Spotlight with Amanda of Kevin & Amanda

If you don't know Amanda and her infinitely cute and helpful blogs, then you need to pay her a visit! She's got a darling hubby and pets, a coveted scrapbook room, and free fonts for the taking, and recipes out the wazoo! She also just got back from an AMAZING trip to L.A. that makes me wonder where the heck I'VE been living this past year (ahem...I live in L.A.). She's such a delight and I am happy to have her with us today!

BGB: How long have you been blogging?

Amanda: I've had a webpage since I was about 14 years old, back in 1995. Back then, we didn't have cool sites to keep in touch like Facebook, or Flickr or Blogger. :) We had a site called Geocities. It was very primitive, you had to write your own HTML, and my page was basically just a gallery of photos. Even back then I loved taking pictures and sharing them with friends and family online! :)

Kevin gave me kevinandamanda.com in 2002 for the one year anniversary of our first date- before we were even married. We were engaged at the time though- just a little over two months away from our wedding date. :) He knew how much I liked posting about our wedding plans and saw how limiting Geocities was. He surprised me by typing in kevinandamanda.com - and it was a countdown to our wedding date.

BGB: Do you have any suggestions for new bloggers? Any tips on gaining followers/readers?

Amanda: Design your site so that it's clean, uncluttered, and easy to navigate. Black text on a white background is easier to read (and looks more professional) than vice versa, or colored text on a patterned background, etc. Make it easy to search and browse archives. Add links with photos to your favorite & most interesting posts in your sidebar. Don't make people answer CAPTCHA questions to leave a comment. Remember that music taste is extremely personal and subjective- think twice about having music playing in the background of your blog.

BGB: Who designed your blog? Do you design it yourself? If so, how did you get started designing?

Amanda: I do all the designing for kevinandamanda.com. I design in HTML, CSS, and PHP. I had to teach myself HTML back when I had my Geocities site- I looked at the code from other sites I liked, copied and pasted it into a "test" webpage, and then I'd add, change, and delete stuff until something changed. Sometimes it did what I wanted... Sometimes it completely broke the webpage! :) Eventually I just did it enough to where I got an idea of what code did what. In 2007, when I switched my blog over to Wordpress, I had to learn CSS and PHP. Fortunately, CSS is very similar to HTML, and I had a great tutorial site to reference when I got stuck. I'm still experimenting with PHP, but fortunately it's similar to Java, which is the language Kevin programs in for work. :)

BGB: Which blogs do you read often? Any favorites?

Amanda: These blogs are at the top of my RSS reader - love getting a new post notification from them! :)

Moment by Moment - beautifully written posts about life, kids, and marriage from Monica. Completely inspiring. I wish I were half as strong as she is.

Lisa Leonard - Gorgeous photos. Sweet, sweet words. Love her calm, laid back approach. When I'm feeling uptight or stressed out, I run here to clear my head.

Picky Palate - Serious yumminess going on over here. My ultimate goal in life is to move in with Picky Palate and be 500 lbs.

Savvy Blogging - Blogging tips, advice, and discussion from other ladies who blog, just like me.

BGB: When and where do you write your posts?

Amanda: I prefer to write in complete silence- usually after dinner, at my desk in the scraproom, in my cushy, oversized office chair, behind the screen of my 20" iMac... but since we travel often, I have been known to write a post or two from the passenger's seat of my 4runner, either going 70 mph down the interstate or dodging pot holes on some country road, balancing my tiny laptop & network card in my lap, with a ball game going on in the background. ;)

BGB: Amanda, thanks so much for taking the time to be interviewed with the Blog Guidebook!

Find Amanda HERE, HERE, and HERE.