Happy New Year From The Football Blog Directory

We would like to take this opportunity to wish all of our visitors, contributors and sponsors a very happy, safe and prosperous 2015.

You all helped us to make 2014 a successful year for The Football Blog Directory, and we will be doing our very best to bring you even more football blogs, more football articles and lots of new tools to help your football blogs attract even more visitors and readers.

So thank you all so much for a great 2014 - here's to an even better 2015 !!

Merry Christmas From The Football Blog Directory

The Football Blog Directory would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas!

Whether you are a contributor, a listed blog owner or a visitor we wish all of you a great Christmas. Thank you for continuing to support the blog directory by visiting the site, listing your blogs and sharing your football articles.

We hope that Santa brought you all that you hoped for this year. If you are in the Christmas spirit and would like to give a gift to the Football Blog Directory, then all that is on our wishlist for this year is that you help us to let other football blog owners know about the site so that they can list their blogs, and that you use the article submission service to promote your own blog posts - so that you help your own blog and the blog directory get more traffic.

Once again, a very merry Christmas to you all!!

John Lewis Christmas Advert 2014 - Football Edition

TalkSport have published a football version of the John Lewis Christmas advert on YouTube. Rather than the tale of the young boy and the penguin, the advert features a variety of football personalities and speculates on what they may like for Christmas.

Don't worry though - the penguin makes an appearance!




With apologies for the Christmas theme when there is still a full weekend of November football left to play!

New Football Blog Directory Up And Running

The new site at footballblogdirectory.co.uk is now up and running. All the blogs from the original directory (that are still available to view) have been transferred to the new site. The blogs that have been submitted over recent months, but not yet uploaded, will begin to be listed over the coming week.
There are still a couple of new sections to complete, such as the blog tools and forum sections, but as these sections are new and not central to the running of the site they can be developed while the site is live.

Please take the time to look around the new site and let us know what you think. We'd appreciate your help spreading the word that we're back up and running too, so if you're able, we'd love you to invite others to take a look at the site.

More coming soon...

What is Going On? Where Have All The Listings Gone??

Don't panic! Nothing has been lost.

We have had to switch a few of the regular features off while we redesign the site.

A few?? - they've all gone along with all of the blog listings!! They will all be back, along with a few new features that we hope you will like, when the new Football Blog Directory goes live soon.

In the meantime you can still see all of the old blog listings here.

Please note that the blog listings on the old site are no longer being maintained or added to, so there may be quite a few dead or out of date links. You can still submit your blog for inclusion on the new Football Blog Directory though by using the submission form here.

Thank you for your patience while we change things around and improve the site. We hope that you agree that it was worth it when you see the new site.

Blog Submissions

An update for anyone who has submitted a blog for inclusion on the Football Blog Directory:

It will be very apparent that no blogs have been added to the listings for a significant amount of time. This must be frustrating for those of you who submitted your blogs and hoped to see your blogs included. All we can do is apologise for the delay and assure you that your blogs will be included in the blog directory listings as soon as possible. Every single submission, dating back over a year, is still on file. Blogs will be added in the order that they were received, which does mean that the latest blogs submitted will probably have a substantial wait before inclusion in the directory.

Please do not resubmit blogs that have already been submitted. Multiple submissions slow down the process of catching up and make it difficult to assess progress.

At the moment we are working on the site re-design, and transferring over all the existing content - including double checking for dead links. This work will take quite a while to complete, but once completed will make the directory much easier to maintain and keep up to date. Thank you for bearing with us in the meantime.

A New Site Deserves A New Logo!

As part of the new site redesign we decided it was time we updated out logo. We wanted one that does exactly what it says on the tin - and we hope we've succeeded. Keep an eye out for our new logo on facebook, Google+ and twitter as well as on the new site once it launches.

We are making steady progress with the new site, but there are a lot of blogs to transfer over along with the full redesign, so it will be a while before the switch over. Follow the progress here and on facebook.

OK, So It's Been A While....

