Where to Find Me

The purpose of this Blogger blog has been to assist a dissolving internet (forum) community transition into the blogsphere.

If you are looking for me, or just curious, be sure to visit my blog - Lisa's Whiteboard

How to Sticky

Blogger doesn't offer a "sticky" feature that could be used for announcements and such.

There is a workaround. When posting (or editing a post) click on post options and enter a date in the future. Look! it's 2099!

Not pretty, but it works. And, you can play with the dates to force an order. You can also play with formatting to make the post stand out.

Thinking aloud...

• Deleting posts - possible to do through the Edit posts tab, ours and anyones.
• I can't see anything which would push posts with comments to the top of the blog, I guess that makes sense because the blogs I've seen are chronological records generally for one person - they won't particularly want a post to keep moving to the top.
• BUT, can we use the labels thing as a way of sorting a channel out ? E.g. if I were to start a post for a Clean Sweep challenge I could give it two labels: clean and challenge then people could use the side tabs (is that what they're called?) to narrow down their search for a particular post. If old challenges were deleted regularly there would be a really limited number of posts.
• This is going to need quite a lot of input from us to monitor, keep up to date and be sure we post the starter for things like the daily challenges. Unless anyone can start a post which I guess they can't unless we invite them to be an author and I think that's just not feasible (or sensible!)
• It is going to be hard to explain 'how to' to people new to blogging. Yes, I know I declared myself totally ignorant of them and I know I'm 'figuring this out' on my own right now but I'm usually pretty good at picking things up - this is hard!

I'm going to post this over at OH too to see if anyone has any input.

Phew! I've signed up for so many things in the last couple of days that I've completely forgotten which password I've used for what! Usually it's the same combination of name and password but for somereason - not this time!

Question about Comments

Just trying to figure this out.

If one of us creates an entry, it pops up on the main page, under the date it was written.

But if there are "comments" afterward, it puts them at the end, but the original post doesn't pop up to the top of the heap, or anything.

In theory, someone could go into an entry that was a couple years old, add a comment, and we would be none the wiser. Yes? I mean, we'd have to go looking for it or we would be notified via email, but the site wouldn't pop the entry to the top or give any indication that a comment had been made.

I am wondering what we do for things like Challenges or things we expect to have replies. Do we just fake-sticky them? And then move them out?

Or am I totally missing a feature?

My Goal for the next two days....

Not completely disintegrate in this heat. I have been faithfully writing down everything I spend while here in North Carolina. Today it was the grocery store $76.61 at Lowe's Food which is right next door to a Lowe's Home improvement store, but apparently no relation!

If I was using my cash, I would be broke, but used my debit card at the grocery store. Also my automatic shipment from Nutrisystem shipped today. Whoops! Gotta cancel that one right away.

Just proving I can!

Hi, I'm here! Just wondering, is it possible to delete old posts once they're out there. I'm thinking that if we have challenges etc then these will need to be decluttered regularly or does that not really matter in a blog type setting?

(edited: Hey, this is Becky. It looks like I can edit your post, so it seems like I could just delete it if I wanted to. You can also choose how often to Archive, which at least would move old stuff to storage and out of sight)

Backlinks

Ok. Backlinks are a way to track links other bloggers might make to your posts. I've activated them here.

In Blogger, you do so by going to Settings -> Comments and clicking the "show" button for Backlinks.

To see the backlinks, you click on the link that says, "Links to this post" next to the comment links.

I created a post with a link to the Challenge: Attic post from my Whiteboard, just to see how it looks. It's not showing up yet. Could be I don't know what I'm doing, or could be a delay related to indexing. It could also be that it only works from Blogger blogs. Time will tell.

Challenge: Attic

Blogger Becky is thinking that cooler temperatures are a good time for doing the old heave-ho in the attic, and has thrown down a challenge at The Becky Chronicle's

Anyone up for it?

Used this post to show how you might use a blogger portal to link out and play with personal blogs.

Labels

Lables give you a way to categorize posts.

Placing a Label List in the sidebar is an option for helping readers navigate the blog. It is on at the moment.

There is a field at the bottom of the box where you write new posts (or edit existing ones) that says labels for this post. You can enter a new one there. Or multiple labels. It's really quite flexible.

Next to the label field is a link that allows you to display the labels you've defined, or hide them if they are already displayed.

Just so you know

The hot pink template is Miz Becky playing - and I'm glad to see it! Go Becky Go!

Thoughts

I'm thinking something like this is what Becky was referring to when she suggested a blog portal to themed, structured, so-authored blogs - and possibly a landing point board.

Feel free to fart around with it, and see what it can do.

Co-Authorship

Welcome Becky!

Ok, on multiple authors, you have the option of setting them as Guest Authors or Admins.

I will make you guys Admins - just don't remove me. :P That way, you can play here and not hurt anything ;)

My stuff

This is the blog I just set up a couple of days ago-

http://thebeckychronicles.blogspot.com/

It's just the framework, of course, and it's "personal".

I am going to set up one for Cheryl and I, for the payroll chicks and financial harmony group. We are currently stuck trying to think of a name for it, though. Isn't that the hardest part?

Challenge: Ready to Rock-n-Roll?

Ok, Transition Team - let's see what you're made of!

If you have a blog, post a comment and give us a link.

If you aren't blogging, start one.

Wanna co-author here? Comment!

Huh?

This is an old Blogger site that I setup several years ago. I've updated it a bit to give the Transition Team an idea of how things can be setup and how they would look.

I got rid of all the old posts, except for the initial Test Post, so that you can see what the "archive" feature looks like in the sidebar.

test post

la la la la