I had trouble upgrading the blog’s theme, so things may look different around here for a while…

UPDATE: Things should be mostly back to normal. If you find any problems with the blog, please let me know.

I have (1) guests and (2) a cold, so I’m taking a little break from blogging, but I will be back soon. The Royalty.nu site will be minimally updated, with the Royal News page on hold for a few days. The New Royal Books list will be updated as usual on the first day of the month.

Sorry for the absence, and HAPPY NEW YEAR to you all!

I’ve been having some trouble with the blog’s theme, so I’ll be changing it soon. In the meantime, things may look a little jumbled. My apologies.

If you’re a regular visitor to the blog, you’ll probably notice that I’ve changed the header image. What can I say: I’m fickle.

Well, actually, I changed the image to match the new beige background color, and I changed that because the previous purple background, while quite royal, made it hard to read the blog’s text while the rest of the blog was taking its sweet time loading… OK, never mind, let’s just go back to calling me fickle.

I fear the blog title doesn’t show up very well against the new image, but I can’t find a title color that works better with that image. Aargh. Also, I’m wondering if the blog has too many colors going on now…? I’d hate to kill the pink/purple in the sidebar, but should I??? Oh, dear. I should, shouldn’t I.

Obviously I am not a design guru. If you have an opinion about this new look, good or bad, please share it. Or feel free to simply point at the blog and laugh heartily.

In case you’re wondering, the new header image is from an 1815 painting of Heidelberg Castle by Carl Philipp Fohr. According to Wikimedia Commons, it is in the public domain.

As you can see, the World of Royalty Blog has undergone a big redesign! I loved the old theme, but I never felt it matched the blog’s content. It was hard to tear myself away from the pretty flowers and ribbons, but I’ve finally done it. (Weep.)

This theme isn’t exactly austere — especially now that I’ve added fluffy purple clouds and pink links — but it’s easy on the eyes, I think. The header image is taken from a public-domain photo I found on Wikimedia Commons.

I didn’t have room in the sidebar for my lengthy blogroll, so you’ll find that on the new Links page. There’s also a new Archives page that includes a list of all the tags used on this site (248 so far), from “Amazon” (the region, not the website) to “Zara Phillips.”

It took me forever to talk myself into this redesign, but now I’m happy I did. I won’t think about the flowers and ribbons I’ve lost. This is so much better. Less girly. More serious. Plus purple and pink. Yay!

Like it? Hate it? I want to hear what you think!

I’m fiddling around with the blog theme again, so things will be in disarray for a while.

The life of a royalty site owner is an exciting one. When I’m not cutting and pasting headlines about Prince Harry’s latest apologies, I like to lurk around Web 2.0 news sites (like Mashable), wondering when venture capitalists will stop investing in all those half-baked interactive social widget thingamajigs and start throwing their billions at royalty websites instead.

Recently, one company name keeps popping up on these sites: Twitter. It’s like Paris Hilton — you don’t want to hear about her, but you can’t escape. Everywhere I turn it’s Twitter this and Twitter that, Twitter, Twitter, Twitter. How irritating.

So, of course, in the end I signed up for Twitter. Here’s my worldofroyalty profile page. You can also see the RSS feed in this blog’s sidebar (it’s currently under the Google ad).

The concept of Twitter is difficult to explain, maybe because I don’t really get it yet. It’s a micro-blog (posts limited to 140 characters) where you’re apparently supposed to share every random detail of your life. (I had strawberries and yogurt for breakfast this morning, in case you’re wondering. And my refrigerator is broken.) Or you can share links of articles you’re reading. Or…

Well, I’m still figuring out how to use it, and whether or not, and why. But I can already see that it’s fun and informative. I quickly found several other royalty site owners on Twitter and signed up as their followers.

And now I can annoy my blog’s readers the way other blogs annoyed me. Twitter this and Twitter that! Twitter tweet Twitter! Look how cool I am! Bwhahahaha!

Sorry about that. It will never happen again.

I’ve added a tag cloud to the blog’s sidebar (look under “Categories”). This is an experiment, and I still haven’t figured out exactly what I’m doing with the tags.

Right now, I’m trying to use tags that don’t just duplicate what you’ll find via the categories or search function. I’ve also been giving tags to most authors, and some royals who are likely to be mentioned here a lot. Maybe that’s too many tags — I’m not sure if I should be aiming for more tags or less.

I’ve shamelessly added a few tags that might attract search engine users (why, Anna Nicole Smith, what are YOU doing in my history-royalty tag cloud?) And I’m stubbornly denying tags to a few people I don’t like (I’m sure Prince Frederick von Anhalt and Germaine Greer are heartbroken).

OK, it sounds like I know what I’m doing with the tags, after all. But I don’t know if this tagging system is useful or fun for anyone other than me. So if you have comments, please share them.

So far the cloud says this blog is about Princess Diana, plus Ancient History, with some Historical Fiction and Marie Antoinette thrown in. Well, that doesn’t sound so bad.