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Saturday, February 4, 2012

Blog Tweaks

Instead of doing my nails today or editing pictures from my backlog, I've been playing with my blog set up. I'd seen other blogspot blogs recently that could reply to individual comments without having an outside comment service like Disqus, but that didn't show up on my blog automatically. Turns out I had to change a setting, which I found out from an article on Blogger Sentral. So far I've only tried replying to one comment, but that worked, so that's good. Of course the old comments I did replying to a bunch of people at once now look sort of goofy, but that's progress for you.

I also added a Pin It button at the bottom of the entry. I joined Pinterest a few weeks ago and have been pinning all sorts of nail stuff, and it's handy when there's a button right there for me to use, so I thought it might be nice if I had a button here for other people to use. If you're on the home page of the blog, the pin will link to the home page, but if you're an entry, the pin will link right to the entry. If you want to see my pins, my profile is here. If you need an invite, let me know; I think I can do that, though I haven't so far. If you want a Pin It button for your Blogger blog, too, do like I did and follow the directions on Chykalophia Design, which I found my way to thanks to a tip from ReecesPeeces, the proprietess of Spit & Polish.

While I'm on the subject of blog changes, some time back I noticed my list of tags in the sidebar was getting really long, so I switched to dropdowns. I learned how to that from Spice Up Your Blog. Since another problem I was having was not being able to add all the tags I wanted sometimes because the names were long, being prefaced by brand:, color:, and so on, so when I switched to the dropdowns, I also shortened the names. At first I thought I'd just drop the prefixes, since the dropdowns would be separate, but that meant on the list of all of them, the colors were mixed in with the brands and finishes and that was too much chaos for me, so I just shortened the prefixes to things like b: for brand. That made me much happier. The one drawback I've found is that to maintain the dropdowns by category, I need to remember to add new labels to them, which I don't always do. (When I do, though, having the prefix makes it easy to see which ones are missing.) The top dropdown one always has all of the tags, though, so everything's accessible there.

Wow, I didn't realize I had so much to say about this subject, but I guess it's not surprising since I am a tech geek of sorts. I'll be back to nail stuff next week, though when exactly I'm not sure since I have to report for jury duty on Monday and who knows how that'll turn out. I might be home early or I might be stuck downtown all day or all week. In the meantime, if you notice any issues with the new setup, please let me know!

25 comments:

  1. Ooo... let's see this commenting system in action!

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    1. This is me, replying to you. :)

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    2. I want to see how many indents there are to this commenting system.

      (I just tried to add the Pinit button to my blog, but I couldn't get the dang image to show up where you have yours - it would keep putting the image right after the last word I wrote in my blog post! Doh! )

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    3. cilucia, not enough indents is the answer, I think. :) I had to play with the placement of the button a lot before it landed where I wanted it. In the end I had to try somewhere I didn't think looked right in the template at all but it displays okay so I'm happy.

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  2. Awesome tweaks you added to your blog!If you don't mind, I would love an invite to pinterest! I sent a request a while ago, but nothing so far...
    Not sure what you need to invite, but here's my email: drinkcitra (at) gmail (dot) com :D

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    1. I think just your e-mail is needed; I put it in and clicked and Pinterest said "Invite sent!" so hope that worked.

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    2. Yay thanks so much! I received it :D

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  3. I like being able to reply to comments! I use Intense Debate and I like it so far. I didn't know you could just change settings in blogger to be able to do that though!I will have to look into that! I was invited to use pinterest, but it wouldn't let me log in with out a facebook account. :(

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    1. I think this Blogger comment setup is a pretty recent change; I know it didn't exist when I first looked for it.

      Yeah, I think right now you have to have either a Facebook or Twitter account to join Pinterest, but once you're in you can unlink and just login directly--that's what I've been doing.

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  4. I like it too, Intense Debate didn't work on my blog.
    and yes iets new in blogger, works great!

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    1. Intense Debate ... that's the one besides Disqus that I couldn't think of.

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  5. Thank you so much for that, Karen! I've been wanting to figure out how to reply to comments for a while, and you made it really easy for me to change it!

    I love your drop downs - it's going to make it really easy to search for what we want to find!

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  6. Great changes! I added the Pin It button the same way, it seems to be working!

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  7. Thank you thank you thank you! I have been trying and trying to get the new reply to comment thing to work on my blog but just couldnt. Now your link has shown me the way! woohoo!

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  8. OK geek girl-help me out if you would. I already did the drop down box for my labels but would love to separate them out into categories like you did here. How did you do that? Is it gonna entail going back to my first post to relabel my labels? I'm way too lazy for that! When you get a chance-could you email me and let me know? As far as jury duty goes-answer all questions like you're a crazy person. It'll get you off! HAHAH!

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    1. Fingers, I will e-mail you but wanted to reply here as well in case anyone else is wondering. To get separate dropdowns for the categories, you just need add the widget for labels again for each category, then edit so that that only the labels for that category are included. You don't have to change your labels unless you want to!

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  9. Yes, it's not more than a couple of weeks since it suddenly had been incorporated on my Blogger blog.
    It's nice for the blogger - but a nightmare for the commenter if you subscribe by email, you get a lot of mails that way LOL - it would be really smart if you could subscribe to comments to yourself only.
    The Pin it is a nice detail, I wonder if I could figure that out LOL

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  10. Great changes. Can you send me an invite to Pinterest, I think I need to get involved with that: marijonails@gmail.com. Thanks for the links with the tips.

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  11. I think my blog has the reply to comments option and I have no idea how it got there haha. It must be new, because I don't remember that option when I began my blog last June. I also followed you on Pinterest. My username is jmsheehe :)

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  12. Hi Karen.

    If you have the time and would like to receive them, I have two awards for you, see more here: http://mariasnailpolishblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/more-awards.html - you have one of them already, but not the other :)

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  13. I tried to add the replay on my blog but it didn't work. I am thinking of trying to get disqu but every time someone wants to comment they have to sign in so I am not sure what to do yet :)

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    1. beautyshades, I've seen disqus where there's an option so you don't have to sign in to comment--maybe there's a way to configure it that way for your blog. Not sure why the blogger reply setup wouldn't work, though I have read it might be an issue with which template you're using and whether it's been modified in some ways. Hope you find a solution that works for you!

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  14. Thanks for this! I need to fix my comments & add a pin it button too.

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  15. Good for you spending some time playing with your blog...while I need to do this too, doing my nails always wins :)

    I still can't get the reply button to work; glad to see yours is working!

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Thank you for reading and commenting! I greatly appreciate knowing I'm not just talking to myself here. :) I'm moderating most comments now due to the spate of spammers who claim to be looking for sexy times.