Blogger hints and helps

It has come under my radar that maybe a few of you could use a little help on some blogger points and to make your lives a little easier. So, I am going to share some the of the stuff I have picked up on since being here.

For instance did you know you can have on your dashboard a live feed of all the blogs you follow? Therefore, when you sign in, you see a list of all the blogs you follow and their latest entries? I used to have to click into all of my blogs to see if there is anything new. Now, I can just log in and see what's new.
All you have to do, is become a follower of the blogs you are interested in. To do that, go to your dashboard and you will see "reading list" it will probably say -you are not currently following any blogs- under that a bit, there is a blue button that says "add" click that and get the url of the blog you would like to follow and click and paste it in there. This is a pretty new feature (2 or 3 weeks) and it has made my (blog) life a lot easier.

My next hint, is something I realized Sue doesn't do (since I was given her password to figure out a glitch she had) I noticed she doesn't subscribe to the option of having comments emailed to her. You can click a little box that will send you an email every time someone comments on your profile. Here is where you will find that option: While you are signed onto your blog, go to the right hand corner (top) and hit "customize" then click the "settings" tab, from there click on the "comments" tab. Then at the very bottom of that page, it says "comment notification email" you type in your main email address then hit save and voila! You will never miss a comment.

My last hint for now is how to get a notification when someone comments after you on any given blog you have commented on. B, you have to make a comment using your real identity for this, but boy is it worth it. To have this option show up, BEFORE you comment you have to already be logged on. This is simple and most of you undoubtedly know this, but I thought I would share, in case you have missed it. After typing your comment, below somewhere it will say "you are currently posting as "blah blah blah" then it will have a box that says email followup comments to -blah blah blah. It will probably be your google account and if you are like me, only set that account up to have a blog and don't visit it, therefore that is no use to you right? WRONG! Gmail has a handy little option to have all items in your inbox automatically forwarded to any email of your choosing. Here is how you do that: Log into your gmail account. In the top right hand corner, click "settings" in that screen, click "forwarding and POP/IMAP". The first line says: Forwarding, then click the bubble to :forward a copy of incoming mail to "blah" and then type in your account. Then, you never have to go into that account at all, and you won't miss strings of comments on someone else's blog.

I lied I have one more hint. To create a link to another site like this, all you have to do is: While composing a post, you have lots of little options up on your toolbar like font, text size bold, yada yada, right before "left justified" there is a little picture of a green world and a chain (or something) -that is it. First, you will want to copy the url of the website you want (it is much easier to do this in another window of course), then, go back to your post and type the word that you want to have become the link like I did "this" then highlight it, then click the green world thing. A little window will pop up that says "add url" the http will be highlighted, you may want to just backspace to erase it, since usually when you copy a url, you have copied that part and if you paste the url of your choosing, it will then be doubled. then paste your own url and that should do it.

I hope someone finds some use of these hints, you may already know all of this, if so, then great, but I know we have some blogger virgins and blogger novices here, so maybe something here will help someone.

Em