will be looking for your feedback.  So it is should be lots of fun.

Depending on time I might try to organize a giveaway as well, so if you have something you want to contribute, feel free to let me know.  So for now, mark your calendars for July 16-20 for Spectacular Series Week!