“Mom, for New Year’s Eve can you make that stuff that’s really good? You know, that stuff with the cheese? You put the cheese in the dough with some other stuff and then stick it in the oven. When it comes out, the cheese is melted and everybody’s happy. Well, except for that one time when Jay purposely farted on Will and a wrestling match broke out in the kitchen and they knocked the cheese on the floor. You and dad got really mad and sent everybody to their rooms.” Anna-12

If you’re looking to make some people happy this New Year’s Eve, I recommend making the following. It’s a guaranteed crowd favorite and even the biggest Dummy of the Year can make it with ease. Please keep the wrestling to a minimum, unless you plan on eating it off the kitchen floor and enjoy spending time alone in your room.

Here’s what you’ll need for your Baked Havarti…

• 8-10 oz. of Havarti Cheese
• Pillsbury Crescent Seamless Dough Sheet (you can substitute Pillsbury Crescent Rolls, just seal the perforated edges)
• Honey Dijon mustard
• Crackers and Pretzels

Preheat your oven to 375. Cut Havarti cheese in half lengthwise. Unroll the dough onto your baking dish. Spread a generous amount of mustard onto the center of the dough. Place half of the cheese onto the mustard. Spread more mustard on top of the cheese and then top with the second half of cheese. Generously spread more mustard over the entire block of cheese. Gently fold dough over the cheese and press the seams together. Bake at 375 for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown. Serve with crackers and pretzels. Enjoy!

Happy New Year!

Young American Wisdom (@youthfulwisdom) is about a mother’s plight to find the funny in the frustrating and save her sanity. She will use this as blackmail, you can use it for birth control.

2009

In 2009 I went to WordPress.com and created this blog.  My focus was talking about short reports on half-baked decisions.  Basically I would search for news articles on Google News and talk about it here.

I wrote 90 posts my first month.  It’s amazing what ADHD meds can inspire one to do.

2010

In October of 2010 I decided to change the focus a bit.  I wrote poorly done satire pieces.  All two of you showed me grace and added funny comments.  I moved to self-hosting.

2011

I continued to write satire pieces.  I also started to experiment with having decent blog titles.

The most important thing I began to do was commenting on your site.  I have built a nice community here at Dummies of the Year and have enjoyed the community at your blog as well.

I recently changed the sub-title of the site to Boosting Your Dummy IQ.

2012

The focus of Dummies of the Year is about to change once again.  This year will be the Year of the Experts!

I am going to write articles that will help people.  I am going to write about what I know well, what I think I am an expert at.

This means I am going to write a total of 5 posts

I am opening the site for guest posting!!

It is my hope and desire to get a blog full of guest posters that want to make our lives easier.

Boost Our Dummy IQ

Boost our Dummy IQ is just my way of saying, “Make us more knowledgeable!”  If you are interested in helping us understand your area of expertise, then please go here: I would love to make Dummies of the Year better in 2012!

How is your blog doing?  Is it hopping with excitement or has it been ran over like a bad Atari Frogger experience from 1981?

If your’s is the latter then be sure to read this post.  Even if your blog is thriving, then share this with a sinking friend.

Here are 5 mistakes you can fix to keep your blog from dying.

1. No Comments

If you are just beginning to blog, comments are really hard to come by.  This is because you haven’t gained blogging credibility yet.  After time and some interesting posts you should begin to start getting comments.

If you have been blogging for a year and you still have very few comments, it may be time to either hang it up or go searching for commenters.

Create a community.  Go search for like minded blogs and leave comments.  Soon enough bloggers will leave comments on your blog as well.

Discard the ones who don’t return the favor.

2. Low Traffic

Just like getting bloggers to comment on your blog, you need time to build traffic.  There are ways to get a head sooner rather than later.

Use social media tools.  Submit your posts to places like Stumbleupon, Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus.  If you really want to move traffic to your site then you are going to have to engage a good amount of time on those tools.

Building community on social media sites will build community on your blog.

3. No New Posts

Have you run out of topics to blog about?  Maybe you have to begin each new blog post with, “Sorry I haven’t written in a long time.”  Tip: don’t ever begin a post with those words no matter how long you’ve been gone.

Does your blog have a niche or are you all over the place with topics?  Try to narrow your focus.  No more than 10 categories for your blog and no more than 1 category per post.

Start your blog title with one of the following: Why, What or How.  Answer a question that you think your readers want answers to.

Be sure to check out these resources for inspiration:

• Copyblogger
• Problogger
• Tentblogger

4. Slow Loading

If your site doesn’t load quickly people will go look on some other blog.  There may be a few reason why your site is loading slowly.

Is your theme coded badly?  I have to be honest and tell you I have no clue how to tell if a theme has bad code.  What I can do is point you in the right direction.

John Saddington from TentBlogger has created the Standard Theme.  He claims that the Standard Theme is the best coded theme ever.  I have been to several blogs that run the Standard Theme and they all seem to load very quickly.

If you have a good coded theme and your site still runs slow, make sure that you have a good cache plugin.  I recommend WP Super Cache.

If you would like to see how fast your site is in comparison with other sites then go check out Which Loads Faster.

5. Low Subscribers

You need to set your site up with Google’s FeedBurner.  This will require you to have a Google account but that is no big deal.

After you set up your blog and optimize it, then go to the Publicize tab and scroll down to Email Subscriptions.

From here you will see an email subscription code.  Copy and then paste this into your sidebar at the top.  This should help you to increase you subscriber count.

I have chosen to add a huge subscription photo on my sidebar that leads to a new page and describes all of my subscribing options.  You can try this also but keep in mind that this requires my readers to go two steps where as the subscribing widget is only one step.

I have just recently decided to try out the Hello Bar.  That is the orange bar at the top of the page.  Hello Bar is free to try.  Time will tell if this increases my subscriber count.

Work on these 5 steps and your blog should quit croaking and start hopping!

Share in the comments what has helped keep your blog afloat.

Boosting Your Blogging IQ,

PS: Please, please, please share this post with one of your social networks!  To make it easy for you just click one of the share icons.  Thanks!