Feedspot, is it worth paying for?

I recently got listed by Feedspot in the top 25 Second Life Bloggers, at number 21. If you’d told me I’d ever type those words back in 2019 I wouldn’t have believed you, but this post isn’t about where I ranked, it’s about what the site offers and which bits you have to pay for. … Continue reading “Feedspot, is it worth paying for?”

I recently got listed by Feedspot in the top 25 Second Life Bloggers, at number 21.

If you’d told me I’d ever type those words back in 2019 I wouldn’t have believed you, but this post isn’t about where I ranked, it’s about what the site offers and which bits you have to pay for.

TLDR: Unless you make a decent amount of money from your site to pay for it, it’s not worth it. The free offering is just fine for most people. My key gripe being you can’t change your blog/site address without paying.

As most of you probably noticed by now, I moved my site from avadelaney.co.uk to this one avabloodrose.com. I changed my profile pic on Feedspot and the blog address in my profile.

I noticed that the recent listing on Feedspot still had the old address and the wrong logo image. I logged in and tried to fix the errors. It seems on Feedspot you have multiple profiles in an account, a Reader and a Publisher. I’d changed the details in my Reader profile only. I emailed them about the image, because the website didn’t seem to want to let me change it. They were very helpful and resolved it for me.

However there was still the issue of the site address that still said avadelaney.co.uk. This isn’t something you’d change very often, because frankly moving a 7 year old blog that’s about 15GB in size, is a hell of a headache. The setting on Feedspot to change this is however is Paywalled.

Their payment plans include all kinds of potentially useful features that some people may want to pay for, but on a free account with just the one included entry, you can’t change the URL without paying. If you want to list several blogs, or podcasts or whatever, yes charging makes sense it’s their business. Charging to make a change that isn’t going to be repeated very often, if at all by many, is unreasonable.

If a site is commercial (I’ll include blogs that make advertising revenue in here), then yes pay the fees and get seen. Paying lets you add useful stuff if you want to reach lots of customers. But for a little blog that runs at a loss because it’s my hobby and costs money to run, it’s a bit tight of them.

So is it worth paying? For a Second Life blogger, I’d say only if your site makes revenue enough to cover it or you want to link lots of social media accounts to it. The ones I use are already included with other services, so for me it’s pointless.

Incidentally Feedspot asked me to share this link, during my email exchange about the logo.

The top SL bloggers article:

https://bloggers.feedspot.com/second_life_blogs

Please fellow bloggers,  if you pay for Feedspot services I’d love to hear your perspective.

Update: Approximately an hour after publication Feedspot reached out to me (I put the post link in an email to them.) I can only presume they didn’t actually read the post, otherwise the reply might have been more than:

“Thank you for mentioning FeedSpot! Appreciate it.”

(That was before I added the TLDR)

Herb & Fable – Lions Gate Portal – Manifestation Ritual

The Lions Gate is the term given to a period of time when the star Sirius,the brightest star in the sky, rises above the horizon in Egypt. This phenomenon starts on the 31st of July and finishes on 12th August, it is most powerful on the 8th August. Ancient Egyptians used this event to know when the Nile river would annually  flood and nourish their crops.

Herb & Fable have released a Manifestation Ritual to perform at this special time of the year, and Lions Gate Portal to find.

Spell wording:

Image from Gyazo

Recipe:

05:31:47] HnF_ritual_bowl:
HnF_manifestation_ritual requires the following ingredients:
HnF_manifestation_spell: 1
water: 8
HnF_mirror: 1
HnF_copper_coin: 8
HnF_sea_salt: 1
HnF_yellow_spell_candle: 1
HnF_bay_leaves: 8
HnF_rosemary_sprig: 1
It will take 15.0 minutes to make

The new ingredients introduced with this spell:

Image from Gyazo

Some of the required ingredients you may already have, the others you can get from the Herb & Fable store, including the spell card pictured above. Note there’s 2 lots of Bay leaves here because you need 8 for the ritual, but they come in packets of 5.

Once you have completed the ritual you’ll get a little gift and you can then head over to Centauria (where the store is) and search the region for the Lions Gate Portal.

Herb & Fable links:

What have you still to do in Herb & Fable?

Julala recently added a requested feature to Herb & Fable website that allows you to see which badges you still have Yet to Get.

Image from Gyazo

I was surprised how many I was missing, so I’ve been working to try and catch up with the missing tasks.

Image from Gyazo

One group of badges I noticed I was missing were those for the Haynei Iris. The iris beds let you grow flowers, petals and seed pods. The latter is important,  since this plant was only available briefly as a fundraiser and seeds aren’t often available, but can be traded. Fortunately I snagged a few packets of seeds  when they were at Fantasy Faire this year.

Of the other products you can grow,  the petals currently don’t have a use,  but the flowers give you a pretty powerful stats boost of 50% across the board:

HnF Meter - add me: 💚 prana heal +50% ⚡ power heal +50% 💎 emowb heal +50% ☯ spirituality heal +50% 💧 essense heal +50% 💤 vitality heal +50% 💊 wellness heal +50% 😊 happiness heal +50%
Image from Gyazo

I was missing more of the rituals than I realised, but have decided I’ll cover those at their corresponding times of year.

