September 05, 2007

Behind the Scenes at Cranky Fitness

Since we had Leah kindly supplying actual Health-Related Content today, Crabby is free to bring you a few updates from the always busy and bustling Product Development Laboratories at Cranky Fitness!

And boy are they busy back there. Completely imaginary Dedicated workers, thousands of them, are toiling away night and day to update this site and bring you the easiest to find without even Googling latest, most important updates in health and fitness news! And it's not just up-to-the minute content, either. Cranky Fitness plans to keep Screwing around with the Sidebar Optimizing its' User Interface continuously in order to try to make a few bucks someday enhance your browsing experience!

Can you tell Crabby recently discovered how to do Strike-Through Type? She promises to cut it out. Soon. Probably. Eventually. Her recent infatuation has probably officially killed it. All the hip bloggers will move on to something new tomorrow. Check back here in about three years to find out what it is and Crabby will kill it again.

Anyway. So, changes. Innovations.

You may have noticed there are new ads again! Hopefully these will acquire some variety over time. Or maybe you will always be taunted by Snack Chips. Crabby herself found herself craving crunchy snack-foods last time she was at the store, and wonders if all the Blogher bloggers are throwing all kinds of crackers and chips and pretzels and other tempting carbs in their carts all of a sudden without even knowing why.

But the Blogher people somehow seem Way more likable as ad partners than the Google Alternative. So Crabby will just eat her snack chips and shut up about it until they get a few more sponsors going. And a cool thing about the Blogher ad process: they highlight posts from other member blogs. Perhaps you have seen these.

The downside: more clutter on the sidebar. The upside: some days, Cranky Fitness gets to clutter up the sidebars of other blogs! Crabby hopes new people will come and subliminally confuse Cranky Fitness with Snack Chips and think the blog is Tasty and Healthy and Addictive and Convenient and Brightly Packaged!

In other blog news, Cranky Fitness made A European List of the top English Language Health Blogs. How did Cranky Fitness manage to make the list at all, despite being too new for a google page rank, not very big, and weird? Well, partly it was because the blog gets so many comments! So thank you, Commenters! We came in at #79, beating out, for example, a blog called UroStream.

(Crabby didn't check to see whether UroStream was about, well, exactly what it sounds like. Who knows? Maybe it's another way of spelling Euro-Stream and its mission is highlight the important health benefits of European-style rowing. Perhaps they're immensely popular and they've got tasty photos spreads of buffed Continental crew teams with tousled hair and glistening bodies. Crabby prefers to think this, actually.)

Cranky Fitness is also now a Blogburst contributor! Blogburst is a syndicator that actual News Outlets sometimes use. So far, they haven't found anything normal enough here to pick up and distribute to the masses, but it has only been a few days. Crabby may experiment every now and then with trying to sound more like a regular health blog in hopes of getting Noticed. So if sudden Normalcy should attack the blog, do not be alarmed! It will be sporadic and temporary.

***Important Update! Cranky Fitness has now moved up to #17 on the European Guy's Top Health Blog List! Why? Who the hell knows, and it's probably a mistake, but Crabby's pleased! Also, she checked out UroStream and it's actually really cute. It's a blog written by a urologist with a sense of humor, though unfortunately it features no photo-spreads of muscular rowers.

So that's all for now, but stay tuned! Crabby is working hard to realize her dreams of making Cranky Fitness one of the very best, most informative silliest but nonetheless weirdly popular health blogs on the Net!

21 comments:

  1. Perhaps Urostream is an offshoot of the ever popular.."You r a pee in." :-)

    Dr.J

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  2. My son's name is Ian and when we play a game, we say "You're up Ian!" which makes him very mad, so we do it as often as possible. He is 12. We act like we're 12.

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  3. It's important to never stop acting like you're twelve, I totally agree, Holly. And that goes double for you Dr. J, not that you need a reminder!

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  4. "...Cranky Fitness one of the very best, most informative silliest but nonetheless weirdly popular health blogs..."

    You're well on the way.

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  5. Finally. An outlet for the ridiculous snack chip ads. They're taking over the world! Actually, I thought they were quite cool...the first hundred or so times i saw them. THe weird thing is I signed up in my app for all kinds of things like fashion, home stuff, etc. ah well. I might just send them a little note...

    And 17! Good Job! I now need to go back through the post and thoroughly take note of everything I need to copy! (like Blogburst and the strike-through thingy...which is actually pretty funny when you read the post here on the comments page because it doesn't show up...)

