EnerMeter

In a post yesterday I mentioned Tags, but I did not tell the whole story. Today I decided to learn a bit more and found some good information.

There is a clear description of both and how to use them at PROBLOGGER that was written by Michael Martin from Pro Blog Design.

• In terms of coding, categories and tags are almost identical. A category system could very easily be used as a tagging system, and vice versa.
• So what is it that makes the two different? And how are they best used?

He goes on to tell us. It appears what I was calling tags are more appropriately called Categories.

If you want search engines to group your post with related posts by others, it makes sense to use the same tags as others use. Technorati has a list of the most popular tags. And I quickly found a list of more general tags as well at BlogHop.

One thing some beginning blog readers do not immediately understand is the value of comments. The comments content is often more useful to the reader than the original post, particularly on technical matters. So if you catch me in a mistake, or have anything to add, please do it in the comments.

Reviews of Windows Live Writer are generally favorable, so I decided to give it a try. This post is being written with Writer.

If you want to try it, the first step will be to get a copy and install it on your own computer. This is easily done by going to the Windows Live Writer website and clicking on the Get It Free button.

The install process is typical Windows. Just accepting the defaults seems reasonable to me, except for where the installer gratuitously offered to change  my browser Home Page and my default Search. I unchecked those.

The main advantage of Writer over just composing a post in the BlogEngine.NET editor is that Writer provides WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editing. It is a lot like writing in a simplified version of Word. The spell checker will surely come in handy as well.

A couple of points from the Writer website that will be useful are:

1. Preview before you post

   Writer shows you what your blog entry will look like before you post it, using your blog's templates and formatting.

2. Compose your entries offline

   Publish them later, when you get back online.

There are helpful getting started videos at the Writer Blog Site in the May 2008 section. I watched the first one.

I read somewhere that Word 2007 (but not 2003 or earlier) works well also, but Windows Liver Writer is free, and it appears to work just fine.

Of course, I am a beginner too, but there are beginners and beginners. My friend said:

Yes, it worked this time and after I was in I attempted to make a change and it would not let me sign out, an error message came up and I sent the page to you etc. I am wondering, how am I going to learn how to do this?

Duh!

It appears that what you did was make a change to the Theme. This page looks like one of those available for preview, namely Mobile. But I just checked your site and you have replaced that pink Girlgeek strangeness I left you with, with a very nice looking page. I guess what you thought was an error message was a “preview”?  

 Pretty much everything can be customized. Eventually you can have a completely custom theme.   All the permissions stuff BlogEngine talked about I already did. Looks like you are ready to start posting. 

When you are in Internet Explorer and looking at a site that is also a blog, you will see a symbol that looks like the "Subscribe" button on your homepage. It is up as part of the browser toolbar. If you click it you will have the option to “subscribe”. After you do so anything new from that site will show up in the “favorites” section (feeds tab) of your Internet Explorer version 7 or later. I think you can subscribe in some versions of Outlook also, in which case the new posts would come in something like email does.  There are quite a lot of ways to subscribe,  Google Reader is one of the more popular ways to read blogs.  I use a program named RssBandit.

 So your friends can subscribe to you using one or more of these readers. 

When you create a new entry you can give it various tags. Tags are deceptively simple, and very useful. Lets say you write about three main topics, building your new house, astrology, and life in Panama. For the first month or two it will be easy to scroll through the entries and see those in a particular category. After a year there will be twelve months to look through one at a time. But if each Panama entry has a common tag, a single click will bring up all of them at once.

A search of your site might do much the same, but the tag method would be more likely to produce the results you intended as author.

 

 

What a pain they are, but necessary of course. Yesterday I set one up for a friend's new blog and today she could not log in. Turned out after much wasted effort that I had set up the password with a space at the end without putting the space in the string I provided to her. 

Finally this blog is set up with the basics and I can do a post if I want. So this is the first one.