While I was writing this post some other missing badges appeared on the site, Julala released the Manifestation Ritual & Lions Gate Portal. More on those soon!

Image from Gyazo

Herb & Fable links:

Julala’s answer to the title question:

Image from Gyazo. Screenshot of a Discord chat message from Julala saying So much..so much

The Second Life Mobile App Experience Mid 2026

I last wrote about the Second Life Mobile App back in December 2024 a month after it’s public Beta release when Linden Lab held a blogger call to tell everyone what was upcoming. I know they’ve been making may continuous developments, so I thought I’d give the latest signup process a go and see what … Continue reading “The Second Life Mobile App Experience Mid 2026”

I last wrote about the Second Life Mobile App back in December 2024 a month after it’s public Beta release when Linden Lab held a blogger call to tell everyone what was upcoming. I know they’ve been making may continuous developments, so I thought I’d give the latest signup process a go and see what it was like for a new user accessing the grid for the first time on a smartphone.

I’m aware some of this isn’t news to many people, but I wanted to try and be thorough.

The sign up process was pretty standard, so I’ll skip that here and go to the avatar customisation bit. This all takes place in the app after registration and before your avatar appears inworld.

Now this is all great, but there’s one big catch to it; it’s all uses Linden Lab’s own Senra body that few creators design for. Fortunately there’s the Welcome Pack now in the Library section of the inventory and its available in the app by going to the Avatar section screen, so more on that later.

I also happen to have arrived in what would appear to be a regular arrival point, with a single sign explaining how to move, same as it’s been for quite a while. However I was wrong, this place is actually among the Mobile Showcase destinations, make of that what you will.

That is where this post may have ended if I’d not seen a post by Daniel Voyager about the new Mobile Learning Centre 2026.

It seems since I created that new avatar Linden Lab have put some effort into a new on-boarding location. I logged back in with the mobile app and sure enough there was the Mobile Learning Centre on the login screen, so I went to have a look.

If I’d arrived here, I’d have been a little more impressed. It has a game-like activity to help you learn how to control your avatar. You must collect coloured stars, by bumping into them, to open doors. However some of them require you to fly (or the floor fall away underneath you), so you do learn more than just walking. On the whole a much better experience than I had a little while ago.

Unfortunately when someone on the app asks you “How do I get my avatar to look like that?”, things aren’t quite so slick.

As I mentioned above the Avatar Welcome Pack from your inventory Library, is accessible via the Avatar option on the app menu and lets you choose from a few different body types and a few outfits for each.

There’s a very big difference here from the avatar you created at registration though. These selections actually remove the Senra mesh body and replaces it with a Legacy Special Edition body and a Lelutka mesh head. This means you can now wear anything made to fit the Legacy body series, which is well catered for by designers. The Lelutka head means most skins, tattoos and makeups will work just fine too. (Note though that this body and head will get you started, they have some limited capabilities, mainly not including HUDs for making certain changes.)

So now with a head and body that stuff will actually work with, and SLB23 in full swing, there’s a Shop & Hop I can go visit to kit out the new avatar..sort of.

The app let’s you wander around the different stores at the Shop & Hop, clicking the gift boxes to receive the goodies. Sadly there’s currently no way yet to check you received the item, or unpack and wear them because there’s still no inventory access from the mobile app.

This meant I had to switch to the Desktop viewer to overhaul my new avatar with my collected freebies.

You can switch between outfits in the mobile app which is helpful, but you can’t put together an outfit there, except for those made using the avatar selection options. For those residents that might be using primarily mobile, this turns the desktop viewer into a changing room where you have to log on and put your looks together for use on Mobile.

In my December 2024 post I discuss some key features the Lab were planning to bring to Mobile. 18 Months later,how have they done?

  • Lobby – Pass
  • Address Bar – Pass
  • New account creation – Pass
  • Persistent chat logs & Group Notice Push notifications – Pass
  • Notecards – (Grumpity Linden said “Three Months Plus”) – Fail
  • Item level avatar editing – Fail

The ones that passed did so within their 2025 targets. The app and the experience of using it has come on leaps and bounds since public release, but there’s a way to go yet,  if they want the experience to resemble the online video marketing.

For me personally it’s nearly there; hovertext and dialog box support have been added,  we just need HUD support and rezzing from inventory and I’ll be able to play Herb & Fable on my phone!

A final note on my Mobile experience I’d like to give a shout out to Prima Linden for being so welcoming when I first logge

Final Flight round the Faire

Time is running out, the clock is ticking! From when I hit Publish on this post there will be just 10 hours and 50 minutes of Fantasy Faire 2026! So we all have that long to take one final whizz around the Faire grabbing those things we saw but hesitated on.


