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Saturday, November 20, 2010

Blogging Tips

Do you see my new pages? Look up & you will see them! I've been meaning to do this, but never really knew how & always worried that it would interfere with my blog design. I am still working on making them cuter, but that is good for now! :) Check them out! (P.S. The "About Me" section includes a pic from our latest photo shoot - pics i have yet to share online.)


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Do you read at Kevin & Amanda {dot} com? I do. I love her. She is so talented & creative & always willing to help make our blogs look cuter! Well, this week she did a post called 9 Quick Steps to a Better Blog Experience. It was a great post & i have followed her advice on several of her tips.

I even decided to follow her advice on the word-verification. She suggests turning it off. I do not know how long this will last, honestly. This is just an experiment. You see, before i got lots of spam. Not just spam, but annoying comments that i didn't want to see again EVER. Using word-verification did not keep these little boogers away, even though i would "report as spam" often.  Well, i later found out how to mark these as spam so that i will never see them again. You can do that by:
(1) going to your dashboard
(2) clicking "settings"
(3) clicking the "comments" tab
(4) A list of all your comments will come up. Check the ones that you would consider spam & then click "Spam". You will never see these again! :) (If you accidentally mark one that is NOT spam, just go into the spam folder & check it & click "not spam".)

I know another option is to approve my comments before posting. I have tried this before, but it doesn't work for me. I prefer for them to go ahead & post right away. If a comment is posted that i don't approve of, then i will just delete it immediately (i check my email often enough so that it will not be up long before i catch it!). However, this RARELY happens. I have already marked certain ones as spam. I am so glad not to see these anymore - they drove me crazy!

Please follow her advice on the music... i keep my computer on mute... but sometimes i accidentally leave it on after watching a video. If i click on a blog & suddenly hear loud music blaring, i am most likely to click out of the blog immediately. I am a music-lover, but i really do not like it on blogs (not to mention - it seems to slow everything down).

Another thing i would like to add... PLEASE do yourself a favor & add your email address to blogger! Please! :) (If you truly hate it, you can always disable it later. But i have yet to hear someone complain that they hate it!) When you comment on a blog post, sometimes you say something or ask me a question that i would love to answer right away. I get my comments through my email. If i want to reply to what you have said, i hit "reply" so that i can email you my answer. If you have your email address set up in blogger, then your address will pop up & i can write you back. Otherwise, it will show it's a "no-reply". Do i come back to my blog & put a comment there, hoping you'll see it? Sometimes. But it's a guarantee that you'll see it if i can just reply to you through email. You can fix this by:
(1) Go to your Dashboard & then click on "Settings"
(2) Click on "comments" (under Settings)
(3) Scroll down to the bottom where it says "comment notification email". Put your email address there.
(4) Click "Save Settings" & you're done!

These are just some tips. Of course, we all have personal reasons why we choose the settings we do & that is fine. Just wanted to share with you some of the things i have learned. And you should definitely check out Amanda's post too!

3 comments:

  1. I hear you on the e-mail in Blogger, I wish there was a way to reply back like there is in Typepad. I read Kevin and Amanda, too. Good stuff!

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  2. I could not agree more with the e-mail! It bugs me so much when someone asks a question, and I always manage to get a good e-mail going, like with a recipe or recently info for a photographer, and go to click send before I realize I can't! I've never set my comments to just post, but I hate word verification!

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  3. Oh that's a great link! Working on some of that stuff today! I want a blog makeover but I forget all my html ha! Not good.

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Comments are my favorite.