Site Updates!

This isn't as exciting as Valentine cookies or some of the other stuff that I have in the pipeline but I think that it's still important so I wanted to draw your attention to some of the changes I have made to the site.

There are some that are to improve the ease of use and to better interface with other platforms - I added buttons at the bottom of each post to make it easier to share via twitter, facebook, etc, and I have added buttons in the sidebar to make it easier to connect with me via email, twitter, ravelry, flickr and on my new Needle and Spatula Facebook page.  I'll be putting blog and shop updates on the Facebook page, including shop promotions, so check it out and "like" it if you want to get those updates!  I also added a new page on the blog, "Patterns for Sale"... I'm very excited to be sharing more on that soon.

The more serious update is that I added a policies/information page, partly because of hearing of creepy things happening to other bloggers (like this).  I found Dana's guidelines very helpful and wanted to document my policies too... I also found these two bizladies posts helpful, and Elizabeth Hartman's policies, if you are looking for more guidance/examples.  I love all the sharing, inspiration and collaboration that happens in the craft blogging community and I don't mean for these policies to be a damper on that - rather, as some of the examples out there demonstrate, I think it is a good practice for bloggers to get into to protect their rights and all of their hard work!  With that in mind, I have noted on the policies page that while generally permission is required to repost/republish any of my text, you are welcome to copy/reuse/adapt the policies if you find it helpful.  They certainly aren't perfect but if you also have been thinking you should write some policies maybe they will be a helpful starting point.

I plan to continue to tweak and refine the blog as time goes on, so you may see more changes around here which I may not always mention - but since these were a couple big ones I thought I would point them out.  I am still struggling a bit with comments in blogger - I currently often reply to comments via email but would like to find a solution to reply in the comments section that also sends something to the original commenter.  Does anyone know if something like that exists (for blogger)?  If you are a blogger, what are some changes/improvements you have made or hope to make to your blog?

Thanks everyone!