BEEP!! BEEP!! BEEP!!

Please, excuse the interruption for some bloggity service announcements.

I started my blog only about 9 months ago. I have seriously enjoyed every aspect of it and over this short period of time I have learned a lot. I thought I would take some time to let you in on some things that you may or may not know about the blog-o-sphere. I am not the one with the most wisdom, but this is what I got.

1. Email addresses: For those of you who use Blogger….PLEASE CHECK THE BOX!!! The box that I am referring to is found under “Edit Profile” when you first log into Blogger. It is the box that says “show my email address.” Why should you do this, some may ask? Because it makes it so much easier to respond to a comment from someone! You know how you get an email and it says "noreply-comment@blogger.com"…if you check the box then the person that you left a comment for will be able to reply to you personally – and not have to try to hunt you down through your user profile! I love it when I see someone’s email address! If you need help with figuring out how to do this go HERE or HERE.
2. Feeds: If you are anything like me….you read tons of blogs. I don’t even know exactly how many blogs that I stalk/read on a regular basis. I use a nifty service called Bloglines. It is great! What I do is “subscribe” to the blogs that I regulary read (I even have a button in my sidebar that will do that for you!). Then all I have to do is go to one central place and it will show me when a new post is up! Isn’t that wonderful! Then I don’t have to spend time “checking” in on a blog to find that there isn’t anything new. It saves me lots of time! Like I said…I use Bloglines, but Google has a reader that works well too. Check them out, and pick which one works for you.
3. Technorati: If you haven’t heard of this site…it is pretty cool. They know all of what is cool in the blogosphere. You can go here and "claim" your blog, and then see where you “rank.” It keeps track of all the sites that have links to your blog. It is always fun for me to see when someone links to me either in a post or adds me to their blogroll.
4. Hit Counters: I am sure you have all seen the counters on most blogs. It tracks all hits that your blog gets. I use Sitemeter. The thing that I like about Sitemeter is that not only does it keep track of my hits, but it also shows me where they are coming from. I can see how people were referred to my blog, what state they are in, and how much time they spent looking at my blog. You can even make it ignore your own personal visits. It’s pretty cool.
5. Test Blog: There have been many times when I am trying to change the look of my blog, and almost end up erasing everything!!! That feeling is terrible! In order to solve that problem I set up a “test blog.” You can name it whatever you want, and use that blog to fiddle with the html until you get it to look the way you want. If you mess up…no biggie because it doesn’t really contain any information. Then you can just copy and paste the changes into your real blog with no worries!
6. Headers: When I first started blogging I had the standard header that came with the template that I chose. While I blog hopped I saw all the cute ones that people came up with, and wanted to make mine unique too. I did a search on Google, and found this tutorial. It has been great, and has given me a good foundation to learn how to play with Photoshop. There is still a lot I don’t know about Photoshop, and its capabilities, but this was a good start.
7. Picture hosting: When there are certain things that you want to put on your blog sometimes it requires “picture hosting.” I use Photobucket, but there are many others available too. I use this mainly for uploading the scrapbook papers that I use for my backgrounds. Photobucket creates the url needed to put in the html section of your layout in order for it to show up on your page. It is pretty simple to get set up, and then upload your files too.

There is probably a lot more things to discover, but these are just a few that have helped me out. If you ever have questions about stuff…feel free to ask, and I will help you out if I can!

Do you have any tips or tricks that I don't know about!?