Peter Checksfield starts new blog and gives me feeds trouble.

Monday mornings are never easy times to face errant internet problems, in fact it sometimes seems here that the computers that have had Sunday off have Monday morning problems of my own.

This morning I was pleased to notice that Peter Checksfield of Naked in Thanet fame had started a music blog and after a relaxing read about Jerry Lee Lewis I attempted to add it to the latest feeds on my sidebar thingy.

After several failed attempts and ever mindful of Mr Lewis’s piano flambé I had started showing the computer various bottles of inflammable solvents that I use for removing sticky labels from books.

Here is how to do it where it says “add by url” and you would expect to add http://themargatemusicman.blogspot.com/ you actually need to add http://themargatemusicman.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

Oh well now to add it to http://thanetblogs.blogspot.com/ as this has to be all written in Java perhaps I will leave it until later.

Blogs and blogging for beginners getting your blogger dashboard

First I should point out this is free and doesn’t cost you anything.

This is my second posting on the subject and is for those of you who wish to get into the driving seat and start your own blog, or wish to join blogger to prevent other people maliciously using their identity.

Before joining blogger you will need to work out what name you want to use for yourself as this will appear as when you post on other blogs, you also need to decide on what email address you want to use. This is very important if you wish to hide your true identity and you may need to get a hotmail or other free email address before you start.

The name you use for yourself is the one that appears in your blogger profile and doesn’t need to be the same as the name of your blog, indeed you can have a number of blogs all using your chosen name.

I have 2 blogs http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/, which is my main blog and http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.com/, which I occasionally play with, but is pointless.

You then go to blogger.com and sign up following the instructions which are all fairly straightforward.

After having done this when you go to blogger.com and sign on you go to your own blogger dashboard where you can do various things.
One final thing in the sign in box your username is your email address.

Blogs and blogging for beginners

I was talking to a savvy 20 something earlier and she said, “what’s a blog?” well I suppose we all get caught up in our own little world, oddly enough the secondhand book world is very internet orientated and interlinked, so secondhand booksellers for the most part have been using the internet for a very long time.

Certainly 10 years ago we had 12,000 books listed on the internet and people asking me what the internet was, never came as a surprise.

Anyway it occurred to me that I ought to put simple instructions on how to post linked to the sidebar.

If any of you notice anything important I have missed please let me know.