Well, maybe more than a while. More like a year and a half. Yes, it's definitely fair to say that the Football Blog Directory has been more than a little quiet. All I can do is apologise to those of you who enjoyed the posts on here, and even more so to those of you who have submitted blogs for inclusion on the site and have heard nothing back!

The directory is maintained on a part-time basis, and the awkward way it is designed to fit in with blogger has always meant that adding listings and updating the site took longer than it should have. This in turn led to a backlog, which in turn led to heads being buried in the sand and directories being neglected!

However, I am now in the middle of redesigning the site and re-launching it as a purpose built site, no longer hosted here on blogger. In the meantime you may notice this site getting a little messy as some of the features are redesigned to fit on the new site. It will be a slow process, but we will get there!

Watch this space....

Help Spread The Word: FBD Facebook Page

The Football Blog Directory now has a facebook page. Please take the time to visit the page and hit the like button. Everything that we can all do to promote the site will have a knock on benefit to all of the blogs listed. After all, the more visitors to the site then the more visitors to the blogs listed. Everyone wins!



As well as promoting the directory, one of the purposes of the facebook page is to include a link to every newly added blog to the directory. This will, combined with the new layout of the category pages, mean that each new listing will get up to 15 quality and relevant back links to their blog.

Using Facebook is also a way of spreading word about the blog directory, especially to those who do not use twitter. The more people notice the blog and list/visit then the more your backlinks become worth!

FBD Daily

Today the first edition of the FBD Daily was published. It is something that I am trying and it will be a case of seeing how it goes. I have noticed for a while that quite a few of the twitter accounts that I follow are using paper.li to publish the top stories from their twitter timeline and thought that it might be an idea to do the same.

Being not the brightest spark on the planet, I am still not sure exactly how it works so I am sure there will still be a lot of fine tuning involved along the way. At the moment it is taking stories exclusively from my twitter timeline. I haven't worked out yet how to do the fine tuning to make it as relevant as possible to users of the directory. Anybody with any tips on how to get the best out of paper.li please feel free to tweet me or email me.

In the meantime, please feel free to check out the FBD Daily and send in your feedback. It's all about increasing traffic to the directory so that you get increased traffic to your blogs.

December Blog Of The Month

Yes - it's back! After a few months on the back burner Blog Of The Month returns today with a new winner for December. This month's award has gone to Tom Hall and The Scottish Football Blog.

Tom has been running the blog for five years now and covers many aspects of the game in Scotland. It was his recent Blogathon that brought his blog to our attention for BOTM however. You can read all about it and his fundraising efforts on the Blog Of The Month page.

Don't forget to keep suggesting blogs to us for future awards in the New Year.

Recent Member Blog Posts: Dedicated Page

As regular visitors to the Football Blog Directory may have noticed, the menu at the top of our page has changed. There is now an additional page on the site dedicated to recent member blog posts. This page provides details of the 100 most recent blog postings by listed blog members, along with an introductory paragraph and links to that blog article.

The whole purpose of this site is to drive more web traffic to football blogs and to raise awareness of the many football blogs available online. The recent member blog posts page is another way of increasing traffic to your blog. The page is fed from our RSS feed, so if your blog is listed on the directory but you do not see your articles appearing in the feed then please send us details of your RSS feed and we will make sure it is added to the list.

If you think of any other ideas that you would like to see included on the Football Blog Directory then please do not hesitate to email and let us know. Any ideas that will help increase traffic to the directory, and so then onto your blogs, will be greatly appreciated.

Football Blog Directory Facebook Page

The Football Blog Directory now has a facebook page. Please take the time to visit the page and hit the like button. Everything that we can all do to promote the site will have a knock on benefit to all of the blogs listed. After all, the more visitors to the site then the more visitors to the blogs listed. Everyone wins!



As well as promoting the directory, one of the purposes of the facebook page is to include a link to every newly added blog to the directory. This will, combined with the new layout of the category pages, mean that each new listing will get up to 15 quality and relevant back links to their blog.

