Blog Tutorial

Hi!  How are you guys today?  I've had a LOT of caffeine today!  I just got back from the Hmong New Year celebration here in Duluth. I earned some continuing education credits for my teaching license by going to it and immersing myself in another culture for a few hours.  I was the tallest person in the room by at least five or six inches.  It was fun and they were super nice to me.  My favorite part was a singing group of Hmong freshman at UMD who called themselves the "FreshHmong"

Anyhoo, I have some bloggy business to take care of because although I've had this blog for almost three years now, I've lately gotten some questions that lead me to believe some of my followers don't know all the neat things you can do on it.

First of all, you can always get back to the main page by simply clicking on the blog title at the very top of the page.

Did you just click on the picture of the title?  Well that's not what I was talking about.  The picture is only there to show you what the blog title looks like.  You need to pay better attention.

The blogger bar at the top, above the blog title, has some features that you might like:

Starting at the far left there is a blank space for you to type in any query you want and blogger will look up everything related to that query on the blog.  Try it now.  Type in "Mitch" and you will see all posts featuring Mitch.  See?  Neat!

Next is the follow button.  If you haven't clicked on that already, do it now.  Cool huh?  Don't you feel better now?  Next is the Report Abuse button which you will (probably) never have to use for this blog.  I don't abuse anyone.  The next thing is the Next Blog button.  That will take you to a random blogger blog that is somehow similar to mine.

On the right side there are spots where you can click to create your own blog or to sign in.

Underneath the blog title there are eight buttons.

Home is the homepage, the main page, the front page.  It shows the very latest thing posted on the blog and then after that the next most recent post etc. etc.

If you click on Reading List you will see an exhaustive list of books I have read with a short review, linked to Amazon where if you are interested you can buy them yourself or read a better review than I wrote.  The top entry is the latest book I read and it goes to the next most recent from there.

The Searches button is a list of crazy things that people have typed into to google and have been directed to my blog.  I think they are funny.

Under Characters is a list (with pictures!) of the people I talk about on the blog.  I should add more.

The Cartoons page features cartoons by Natalie Dee.  She cracks me up.

The FAQ button is a page with frequently asked questions.  Nobody asks me questions.  I made the whole thing up.  Actually, I asked people to ask me questions so I could make a FAQ page.  I think because I had just learned that FAQ means "frequently asked questions."  I was feeling pretty special that day.  Some people were kind enough to humor me and sent me some questions by they are not by any stretch frequently asked.

The find me page features links to other places on the internet that you can find me.  Click on any one of them and you will get to me.  But you're already here with me now, so why would you do that?  Are you obsessed with me or something?  Just kidding.  Friend me on Facebook.

The last button is a list of nicknames because I think they are funny.

If you go to any of these pages and panic and think to yourself, "OMG!  How do I get back to the main page?  What if she has posted something since I've been reading these FAQs or Cartoons?!  I must get back!" then you just click on the blog title, or on the Home button and you will get back to the main page.  See?  It's not so hard!

Sometime I link to other pages or to previous posts in a post.  When I do that you will be able to tell it is a link because it will be a different color like this.  If you see that, click on it and I could bring you to someplace WONDERFUL!

After each post is a little box with info in it like this:

Starting at the top left  this tells us that there have been three comments on this post.  The little envelope thingy can be clicked on if you want to email this post to someone.  The pencil is just for me.  You don't usually see it.  It is so I can edit the post if I want.  Then there are some buttons.  The M is for Gmail.  Click on it if you want to gmail the post to someone.  The B is for blogger.  If you have a blogger blog and want to blog about this or post this post on your blog, that's what you click on.  Next is a T for Twitter.  Click on it if you want to tweet the post.  And the last one is an F for Facebook.  If you click on it you will create a link to the post on your Facebook page.  Finally there is a button with a little 1 in it.  If you have a google account click on it and you will recommend the post to other google users.

Under that line is labels.  This is how I categorize each and every post.  They are cross referenced by subject and you can find all the subjects on the sidebar under the heading "Stuff I Write About"  If you click on any one of those, you will get all the posts I categorized under that heading.

The last line is for reactions to the post.  I just put a "like" button like Facebook has because people are used to that and I don't want to know if people think my posts suck because I can't handle it, so I didn't put a "this sucks" button on.  Just like.  Click it now.  See how it works?

Next let's look at the sidebar to the right.  I have too much stuff cluttering up my sidebar but that's just the way it is.  The top is widgets you can click if you want to subscribe to the posts or the comments.  I'm not really sure if these work properly because I don't subscribe to my own blog and I've never used them on other blogs because I just add them to my Google Reader and they automatically show up there.

Next is a StumbeUpon button.  I don't know how to use StumbleUpon and every time I try I feel like a total idiot, but if you have a StumbleUpon account and click on the button you list the post on the Stumble website and I get loads of hits.

Next is a Twitter button.  If you click it you will be directed to my Twitter page and you can follow me there.  I'm kind of a dud on Twitter.  I don't post much.  I'm too wordy.

Next is the heading "Sometimes I'm kind of funny" and below that are links to my personal favorite posts that I have written.

Under the heading "Stuff I Write About" is stuff I write about.  The headings I told you about before.

Next is a spot for me to brag about my blogging accomplishments.  This was listed as one of MBAOnline's top twenty humor blogs of 2010.  And I was nominated for a Best Humor Blog for the Blogger's Choice awards.

Next is my complete blog archive. You can see every post I've ever written by clicking on the links.

Next is the followers area.  These are people who have clicked on the "Join this site" button.  I love when people do that.

Next under the heading "Best Blogs Ever" are links to the blogs I love to read.  The top is the most recently updated.

After that are some pictures, a little thing about me, the blogger and my pageview counter.

So there you have it!  A Blogger blog tutorial!