Learning to Blog 2

Progress! I’ve learned how to install widgets and plugins. WordPress makes it pretty easy. I’ve added a “Subscribe to my blog” link — see it over on the right in the navbar? That was a public domain widget. I had to download a zipfile to my computer, unzip it and then upload all the pieces to my website. There’s also now a facebook like/send button at the bottom of each post. That was a plug-in. It installed automatically with a click (which just added it to the list of possible plug-ins), then I had to check the box next to it in the list and click “apply” to activate it (it took a couple of tries to figure that out). There were options to make it appear as a graphical button, but I chose to use simple text.

Separately I have learned how to tweet. I created a twitter account (free) and have a “follow me on twitter” button on my main webpage (http://brws.com). The twitter.com site had a bunch of different versions of twitter buttons and you can copy the code to put in the html of your webpage. My tweets are mostly daily JOT suggestions.

I’ve also found some great resources online. http://ebookarchitects.com/conversions/formats.php has a really great tutorial on the different formats used for ebooks, and the pros and cons of different ereaders. http://www.unrulyguides.com has lots of DIY guides for epublishing including a tutorial on cover design (and complimentary colors). So far, THE COMET isn’t suitable for becoming an ebook because of the heavily illustrated format. But there’s a new ebook style being developed for children’s books that will have a fixed format — so that images stay with the text. At the moment, conversion to that format is really tricky, but it will get better.

Another feature I’ve become familiar with is moderation of comments. Every time someone makes a comment on my blog, I get the opportunity to accept or reject it. A good thing because blog comments are a target for spammers (because commenters get to link to their own sites). So keep those REAL comments coming.