Since the Blogicito couldn't take the author out to dinner to celebrate, La Gringa's Blogicito is celebrating the five year mark with a much-needed facelift. I hope you like it, because I've been working long and very hard on it.If you are reading this article from a RSS feed or email, please, please, please come and take a look at the new look! I'm not a techie so everything was done through trial and error on a test blog first ... much trial and much, much error.
I still can't believe that I've been blogging for 5 years! With about 1,400 articles, 14,000+ comments, and almost 1,400 readers, technically the 'Blogicito' (little blog) should now be called the 'Blogisote' (big blog). Hahaha. Finding something in the blog has become more and more difficult owing to the sheer volume of articles. My next blog project will be to investigate and figure out a way to make that process more manageable for new readers who want to explore to be able to focus on the best articles.
Special thanks to Readers
A blog is nothing much without readers. Mil gracias (a thousand thanks) go to all you loyal readers who have made the journey with me, to all the new readers who have joined along the way, and especially to those of you who participate with me in the blog by commenting, sending tips, or suggesting topics. No blogger would have made it this long without readers who encourage and inspire. The only reason to blog is so that someone will read it — otherwise it would be called a diary, right?
A million thanks go to my #1 reader, El Jefe, for his patience and understanding, and most of all for helping me to understand "the Honduran way".
I had to close the Blogicito to the public during the transition and debugging process which, thanks to my lack of technical abilities, ended up taking three days instead of one night like I planned. To all those who wrote to me thinking they had been kicked out of the blog, my deepest apologies! I don't know why I didn't think to warn in advance, but I just wanted it to be a surprise.
The future
Now that the time-consuming face-lift is done — assuming you all don't tell me about a million errors — I am making a commitment to you to recommence blogging more regularly with more "everyday living in Honduras" topics. In the many months after June 28, 2009, I really burned myself out and for one reason or another, it has been very hard to get back into the groove. Regular, consistant blogging, like any other good habit, is hard to get back into when you've "fallen off the wagon." :-)
Navigation
I hope that you noticed the fancy new bamboo menu at the top. Man, what a coding and artwork project that was! Even if you are a long-time reader, please explore the new pages in the menu, in particular the new Immigrating and FAQs sections. At the bottom of the page is an automated list of the all-time most popular articles (according to Blogger.com). It is an electic list!
As soon as I get my draft back from the attorneys and revised, I will be posting a very complete Residency page which will give reliable answers to all of your Honduras residency questions.
Probably of less interest is that I've also added Disclosure, Privacy, and Comment policies which you can reach from the small menu at the bottom of the page, but the policies are there for anyone who wants to read them.
Feedback
Please let me know how you like the new look, but it is one of those trick questions like, "Does this dress make me look fat?" The blog style is based on my personal preferences. I like color and the green leaves! The leaves are the Blogicito's trademark so they won't be going anywhere.
I have researched and made some changes to try to make the Blogicito load faster but unfortunately some of those recommendations are beyond my control because they are hard-coded into Google's blogger system. Google seems to have a "do as I say, not as I do" policy — some of their 'no-no's' for website owners that cause slowness are the very things that Blogger.com (owned by Google) does.
I still have a few items on my to-do list that may help the load speed a little and a few little errors to fix. Also, keep in mind that the first time you visit, a new website will always take longer to load on your computer. Once your browser has it in the cache, it should load faster — at least that is how most browsers work.
If you notice something amiss, a widget or link not working, or get an error message on your browser, please send me an email and I'll look into it. I've tested the Blogicito on the most current versions of Firefox, Chrome, and the dreaded, unpredictable Internet Explorer. Google has put some automated mobile user codes in my template, but I have no idea how well that is working for readers. If you use a mobile device to read the Blogicito, please comment.
Don't get me started on that. Internet Explorer drives me absolutely nuts! If you use IE and are getting error messages, you might try putting my specific blog address as a "trusted site" in your privacy and security advanced settings. To do that you may have to change the setting to allow 'http' addresses as well as 'https'. Don't change your settings globally as that isn't a good idea. Also, I was able to view the site without using IE's "broken page" button, which actually messed up some things when used. If you know more about IE and have any tips for other readers, please leave a comment.
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Cheers! And here is to five more!
P.S. Click on the number below to see the comments or leave one. I'm working on trying to get that comment image to link. Sorry about that.
Welcome to my Blogicito — 
