Design Changes and Content Renewal

Over the weekend, My Wealth Builder was updated to the New Blogger Layout design. Although, I had converted to New Blogger in January, 2007, I waited almost two years to convert to the new editing templates, since previously I was unable to keep both the 3-column format and the blog aesthetics. However, I recently found a solution and did the conversion in a few hours over the weekend.

Hopefully, regular readers didn't have any difficulty in accessing My Wealth Builder in the last two days.

Design Changes

The changes are minor, with an improved blogroll, a compression of the archives section, and the addition of labels.

I have combined Regular Reads, Personal Finance Friends, Investors Blog Network blogrolls into a single section of My Blog List, with the feature of showing the most recent post and listingthe blogs in order by recency of posting activity. I like this feature since I can quickly check if I want to read an article by a blogger on my list.

The archives section has been getting long, since My Wealth Builder has been publishing for over two years. With New Blogger layouts, I've been able to compress the archive section to a drop down menu.

Finally, I've been able to add a Labels section for readers who would like to see a group of posts covering the same topic. I've listed the labels by frequency in descending order. I haven't used this feature when reading other blogs, and may drop it if readers do not find it beneficial.

Content Renewal

In reviewing My Wealth Builder's content, I realized that it has evolved to spending a large proportion on the stock market and investing, reflecting my recent personal finance focus areas. This was not the original intent of the blog when I redesigned it in 2007. Here's the schedule of topics, with descriptions from that post:

Monday	Strategy and Execution - This segment is about my objectives, goals, plans and implementation for building wealth.
Tuesday	Ideas You Can Use - This segment will include tips, techniques, or current deals that are in the market. A regular article will be a "Carnivals to Read This Week" post with a My Wealth Builder Carnival pick.
Wednesday	The Practice of Personal Finance - This segment will cover habits and practices that I believe are important for success. Topics such as Mastery of Financial Concepts, Career, and Education will be part of this section.
Thursday	Crossing Generations - This segment covers personal finance topics related to my parents (e.g. inheritances, caring for the elderly) and my children (e.g teaching good financial practice, estate planning.)
Friday	Reaping the Rewards - This segment will be about preparing for and then enjoying retirement. This section will also be about about stewardship - where we manage and enjoy the rewards of our wealth.
Saturday	Reflections and Musings - This segment is intended to give me the opportunity to write about a wide variety of topics, including reviews, op-eds, human interest stories, and humorous observations.
Sunday	New Realities and New Beginnings - This segment is about being agile as the dynamics of personal finance, career success, and the global marketplace are creating rapid change. This segment will include philosophies, strategies, tips and techniques for managing and staying ahead of change.

In 2009, I will be publishing more content related to these topics and a lower percentage related to the stock market.


For more on New Beginnings, check back every Sunday for a new segment.

This is not financial advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

Copyright © 2008 Achievement Catalyst, LLC

Preparing for Change Has Its Rewards

January's conversion to New Blogger went very well. Much better than I had expected based on issues others had shared.

A month ago, I was extremely worried. Right after I received the notice to change, I tested the My Wealth Builder template on New Blogger and it crashed, due to an XML error. Panic. I believed that my hacks, while acceptable on Blogger, were not sufficiently error free for New Blogger. I spent the next two evenings searching for solutions, ideas, and help. And I found them. First, after more experimentation, I found out that New Blogger allowed reverting to the "classic template," which would accept My Wealth Builder's current format. Now I was feeling better. Second, I found a blog, Beta Blogger for Dummies, that has excellent tips, techniques and hacks for New Blogger. These guys are good! Using their template, I was able to recreate my current three column template in New Blogger.

Success is where preparation meets opportunity. For the past month, I had been preparing for today. Based on migration recommendations by Beta Blogger for Dummies, I backed up the blog template, the blog posts, and created a test template in New Blogger. I even had plans to create a replica of My Wealth Builder if the migration crashed. As it turned out, I didn't need to do use any of the backup plans. So readers got uninterrupted service and will so get a better My Wealth Builder in the future :-)

I'm hoping future changes in my life will go this well :-)

For more on New Beginnings, check back every Sunday for a new segment.

This is not financial or blogging advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

Copyright © 2008 Achievement Catalyst, LLC

More Changes - Switching to New Blogger, Full RSS Feeds

Today My Wealth Builder will be making some minor updates. First, My Wealth Builder will be converting from Blogger to New Blogger. I received the first conversion request in mid December, 2006. I received the second notice this weekend. I expect that I will receive a final "must change" notice in another month :-) Having done all the necessary backup and preparation, I will initiate the conversion today. If there are bugs with the conversion, I may miss a few days of publishing. If the issue lasts longer than a week, please check My Blog Builder, another blog I just started. If I cannot publish to My Wealth Builder, I will post updates about the issues in My Blog Builder.

Second, on January 1, 2007, I had switched my RSS feeds to be partial text instead of full text. Based on comments from readers, My Wealth Builder feeds have been changed back to full text.

Update: The conversion to New Blogger went very well. I initiated the conversion at 1:56PM and it was completed by 2:01PM. All the Blogger blogs transferred with no errors or issues. The only glitch I have found is the blogs using the "classic templates" get an error message that the web page may not load correctly. Congratulations to the Google team working on New Blogger conversions.

For more on New Beginnings, check back every Sunday for a new segment.

This is not financial advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

Copyright © 2007 Achievement Catalyst, LLC