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  6. Urine good company for sure! And ditto what Leah said... well on your way. Go, Crabby!

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  7. The comments on your site contribute for 82.5% to your ranking. So it is really the effort of your visitors.

    Maybe I will change this but for now you deserve the 17th spot.

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  8. So you're going to be a millionare before long right? Doing the talk show circuit and all that?

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  9. I for one fully support the future rise of our new crustacean overlord.

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  10. Way to go Crabby!! #17 overall out of what? Probably Millions?

    Thousands at the very least.

    Great job!

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  11. Leah--
    Well, if you apply that strikeout type to everything but "silliest," I totally agree with you. And thanks so much for this morning's post, that was fun and I'm actually going to start looking for that savory stuff!

    Hi Katieo! Well, I suspect they just don't have much else yet--seems like they've been busy recruiting blogs but need to work a bit more on getting sponsors. Unless it's some deal where the sponsor WANTS to be the only ad out there, but I can't believe that would make sense for them. And doesn't Nabisco make anything else healthy? Aren't they like the biggest food company in the world? (I went over to your blog to actually click on the dang thing to find out who makes them because I'm afraid lightning will strike me dead if I click on my own ad. I think google has that death by lightening provision; don't know about Blogher).

    Hilary! Hilary! Hilary! Bad girl! (I love it!)

    Jan, thank you so much! Thanks for coming here to explain your process, and thank you for including me on the list!

    Hi Amanda,
    Yeah, I'm well on the way! With the advertising proceeds I've made so far in these first few months, I will soon be able to afford my very own box of Snack Chips!

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  12. Chickengirl,
    Crabs are quite fond of Mutant Chickens, they will be well rewarded in the new Crustacean Empire when we eventually achieve World Domination.

    And hi Vanilla!
    Um, well, I suspect this list is perhaps not all-inclusive. Nor does it appear to use boring popularity measures like actual traffic. This is why Cranky Fitness is so very fond of it!

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  13. Hey Crabby! You never did explain how to do the Strike Through thing! I've seen it about and always wondered.

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  14. Don't abuse that new superpower, Ms. Crab! Remember the three strikes law ;)

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  15. Ok, but the thing that bugs me is when I go to other blogher blogs that have been up and around and are bigger, they've got all sorts of different ads....every day. So is it just us healthy nuts that get the cracker shaft?
    And I can't remember about the lightening provision. I'm pretty sure you get compensation for impression load, not clicks...I think. Maybe it depends on the sponsor. I'm not 100% sure.

    maybe I should've sent this in an email...lol.

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  16. Hi Dawn! It turns out it's really simple, it's just html coding. Pretend the "(" is a "<" like normal html (otherwise the coding might convert in the comment):

    (strike)The text you want to strikethrough(/strike).

    Mary, too funny. But I'm afraid they've already issued a warrant for my arrest as I've gone way over the limit already.

    Katieo,
    Good point about the non-health blogs, I forgot about them! Are they getting stuff that's not kid-related? I think this may have started off with mostly Mom bloggers. Of course now I'm hoping I wasn't stupid by teasing the Blogher people about it, as I'd like to see Cranky Fitness posts in the sidebar again! But the folks I've emailed with about other things seemed Really Friendly and Helpful, so I doubt they'll take it personally if we grouse about the never-changing Snack Chips!

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  17. Ok. so I'm just stopping in to say I saw a new ad on my blog this morning! Wha? How did they know? lol! And I see you've made the bloggy list thingy underneath. I really gotta work on my titles!

    and thanks for the skirt! I'll back later to actually comment on your real post today! I gotta find some time to respond to my comments too. yeesh!

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  18. I just needed to add
    ONE
    MORE
    EXCLAMATION
    POINT!
    :)

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  19. Katieo,
    I noticed the new ad too so I felt kind of bad about teasing them! Or perhaps (ulp) they actually read the post. They seem so nice I hate to be a trouble-maker! And I can match you exclamation point for exclamation point! It's gotten to be like a complusive disease! Every darn sentence wants to end in one! !!!!

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  20. (Ok. sorry to clog up this post with all of my blogher ad whining.) But I just had to come back and say, They ARE really great, If it weren't for them I wouldn't have even put ads up in the first place. (will slink away now....ever grateful for the fresh ad)

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