I’ve been having a Dickens of a time… (I just love that phrase! Pardon me while I digress: The phrase always conjures up an image for me of a little match girl wandering the streets of a cold harsh reality in a Victorian novel by Charles Dickens — in this case imagine a little match girl wearing an insubstancial “BlogHer Blue” cape and a tattered hat of the same color that she has adorned with a Nablopomo imprinted ribbon. She is wandering in and out of tabs and pages posts looking for something she knows it somewhere close by but which she cannot find….)
Any way, I’ve been having a Dickens of a time trying to navigate the new Nablopomo section of BlogHer. I was having difficulty navigating this new feature on BlogHer not because anything is wrong with how the site and section are set up, but rather because I am accustomed to the old Nablopomo site that Melissa ran for a good long while before coming over to BlogHer (which I think is a very good move, by the by and by…) and once I have a tree structure (threw that in for you techy types reading this), a taxonomy, or a procedure created in my central nervous system I have a devil of a time restructuring it.
I started to post this procedure on how to get to the daily posts for Nablopomo as a comment after Victoria’s comment to my comment on Victoria’s post when I realized it was far more than a comment. So if you have come here from the comment on the comment on the post… you can skip down to the procedure. It is clearly listed further down in this post.
But to get to the point beyond my digressions, and I do love a good digression, I figured out how to read non-featured Nablopomo posts by reg. old bloghers who choose to share beyond the point of just listing themselves on a blogroll. Now there isn’t a thing in the world wrong with reading the featured, hot, or syndicated posts that are the easiest posts to find. But BlogHer is huge both in size and importance, and it isn’t easy to find all the best stuff that is available here because we all have different ideas about what makes up the “best” of anything.
And, pardon another digression, but… I talked to a blogher at BlogHer ’11 in San Diego who considers herself to be a blogher and not just a blogger (just like I consider myself) who never posts anything on the actual BlogHer site as a member post! Can you imagine not taking full advantage of this great network of amazing women (and men) writers and everything they all have to offer? She went so far as to say she didn’t even come to the site to read stuff here very often. Can you imagine? Poor thing.
I thought of her when my inner Little Match Girl was wandering around the site trying to figure out how everything worked for Nablopomo this month. I understand that something as big and complex and important as a Women’s Network can be a bit daunnting at first. As an information addict I just dig in and slither around in all the tantalizing bits and bytes of information and experience that are collectively offered to all here for the simple price of reading (taking the time to read is an investment like any other…at thus has a cost, but I digress AGAIN) here.
Anyway, I’ve been on BlogHer since at least 2006 and I still get lost! So I thought I would write this post about how to use some of the features of this National Blog Posting Month celebration that is welcoming the monthly writing challenge, that is Nablopomo, to BlogHer this month. And Melissa m’dear I hope I am not stepping on your toes by writing this as you have done a great job explaining the intricacies of all this on your post that I have bookmarked and still refer to several times a day. It is just that no one person can write all the instructions needed in the world and when I find myself needing to figure out a procedure I like to share it if there is a good chance someone else might find it to be useful.
Last evening I figured out how to get to the section where I can subscribe to various types of Nablopomo feeds. So I decided to whip up this little post that is my Nablopomo post for the day that spells out a step by step procedure on how to get to where I wanted to be on this site in this section, that might also be where others want to be but not know how to get there. So you can click on the above link or follow this procedure:
HOW TO GET TO THE COLLECTIVE DAILY NABLOPOMO POSTS
of people participating in BlogHer’s National Blog Posting Month
- Once you are on the BlogHer site go to the BLOGGING AND SOCIAL MEDIA TAB at the top of the page,
- then to the LEFT SIDEBAR WIDGET BOX that is labeled CATEGORIES
- then click on the NABLOPOMO LINK under the CATEGORIES header,
- then in the center column under the prompt of the day where it says “What’s Hot,” just look to the right on the same line and click the more posts > link.
- at the top of the center column on this page you are offered options for RSS feeds to which you may subscribe, with whatever feedreader you choose to use, by clicking on the icon next to the feed you want, or you may click on the word itself and be taken to the posts on BlogHer rather than through the feedreader. The options are: Editors’ Picks| Member Posts| Network Posts| All Posts and I’m not sure what all the differences are between these options, maybe Melissa has covered this and I missed it, but I don’t get anything under Network Posts, and I’m not immediately clear on what the difference between the “Member Posts” and “All Posts” feeds are, maybe someone can share their knowledge.
But I was pleased as punch to find out that I can shovel all the member posts into my Feedly feed or read them on the BlogHer site.
Maybe this is way too much information, but if you are still reading, then you must have had an experience somewhat related to mine in trying to find something.
I find out more and more things about BlogHer all the time and I’ve been using this site for over 5 years! I figure there are others who might also have missed a nifty feature, so I like to share my discoveries and Nablopomo helped me figure out so much about what it takes to be a regularly schedule blogger that I really wanted to share this in particular.
Thanks to BlogHer and Melissa!