Dork Endorphin Flow cartoon by bLaugh.

I awoke to over 25 past, present, and future post missing from Fam5.com.  I went on a long and exhausting search for missing post.  I searched high, I searched low, I searched miles of code but to my amazement I found nothing.  I found no traces that would lead me to answers of the missing blog post.  I called my son in and said Brandon we may need to call CSI to help out on this one.  He said, “you know Dad there may be another explanation.”  I asked him what he meant, he said ”Turtle Bay is exploring Are we alone?”  We continued to search for answers but this time we searched for the unexplained.  We even sat down with the family and watched E.T. the movie.  This gave us hope we devised a listening device to help find Aliens.  We even bought some Reese pieces candy and laid them out over night.  

Here I write about our alien encounters and still no evidence of what happened to the post.  We have decided it had to be the aliens.  Why not blame them?  It seems safe and more fun to blame aliens.  Of course, I doubt it could be that we were notified by Tammy’s home-based business that we are not allowed to link to her website.  We’re also not allowed to mention the name of her home-based business and post recipes. 

It was fun while it lasted and Brandon sure got a kick out of the idea that aliens just might exists.  I only hope that aliens are reading our blog and would leave comments.  We do not discriminate here at Fam5.

If you have an alien experience I would love to hear about it. 

If your like me you wonder what all the  blogging terms mean.  Upon my miles of travel on the Internet I came across The Giant Blogging Terms Glossary.

Are you puzzled by strange blogging terms and unusual blog abbreviations and blogging acronyms? Then this post will get the Blargon Demystified. This article attempts to simplify some common blogging terms organized into a simple blogging glossary.Are you puzzled by strange blogging terms and unusual blog abbreviations and blogging acronyms? Then this post will get the Blargon Demystified. This article attempts to simplify some common blogging terms organized into a simple blogging glossary.  

Here is just a small example of the terms and how they are laid out at The Giant Blogging Terms Glossary.

BLOGGING

• Weblog- An online dated diary listing your periodic thoughts on a specific topic, often in reverse chronological order.
• Blog - short form for weblog
• Blogging - the act of posting on blogs
• Blogger - a person who blogs
• Blogosphere - The Internet blogging community

I found this list to be very comprehensive and easy to read and gave me insight to the blogging world language. 

Do you find a list like this useful?

Wanted to let my readers know about a site about blogging called Problogger there having a huge birthday bash.  I find there birthday notice as quite the inginous marketing ploy. They call it “$54,000 worth of Prizes on Offer in the ProBlogger Birthday Bash Competitions!“.  They are giving away over $54,000 worth of prizes they say are donated. 

Worth a stop by and who knows you might like there post and subscribe to there RSS feeds.

Have a good one.

JB

I subscribe to Skelliewag blog  and one of the recent post she offered is ‘Get a Free Clutter-Busting Review of Your Blog or Website‘ she say’s

One thing I’ve previously enjoyed doing is giving one-on-one feedback to bloggers and webmasters on how they can simplify and declutter their sites, strengthening their core message. It’s also something I don’t get to do often enough.

In an attempt to change that, I’ve decided to offer personalized email reviews of your blog or website, with a focus on simplicity and clutter removal tailored to you.

They do not expect anything in return because as she says:

This is simply me trying to exercise skill #21 of 101 Essential Blogging Skills: “Give without expecting to receive.

As a new blogger I sure appreciate the comments.  Some of what she recommended are the following.

1. Remove the ‘Add to Google’ button from beneath your feed icon. There is an option to add the feed to Google when you click on the main icon anyway, so the doubling-up is unnecessary.

2. Remove the second ‘Archives’ drop-down menu. You have already linked to a dedicated Archives page earlier in your sidebar.

3. I’d remove the ‘Registration’ element.Registration is only useful if you want any blog reader to be able to write posts on your blog. You can bookmark your login page and do away with it, which will help to unclutter your sidebar.

4. Consider removing inText advertising. I’ve heard from dozens of people that these ads reduce traffic. A lot of blogs use them which are designed to trick readers into clicking links. Your blog obviously isn’t one of those, but readers generally have negative associations with them. They distract from your content and sometimes trick readers into thinking they are normal links. So unless you’re making lots of money from these I don’t think they’re worth the loss.

5. Put the Wordpress and Blog Catalog buttons in your footer. They’re a bit distracting where they are now, and you’re not really getting anything in return for displaying them there.

I took her constructive criticism and made appropriate changes.  For someone to give a review for a complete stranger and not expect something in return is almost unheard of these days. 

Thank you Skelliewag it meant a lot.  If you have a blog and looking someone elses ideas to help you I would recommend surfing by Skelliewag and check her out.

Have a good evening all.

JB

Good morning all:

I thought I would give some tidbits on how to use a blog.  First a blog is defined as:

(n) Short for Web Log, a blog is a Web page that serves as a publicly accessible personal journal for an individual.  Typically updated daily, blogs often reflect the personality of the author.

(v) To author a web log

Other forms: Blogger - a person who blogs.

An article in a blog is called a Post.

You can just visit a blog and read the great information or you can comment on post.  If you want to post comments then you will need to register an account.  This is required for two reasons.  First it insures your post are kept yours and not editable by other users.  Then there is the spam reason.  It insures a computer is not just automatically uploading spam to a blog.  This is highly important to a blog owner or what is known as Admin.

Now every blog can look different but there are some basics to understand.

When you read an article your actually reading a post.  Normally when you first access a blog site you are on the homepage and it shows the latest post.  To read the whole post/blog you click on the heading and it will take you to a page with all the post in it.  Try clicking on the heading for this post “How to interact with a blog”.

Somewhere in the blog there should be a navigation bar.  For this site it is to the right.  This bar holds various links and perhaps advertisements.  If you are interested in buying something you seen in a blog please use there link to purchase the product.  This in most cases gives the blog owner a kick back and helps with the cost of maintaining the blog.

On www.fam5.com the navbar have links to various pages related to the owner of that blog.  I have links to About us, links, Our first home, etc… 

Then on most blogs you will find an Archive section.  This is usually done by date or sometimes by article titles.  This is done so that you will not need to scroll through potentially hundreds of post on the main page.

You see categories next and that gives quick and easy access to articles the author think there readers will want to access.  For us at www.fam5.com for example if you click on Family and you will see all the articles we designate as Family related.

Next we have a Blogroll (links section) these are links to websites/blogs the blog owner finds interesting.

Meta is where you sign into the site so that you can make post.  Meta is not always a common term in blogging.  However, some where you have to login to make comments.

I hope all this helps and gives you some tidbits on how to use and enjoy reading and commenting on blogs.

Good luck and welcome aboard.

JB