  • Outfit: Eudora3D Smoke (Top,Boots & Shorts sold separately) – Euroa3D Booth
  • Hat: Eudora3D Witch Hunter Hat Red – Euroa3D Booth
  • Broomstick: ::Static:: Styx Broom – Static Booth
  • Skin: Death [xx]+FGInc.+ Original Ed. PG – Fallen Gods
  • Chest & Neck tattoo: ENSO Secrets Untold (F) Neck Tattoo Dark – Enso Ink
  • Torso tattoo: ENSO Secret Garden (f) Tattoo Dark – Enso Ink
  • Eyes: DELIQUIUM – Eyeception Eye Set (Lelutka & BOM) – DELIQUIUM Booth
  • Necklace: Badwolf – Votum Necklace (Legacy F)- Badwolf Accessories
  • Hair: Raven Bell – Percival – Raven Bell
  • Lip Gloss: Wintersong Lipgloss Snowbound Edtn. for EvoX HD – StarQuake

(Yes, I know I used some of the items from a previous post, but I loved them so much, and I really didn’t do some of them justice.)

Faire Links:

Fantasy Faire 2026 Meeting..Rave..

11:42:55] Alia Baroque: some of us realised that a few months ago we just aim at the rave
[11:43:07] Alia Baroque: is like the finish line after the auction finish line
[11:43:22] Alia Baroque: like the final prize
[11:43:34] Alia Baroque: you did well now go play with your glowsticks
[11:43:38] Alia Baroque: and look at butts

[11:43:52] Ketsui Naidoo: mmm butts

Rig! Wagons Roll..not yet!

Fantasy Faire 2026 has been extended by the Lindens until Wednesday 13th of May at Midnight SLT.

I’ve been gradually collecting the various Market Stalls from Rig! over the last couple of years. This time at Fantasy Faire I found the “Dreggs” ale cart and just had to get it to add to my collection.

Credits:

  • Dreggs Wagon: RiG! Brewer’s Wagon – Rig Booth
  • Barrel wagon: RiG! Barrel Wagon (Large)- Rig Booth
  • Stalls:
  • RiG! Market Stall – Fruit & Veg- Rig Booth
  • RiG! Market Stall-Seamstress/Tailor- Rig Booth
  • RiG! Market Stall – Fish Seller- Rig Booth
  • Outfit: Grasshopper Street FF26 Quest Outfit Female – Comes with Deluxe Quest HUD available at eacth Faire region arrival point.

Deathly Roses

It’s said the leaves of UlimHyl’s trees are red from the blood of a mischievous fae, but the story has got mixed up over time, because it is closer to being the blood of it’s victims. A Dark fae enchanted the forests so that she would blend in unnoticed by unwary mortals as they wandered through her hunting grounds, waiting to abduct unsuspecting Fairelanders.

Location: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/UlimHyl/1/14/65

Credits:

  • Rose Outfit: [Faunus] Danu set // Fatpack – Faunus
  • Skin: Death [xx]+FGInc.+ Original Ed. PG – Fallen Gods
  • Body & Face Tattoo: Brier, tattoo + Fallen Gods Inc.- Fallen Gods
  • Bracelets: Badwolf – Reliquary Bracelets (LaraX) – Badwolf Accessories
  • Necklace: Badwolf – Votum Necklace (Legacy F)- Badwolf Accessories
  • Hair: Raven Bell – Percival – Raven Bell
  • Chair: Raindale – Spindlewood forest seat – adult (light) – Raindale

In the Jungle of The Golden Hour

This is a quick snap I took as I was making way round the Faire for the first time this year. I came through The Golden Hour and it made me think of this outfit from Poet’s Heart and some Tattoos from a couple of merchants that had been kindly left in the blogger room. How do the different regions inspire you?

Credits:

  • Skirt: PH – Gina – Dawn Pack (larax) – Poet’s Heart
  • Face tattoo: Faeble EvoX – Raini 11 – Faeble
  • Arm tattoos: ENSO Secret Revealed (F) Tattoo Sleeve Dark – Enso Ink
  • Chest & Neck tattoo: ENSO Secrets Untold (F) Neck Tattoo Dark – Enso Ink
  • Torso tattoo: ENSO Secret Garden (f) Tattoo Dark – Enso Ink

Faire Links:

My New Shiny Witch

I love that at Fantasy Faire I nearly always find a new store I love. Last year it was Madame Noir, previous years it’s been Jinx and Petrichor. This year it’s Eudora3D and StarQuake that go in my “New Shiny” blogger challenge post, and probably some more before the Faire closes.

Photo location : Requiem

Credits:

  • Outfit: Eudora3D Nova Sets FATPACK– Euroa3D Booth
  • Boots & Stockings: Eudora3D Nova Boots&Stockings FATPACK– Euroa3D Booth
  • Hat: ::Static:: Outlaw Bandolier Hat – STATIC
  • Leg knife: UNA. Krantiz Belt – UNA Booth
  • Potion belt: UNA. MagiPotions Belt – UNA Booth
  • Broomstick: Ventus Noctis Broomstick – Positive Wavelength
  • Hand Tattoos: [sQ] Rosemary hand tattoos_ALL_black_fresh– StarQuake
  • Face Tattoo:[sQ] Xerath Face Fades_texture3 (tinted Green)– StarQuake
  • Lip Gloss: Wintersong Lipgloss Snowbound Edtn. for EvoX HD – StarQuake
  • Hair: Raven Bell & !R! – Percival Hair – Raven Bell Booth

Faire Links: