Keeping Up with the Bloggers
I used to consider myself to be pretty good with technology. I’ve had my own computer since I was about 14 years old, and have never had much trouble using one. But last summer, when I decided that I wanted to start my own “mommy blog”, I realized that I don’t know as much as I thought I did.
My website is pretty basic and bare bones. I chose to purchase my own domain (as suggested by Jen at Absolutely Bananas), but had to read most of this book to figure out how to put my WordPress blog together. And even still, everything is pretty straightforward. I chose a template, filled in the pieces, and presto change-o, there was the beginning of reanbean.com.
But I read a lot of other blogs, and realize that there are other cool features out there. Some have buttons and widgets and places that show the followers. How did they do that? And how did they know how to do that?
To enter a couple of giveaways, I became an official follower of a couple of blogs I read regularly. But I still don’t get what it means to be an official follower. I know it means that I now “count” as a follower for that person’s blog, but does it benefit me in some way that I’ve yet to realize?
And what is a Google Reader? A few of my readers have told me that I’m on their Google Reader (or something like that) but I have absolutely no idea what that means. I can only hope it’s a good thing.
So tell me this- how did you learn to create your blog and incorporate the many features that can make a blog attractive and flashy? Did you hire a fancy-pants designer or are you just that talented?
I have done NO customization to my blog because I work in IT and do software all day. HA HA!
I use Google Reader and love it.
And I do have secret code so I know who is visiting, when, and what keywords they use to search there.
Ah yes, I use statcounter.com’s widget for nefarious spying tasks, as Laura mentions.
Google Reader is the BEST. That way you can keep up with new posts on lots of blogs without actually having to check the sites every day. Basically it’s a single page with all the blogs you want to follow, and it shows you whenever there’s a new post.
I think the “follower” thing is a Blogspot/Google thing, I don’t know of a direct equivalent in WordPress.
Most buttons and widgets and things are done by going to the “Appearance” tab in your WP Control Panel, then “Widgets,” and add a “text” widget. That’s where you would paste in the text/code for a particular widget or button.
I did pay someone to do the design on my primary blog (as well as HDYDI). I don’t know much about CSS and I’m terrible at graphic design, so I decided to pay someone to make it look nicer than I know how.
Ya, the follower thing is a blogspot/blogger thing. Since I use blogspot (which is run by Google) I can go to my “account” page and see all the blog I follow there. It gives me the title and a preview (like the first few sentences) and if I clikc on it, it will open up that person’s page for me. So, I would say that’s the benefit and it’s only a benefit if you use Blogger.
Google reader does much the same thing, except better, IMO. Not sure if you have to be an official follower of a blog to have it come up on your Google reader because my Google reader gets my blog reading list from Blogger – goodness, does that make any sense??? I’m not sure that I have added much value here… 
I’m sure if you follow Sadia’s link, it will be very straightforward.
I also LOVE google reader! There is NO WAY I could keep up with all the blogs I follow without it!
I’ll have to try google reader. Right now like Nicole I have the follower on my blog that I use to see when people update their blogs. I know very little about the whole blogging thing and every once in a while find out how to add something to my blog.
I know some HTML from my college days (and the days of when I had a small website business on the side). Same goes for graphics.
I’m a hands-on kind of person, so I just went in to the Widgets page and clicked everything to see what it did.
Usually if you see a widget of some sort of someone’s blog, you can click it and it’ll lead to a page where you can grab your own code…that’s what I do when I see something I like.
Reanbean–I second everything you said!
I work in IT. Part of my training was basic HTML (web page content) and CSS (web page styling). So, that’s where my page styling and post-internal sidebars come from.
Google Reader? Check it out: http://www.google.com/reader/. You subscribe to the blogs you read, and go to one place to see updates to them all.