Saturday, December 30, 2006

Fiddling with the Blog

Yesterday I sat down to the computer to continue revising the old novel. I had been up since 5:15 AM, so that after a while my brain became too weary even for revising. I began to fiddle with this blog, decided it would be fun to put on labels, learned how to do it (not hard, as I thought it would be), and did some of the 167. What use are labels, I wondered.

I found a blogspot page I didn’t know existed, telling how comments are to be received. It said that the only registered bloggers can comment. That must be the default. I didn’t know that. This must be why my friend Ted can’t comment. What function does this default serve – to prevent bad people from commenting? Do people surf the net looking for unprotected sites upon which they may type the f word? Or worse, I suppose. What would happen if I checked the box that allowed anyone to comment?

I found that I could have a comment window pop up, which I checked, that I could moderate comments, which I didn’t check, that I could have “type the funny letters you see here” section (I can’t remember if I checked that or not.)

I probably should have been following Another Country’s lead and re-organized my kitchen drawers instead of fiddling with the blog. The trouble with such re-organization is that for the next two years I would be looking in the wrong drawer for the peeler.

3 comments:

Peter said...

True: you have to "relocate" everything, but it's worth it. The bit you tinkered with also prevents anonymous comments, if you wish, just in case...

As well, if you look on the horizontal bar at the top of the New Posting frame, you'll notice a number of symbols (like B for boldtype, left- or centre-justification, etc). There is a strange, greenish one immediately to the right of T for text symbol. This allows you to make a hyperlink (a direct linkage) to whomever or whatever you mention in your posting.

For example, when you said "...Another Country's lead...", you could underline the words "Another Country", then go and click on the greenish thingee, which will open a box with the helpful starter "http" in it. If you type the web address (i.e: http://www. etc etc) into the box. then hit Enter, you'll find the words "Another Country" blue-underlined in your posting. Anyone clicking on that will be transported isntantly to guess whose blog.

S. Kearney said...

Nancy,

I had the same headaches when I started my blog ... it's a slow learning curve!

It's handy to check the right boxes in the set-up pages, to make sure you get the most out of the blog. Opening comments up to everyone is good for increasing traffic to your blog.

I must admit that the spam filter that requires us to type in those irritating letters is a pain. It's worth it though - probably. I often get them wrong though. How difficult is it to just type letters we see in front of us?

Anonymous said...

Fiddle fiddle... now back to the novel! :-)