So technology is both a blessing and a curse. It's mostly good though, right? Anyhow, I had a couple of questions about how to "follow" a blog and given that I have next to zero knowledge about blogging, I went straight to Google for answers.
It appears to me that following a blog is basically just a way of saying "hey, I like what you're saying." And that's always nice. But if you hit follow, in the hopes that you would get updated whenever a new blog is posted, well, you're out of luck. Apparently it doesn't work that way. It's basically about as meaningful as hitting "Like" on Facebook. But feel free to follow this blog. I like seeing your pretty faces and who doesn't like "Likes". It may be important to note that you can follow blogs publicly or privately.
What some might be more interested in knowing is "but how do I know when there is a new blog posted?" I mean, clearly, you can't sit around and just hit refresh all week, waiting for an update. And if you got as far as reading this post, you probably also wouldn't want to forget all about this blog and remember next July that you wanted updates on the baby. Apparently this process is what is called "subscribing" in the blogosphere. If you're already a fan of blogs, you probably know that you can "subscribe" via popular readers like Google Reader, My Yahoo!, etc. This means that your front page (if it's your home page) or your reader site will be updated if a new blog is posted. I have added this function now (Smudge subscription via a reader).
But if you're asking questions like "what is follow? how can I know if there is a new blog posted?" chances are, you have no idea what I'm talking about right now. What you may be interested in, is simply receiving an email when a new blog is posted. Voila! I have now added a little box on the right sidebar (Smudge Subscription! Enter your Email) that will do just that. In essence, you just type in your email address and a box will pop-up asking you to complete one of those annoying "captchas" making sure you're not a robot spammer. Once you have done that, a message will be sent to your email address asking you to verify that you really were crazy enough to want to receive my boring updates. You will then go to your email and follow the link, nodding your head that yes, you agree it's crazy but why not? That's it! Now you are subscribed to the blog and will receive an email whenever a new blog is posted. How easy is that?
And while we're talking logistics of blogging, you may have noticed that after each post there is a place where you can "comment" on that specific post. Feel free to use that function liberally. Everybody loves comments.
Finally, just a note that if you scroll to the bottom there is a button on the right side that says "Older Posts". That will take you to...you guessed it, older posts. You also may have noticed along the right hand side that there is a blog archive that indicates which months have posts in them and you can see the titles and go to specific ones through that link.
Whew. Well, I learned more today about blogging than I expected. I have no idea what people did before Google. :-)
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