Family Friendly Does NOT Mean It's for Children!!

Our BLOG VILLAGE TopList is having a birthday! Our baby is one month old!!

At this moment, there are 61 blogs on Active Status, showing on the TopList. We have 7 more members who, for one reason or another, are on Inactive Status at this time. That's a lot of members for such a short period of time, I think. I'm so very pleased that there are that many bloggers who are of similar mind with my feelings about opening a blog and having objectionable material thrown at you.

There do still seem to be some folks who are unsure as to exactly what kind of blogs are eligible to join BLOG VILLAGE. There really are only two things I look at when I check out a site. Is it in English? That's easy to tell.

The other criteria is not always as easy to decide on. I look at the home page to see if any of the titles or post titles have profanity or sexual words in them. I also look at all the pictures on that opening page, to see if anything would be considered to have sexual connotations or be pornographic. If everything still looks OK, I check back through the Archives and randomly view several more pages, looking for the same things. Do I read every post, looking for "dirty words"? NO! Do I agree with the content or position of every blog on our TopList? NO!!! We're adults. If you find a blog that makes you uncomfortable, or a topic you find objectionable, don't read it again.

Many of the blogs on our TopList are mommy blogs, as you might expect, but not all. Some are quite controversial, some espouse different religions, or no religion, some are rather difficult scientific blogs, there are photo blogs, and there are a few political ones that get rather heated at times. And yes, there are objectional words within the blog posts of some of our Villager's blogs.

The difference in our TopList and others is that all the sites are safe for anyone to casually view the monitor. Our Villagers use no profanity in titles or banners, and there are no pictures with sexual connotations. If the boss doesn't mind you surfing the net on your break, you don't have to be as concerned about what he might see on your monitor, if you're surfing BLOG VILLAGE blogs.

Interested in joining BLOG VILLAGE?

Start HERE.

BLOG VILLAGE, surfing, blogs, profanity, family friendly

You DON'T have to HIDE the SCREEN!

The kids are running through the house, and you're blogging in the Great Room.

Your mother is curious about blogs and you want to show her some.

You have company, and you're checking your email and a few other sites. While you're online, you decide to surf a little on a traffic exchange to earn a few credits, so your blog will be seen today.

What are the odds that your children are going to pass by while some nude or sexually provocative picture is splashed across the screen??

What is MOM going to think about all those choice words in those blog titles and post titles???

Will your friends be offended by the heterosexual and homosexual nudes, plus the profanity all over the blogosphere???

In some houses, these scenarios would never happen, or no one would care.

In other homes, they would be offended or traumatized.

BLOG VILLAGE can SOLVE THIS PROBLEM!!

Bookmark this TopList, and you will have a variety of blogs to enjoy, all chosen to contain no pornographic images or titles containing profanity.

Interested in joining BLOG VILLAGE?

Start HERE.

family friendly blogs, blogging, profanity, nudity, BLOG VILLAGE

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY

Happy Father's Day to all you Pops, Dads, Daddys, Dads, Pere's, Papas, Cupojoes, and Papa Mouses out there today in Cyberland. May you have a wonderful day!


Happy Father's Day

How to Create a 468x60 Banner

If you do very much on the Internet at all, you're going to need a 468x60 banner for your blog or website. Many of you already have one, but some of you don't, or you don't have that size. So I thought I'd share some places on the net that will help you make a free banner, with some quick samples.

(Click on the banner to go the site to make your own banner.)






This one seems to work with IE, but not with FF.

I'll add some more sites as I find them, and you can find your own by searching for +create +banner +free. I hope this helps you.


how to make a banner, free banner, banner

VOTING on a TopList

There are lots of different platforms for running TopLists. Some of them are free, such as the one BLOG VILLAGE runs on (which explains the ads across the top), and others the administrator pays for. Some require considerable programming knowledge, and others do not (the BV one requires no programming skills, thank goodness :)).

With that in mind, an explanation of how I have things set up on BLOG VILLAGE is probably needed.

For right now, at least, while we're still growing so fast, I have the voting set to return to ZERO every Wednesday evening about 4:00PM Central Daylight Time.

Your RANK on BV is determined by the number of INCOMING HITS you have during the voting time period. Incoming hits are how many visitors your blog has sent to our TopList, using your link code.

You will also see statistics for OUTGOING HITS on the TopList. Outgoing hits are how many visitors looked at your site, after they came to the list from clicking someone else's voting link. This is traffic directly generated for you by our TopList. Some of those hits will be from me, checking to see if you have the BLOG VILLAGE voting link displayed on your blog. And from time to time, I go through and vote for everybody on the list, too! Gotta help out my buddies!!

I have the list set to show 20 sites on each page, so only the top 20 sites have their banners showing. This is the page that will get most of the Outgoing Hits, so it makes sense to position your BV voting link on your blog in a prominent position, and ASK for VOTES!

There's bound to be something I didn't think to write about, so by all means, ask away, and I'll do my best to answer you.

How to Get Full Benefit from a TopList

Belonging to a TopList is not a magic trick for getting readers for your blog or website. There are certain things you have to do to make the list work for you.

One of the first things you have to do is decide on the best placement for the TopList's Voting Banner or Icon. (Most TopLists do have a text voting link option, but it is nowhere near as effective as a graphic link, IMVHO.)

It's a good idea to ask for votes, as readers don't know that's what the Banner is for, unless you tell them. Just a simple "Vote for me on " next to the Banner will usually do it. It also helps to place the Banner near the top of your home page, rather than bury it in some obscure spot.


Why, you ask, is positioning for maximum votes so important?
As our BLOG VILLAGE gets more members, for instance, only the top 20 will have banners showing on the first page. When someone votes for one of these top sites, they will see banners, or titles and descriptions, of 19 other sites. Don't you want them to be attracted to YOUR site? That's not as likely to happen if you're on the second page.

toplist, blogging, traffic

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