Bloggy tips & tricks

When I started this blog 2 years ago, I had very little experience with the blog world. I had worked in IT for 5 years, but on the development side... I knew absolutely nothing about html.   Today I still know very little about html- just enough to be dangerous *wink* Everything I know I have learned by googling my problem and finding the answer. (along with a lot of trial and error)

My very first blog header

As my blog has evolved I've tried to evolve the design with it.  I remember the day I about had a heart attack when I saw I had 60 followers- so exciting!!!

Everything you see here is just me... no blog designer- I go back and forth with thinking I should hire one, but I think I'm just too lazy- and part of me does like the "figure it out" part of blogging, but sometimes I wonder if it's holding back my blog growth.  My sister is a web guru and is patient with me when I call her and say things like "I think I broke my blog!!"... she gets me out of tight spots.

Since I've just been "making this up as I go",  I thought some of you might be also and thought I'd share a little trick that I figured out last month.

One of the things that frustrates me about blogging is the immediacy of it.  If someone is new to my blog and doesn't like what I have up that day, they might not come back. Even if something I made months ago might appeal to them.  I feel like so much work goes into creating the projects for my blog, I hate the thought of them getting forgotten about and buried deep in the archives.

As I've been blogging, I have kept a "my tutorials" page.  For the last year it has been extremely frustrating  because I could not get the page to  look the way I liked it- Then I had and idea- Use a linky tool!! I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier- and I'm sure that lots of other bloggers did...(so this might be old news to many of you).

But for those of you who haven't heard of this,  I thought I'd share a really quick "how to" on making a "My Tutorials" page for your blog.

First in blogger- you need to enable the Pages feature.  If you have tabs across the top of your blog, this is where blogger pulls the tabs from.

Next make a page- call it My Tutorials or My Favorite posts or something like that.

Now you need a linky tool- I use linkytools.com. There is an annual fee associated with this tool- but it works well and I don't mind. I'm sure there are other linky tools out there to use also.

Create one linky list for each "section" you want on your tutorials page- I have a sewing, home decor, fun stuff and paper crafts section. Make the starting date for your linky tool today and the stop date today (at midnight) this will allow you to "load up" your linky list then have it closed (so someone won't try to add their own link to your page).

Back in blogger on the page you just created type the title of your linky lists.

Change the font size to the largest one.

Hit enter twice after each title so that you leave a space  between your sections. (in other words, double space your titles).

Go back to your linky tools and copy the html for that particular tool and paste it UNDER the title in your page on blogger.

Do this for each linky list.

Publish the page.

Now view that page on your blog- you will have a  Linky tool- now all you have to do is add all of your tutorials to your linkly list! (that might be the hard part- going through your blog finding all of your old projects).

Then Viola!! An easy way for your readers to find your past projects!

When you have new projects to add to the list- just go back to your Linky Tools dash board and change the closed date to TODAY- this will reopen the linky tool and you can add your new tutorials.

If you do this as you blog, you will always have a running list of your projects.

I hope this helps some of you! I'm by now means a blog expert and am pretty small potatoes in the whole world of blogging, but i thought you guys might like to hear about something that has helped me out!

Feel free to ask questions- but if you do PLEASE make sure your email is attached to your blogger profile, otherwise I have no way to answer your questions (or say hi and get to know you better!)