FBD Facebook Page

The Football Blog Directory now has a facebook page. Please take the time to visit the page and hit the like button. Everything that we can all do to promote the site will have a knock on benefit to all of the blogs listed. After all, the more visitors to the site then the more visitors to the blogs listed. Everyone wins!



As well as promoting the directory, one of the purposes of the facebook page is to include a link to every newly added blog to the directory. This will, combined with the new layout of the category pages, mean that each new listing will get up to 15 quality and relevant back links to their blog.

New Categories Section

Now that we have well over 250 blogs listed on the Football Blog Directory I thought that it would be a good idea to redesign the categories section, and hopefully make it easier to use.

The left hand side menu on the category pages has now been simplified (rather than listing every possible category all at once). Now only the main sections are shown. Any category listed in blue is a link that will then expand when clicked on. So for example, if you are searching for an Arsenal blog, you would click on European Football, then English Football and then Premier League. Make sense? I hope so.

I'd appreciate any feedback of what you think of the new layout.

Football Blog Directory - Categories

250+

We have now passed the 250 mark for blogs listed on the directory. I would like to thank each and everyone of you for submitting your blogs to the directory. Thank you for your continued support.

For those of you who have submitted blogs that are still not listed - we're getting there. For those of you who have blogs that you havent yet submitted then please get in touch. The more we have listed then the more people will visit, which in turn means more visitors sent to blogs that are listed. Wins all round there!

Links To Your Blog Posts

Those of you who have blogs listed in the directory will probably have noticed that you each received an invitation to become a site author at the time that your submission appeared on the site. The purpose of this is to allow you to place a link to your new blog postings along with an introductory paragraph (see many previous entries for examples).

However, as Google (the hosts of this directory) limit the number of authors to 100, some of you may have noticed that invitations not taken up in the first few days have been cancelled and passed on to new listings. This is the only way that we can be fair to every blog listed. In time, no doubt, even those that have been accepted may well have to be shared around. If you would like to advertise your posts on the directory but now find that you no longer have the facility to do so, then please email us and we will re-arrange site authors to try and allow as many people as possible to take advantage of this facility.

Thanks for your understanding.

Please Spread The Word

There are now over 120 football blogs listed on the Football Blog Directory. All but three of the premier league teams are represented, but representation from the lower leagues is still sparse.

Please continue to let people know about the Football Blog Directory so that we can start to gain blogs from throughout he football world. It doesn't matter what level of football you follow - we want blogs from every level and throughout the football world.

The more people who know about the directory, then the more visitors will be attracted to listed blogs - so get emailing, tweeting or whatever it takes to get more people involved!

We Voted Yes To AV...But They Haven't Voted Yes For Us...Yet!

That's right! I have just been out and exercised my democratic right to vote by voting Yes for Randy Lerner as president. Unfortunately none of the followers of the AV party have yet voted for us by listing their blogs on this directory. The good news is that, as hurt as we are, we don't hold grudges and the opportunity to rectify the situation still exists. Even better news is that our polls don't close at 10pm tonight. In fact they never close - occasionally pause for sleep or a trip down the pub - but never close!

Its not just the AV party either. We would gladly welcome approaches from any football party - and not just the mainstream ones. Here at the Football Blog Directory we cater for all minority football views too. We've even got a link to Sunderland!

So spread the word. We're forming our own football coalition and everyone is invited!!

From Little Acorns....

The directory is one week old today. When I started this, I had no idea if the idea would take off. While its too early to say that it has taken off, the response has been very positive - and we're at least on the runway!

In the first week thirty sites have been submitted to the directory. Thats a very encouraging start. It's only a start though. There are thousands of football blogs out there, many of them lost in the blogosphere, visited only be loyal friends and family. They are exactly the sort of sites that we hope to list here on the directory. Who knows what pearls of wisdom we are all missing out on just because nobody knows these blogs exist?

We would like to thank everyone who has already joined the directory, particularly those of you who have been kind enough to promote the directory by including a link on your site. Please keep up the good work and keep spreading the word about the directory. Let's get the real fans' voices heard by more people!