We proudly reproduce an email from the BlogNet Awards Team below:-

"It is with pleasure that we inform you that your blog has been nominated for the December BlogNet Trophy Contest. Before a site is accepted to our site, we do a manual review to make sure that it meets our standards for content and quality. Congratulations, your blog has passed and is now viewing on our site.

Should you win the monthly award your blog will hold a prominent position for the following month on our front page and on all the sites who display our widget, and you will be included in the year end competition for our Annual award.

This is a Free contest that is fun and will give your site more exposure and traffic! The best way to create a buzz for your nomination is to let all your readers and viewers know about this contest, from friends, family and all your contacts in the various communities and forums that you are with. To encourage people to vote and comment to your nomination, we have created a Comment Contest. People need to REGISTER to have their votes and comments counted and the benefit to them as an added bonus is that they can create a backlink to their own primary business, not to mention the cash prizes that they can win. Nominations close on the 15th of the given month, but the voting and commenting goes to the last day of the month.

Again, congratulations and best of luck!"

Dear members, readers and friends. We need your help more than ever before with this one. We thinking voting the " Americymru " blog as number one in its category in this competition is an excellent way to promote Wales and also your own sites and blogs at the same time ( see above quoted email, paragraph 3 ) Please dont be shy...get along to BlogNet Awards now...register, vote for us and comment, comment, comment! You'll be doing us and yourselves a favour.. You know it makes sense! Have Fun.

HOW TO VOTE

If you go to either of the BlogNet Awards text links in the above article you will be on the right page to vote for Americymru. You will need to login or register at the bottom of the comment panel. Dont forget to include details of your webpage in your registration details in order to get the linkback to your site. Then...just go back to the Americymru page and mark us out of ten and leave a short comment. If you decide to comment on the other entrants as well you may qualify for the comment competition. I'm not sure of the details but I think there are cash prizes for this. Remember ...we only have two weeks to get our votes in. Voting ends on December 31st.

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The Troublesome Tudors and Sleazy Stuarts - Wicked Wales

Welsh history in all its gory glory!

Bring history to life with The Troublesome Tudors and Sleazy Stuarts , the first book in the Wicked Wales series, focusing on the gorier elements of periods of Welsh history.

Did you know that under the rule of the Tudors and Stuarts people were boiled alive in oil, husbands tried to sell their wives at livestock fairs, and over a nine year period, one bishop hanged 5,000 people, including one man who was already dead?

A blend of amusing text, gory facts and humorous illustrations bring the era of the Tudors and Stuarts to life, in an appealing and entertaining way. The text is interspersed with quizzes, fact panels, cartoons and games, making this the ideal book to engage childrens interest and get them involved in the history of Wales.

READ MORE...

We are enormously pleased and proud to present two new card designs by Graham Williams of Graham Williams Images . Don't forget to send out your St David's Day Greetings a day or two in advance. Give people time to reply

See our full selection of St David's day cards here

SEND THIS CARD

SEND THIS CARD

SEND THIS CARD

SEND THIS CARD

DYDD GWYL DEWI HAPUS / HAPPY ST DAVID'S DAY

Anyone visiting the site in the last few days will have noticed that we have adopted a new look template. We did this for three reasons. Firstly AmeriCymru has looked the same for the last three years and we felt that it was time for a change. Secondly the new two column layout allows us to present more content and links on every page on the site whereas the old left hand column only appeared on the homepage. Last but not least.....Ning, our platform provider, has introduced a new Design Studio and will be ending support for our old template sooner or later .

We recognize that the new layout will wreak havoc on existing page customizations. Indeed we have weeks of work ahead re-formatting blog posts etc BUT the new Design Studio makes it very easy for members to customize their home pages in a great many interesting ways. We will be holding a 'Homepage Layout Design Competition' later in the year once people have had a chance to familiarize themselves with the new feature. Home pages on AmeriCymru can be personalized and used to promote goods and services and we will assist anyone who opts to use the platform for this purpose. Of course home pages can be customized 'just for fun' as well.

To access the new feature simply click 'My Page' on the top navbar and look for 'Customize my page' in the left hand column. Click on 'Customize' and the 'Design Studio' drop down will appear. Please have fun and feel free to be creative with your page but bear in mind that we will NOT be providing technical support, SO unless you know what you're doing ( with CSS and LESS ) don't alter anything in the 'Advanced' tab. There is plenty that you can do without editing the code directly, but if you are able to do this or get someone to do it for you, then the sky is the limit.

Another side benefit of all the recent upheaval is that we were able to examine every element on the old site and analyze its effect on page load times. As a consequence we ditched a great many features that were slowing the site down. We also decided to do away with background colors in page modules in order to facilitate easier readability. Soon we will introduce a number of new features in the activity feed which should greatly increase participation and interactivity.

So there you have it We have been striving recently to increase speed, interactivity and readability. We even coined a cheesy marketing b/s acronym especially for the occasion:-

Welcome to AmeriCymru S (peed) I (nteractivity) R (eadibility)! Because your time on our site is special to us

OK...once you have finished groaning and guffawing at the apocalyptic awfulness of the above piece of over ripe gorgonzola, please try out the new Design Studio and let us know your thoughts below in comments.

The New Design Studio

SwanseaJack with a grand total of 40 points.

Second place goes to Lorin Morgan Richards with 36 points.

Third place goes to Rhianne Griffiths with 35 points.

All our winners will be receiving 'Sheep of Excellence' and SwanseaJack will receive a copy of the DVD 'Wales:Land of Song' .

For more details about our Top Blogger competition go to this page Top Blogger

The Womens Institute in the UK have partnered with Sky TV to launch a competition to find the ultimate "W-Icon". "What's a W-Icon?", I hear you ask. Read more below:-"One WI member will be chosen from over 200,000 women to become the face of the WI on Sky Learning where she will use the skills the WI are famous for, by hosting a range of inspiring and useful How To guides to modern life. The guides will be hosted online and broadcast on Sky TV." ( quoted from the Women's Institute website )Amongst the finalists are two contestants from Wales including Valerie-Wood Gaiger, a member of this site. Valerie kindly provided us with some biographical details for inclusion in this post:-"Valerie Wood Gaiger MBEValerie has 7 grandchildren and became a great-grandmother in January 2007. Valerie researches and writes Grandmas Stories and is a co founder of Learn with Grandma. A not for profit company reg no. 05913133. The unique holistic educational programme which is incorporated in her work. The philosophy behind Learn with Grandma is to make learning memorable and fun. Without really intending it Valerie has become an expert on Intergenerational Learning!Valerie was awarded an MBE for her work with disabled people. She founded a Charity that helped recognize, throughout the U.K, the value of work for disabled people both financially and in fostering respect and self-respect. Since being made redundant from this work Valerie became aware how that work related to the separation of the generations and the problems that this was causing in society. She has, and is continually; seeking ways of fostering respect for older people and helping the younger and older parts of society learn from each other.Valerie Lives in a tiny village in The Brecon Beacons National Park in Wales. Her children, grandchildren & little great grandson live a long way away. This has lead to another interest - to exploring modern technology as a means of maintaining contact over great distances and as an educational tool. "We feel that Valerie would make an excellent icon for the Women's Institute and urge all eligible members to consider supporting her in the voting which will take place between Thursday and Sunday of this week. We will post further details and links as they become available.