KarenPorterOnline.com

Essentially a blog is a web log. It’s comprised of posts (or entries) that are posted in chronological order by dates. The dates are also posted and visible on the blog though it’s possible that some bloggers can manually remove the dates on their blog entries if they’re so inclined to do so. By the way, a “blogger” is the person who publishes to the blog.

POSTS
The posts of this blog (or any blog) could be comprised of thoughts like you’d read in a personal diary/journal; articles, links to other blogs and websites; images; products for sale and more. This blog just happens to contain articles I’ve written with information and inspiration related to personal and professional development. My personal thoughts and opinions are sometimes worked into the articles. Sometimes the articles are written in third person with no inclusion of my personal opinions.

The newest post in this, or any, blog is always on top on the front page. When you open karenporteronline.com in your browser that’s the front page you get first. You’ll note that if you scroll through each page of this blog, or any blog, that the earliest post written at the blog’s inception is now last. The first post ever written is now the last entry on the last page of the blog.

SCROLLING THROUGH PAGES OF POSTS
Scrolling through the blog posts page by page is one way to read or find every post on the blog karenporteronline.com. You scroll through pages of posts by clicking on the link at the bottom that says “previous entries” or “next entries”, depending on which end of the blog you’re at now.

CATEGORIES
Another way to scroll through the blog and read entries is to use the “categories” in the column on the right side of the page. I classify each post I enter into one or more categories that I think it applies to. That way if you want to find all the posts, or articles, I’ve written about, for instance, job interviewing, you can click that category title and start scrolling through the post summaries (which should all somehow relate to job interviewing).

POST SUMMARIES
Note I said “post summaries” above. Because a lot of my posts in karenporteronline.com are long, I’ve only included the beginning of each article as the post. So to read the entire post, or article, you’ll need to click on the “read the rest of this entry” link or click on the post title. Both will take you to a page on the blog with the full article. Once you read the article you could just hit the back key on your browser to return to the last page of posts you were on before going to the full article.

ARCHIVES
A third way to find all the posts on this blog is by searching the “archives”. The archives are noted in the column on the right side of the page too. The archives arranges the posts, or articles, by month entered. So if you want to read all the posts entered in March 2007, you’d choose to click on that link.

PAGES
You’ll also note that there is a subtitle called “pages” in the column on the right side of the page. These are not posts but rather timeless pages that I put here (like this one). You can click on any of those pages listed to go to it.

You will not find the “pages” listed in the “categories” or “archives” section since technically these are not dynamic, chronological blog entries but rather static pages of content (much like any website page) that I put here.

It’s on pages where I might put extra information like how to read this blog, book recommendations, etc. I can update the “pages” so it’s worth checking back to them now and then when they’re on a topic for instance such as “book recommendations”. As the year progresses I may add more books to the page. If I add more information in the column on the right in addition to what I’m telling you now, I may come back to this page and update it. That way I’ll explain what the new stuff is and where it’ll take you when you click on those new links (if/when I add some).

COMMENTS
Finally, note that there is a “comments” link under each chronological post (or “no comments” if nobody has entered any). This is something that differentiates a blog from an ordinary web page. It’s at the comments section that readers like yourself can comment on the post you just read.

Your comment might be that you agree or disagree with something in the article or that you have a tip of your own to add. Your comment just needs to be relevant to the post topic. And though you can leave a comment to any post any time, note that the majority of readers will comment on new posts (the most recent ones) so if the comment you’re leaving happens to be something like a question for other posters, they may not see it any time soon unless they’re browsing the archives of posts.

HOW TO LEAVE A COMMENT
If you click on the comment link after an article, you will be taken to a box that says “Leave a Reply”. Here you enter your name (required), email address (required but not posted or made visible to anyone but me, the owner of the blog), website (optional if you have one and this will be visible to readers of the blog), and the big box is for your actual comment.

Enter all that information, hit the “submit comment” button just once, wait until it’s finished loading and you’re done.

I moderate comments so that means there will be some lag time between when you actually hit that submit button and when you actually see your comment on the website in the comment section of that post visible to you and other readers. This lag time could be as much as 24 hours depending on how often I’m checking for comments in my moderation box.

REGARDING ENTERING YOUR EMAIL
One reason you enter your email is to differentiate yourself from a spammer or robot. People up to no good don’t bother entering the email (and don’t get their comments posted). If I had a question about your post, I might contact you at your email. But that’s highly unlikely.

Additionally, I don’t do anything with your email (in fact, I don’t even know if I see your email—I’ll have to check when someone posts a comment. I just assumed I see it since it’s on the form, which was created by the blog software application.). Anyway, I would never share or sell your email (or even add it to my own mailing lists). That would defeat our trust bond and chase away people that want to leave comments. And bloggers want you to leave comments (excepts for the ones who “disable comments” on their blogs for various reasons).

WHY I MODERATE COMMENTS
I moderate comments because there are hundreds of spammers on the web trying to add comments to blogs they could care less about just to spam the web with their website URL. You know about spam, don’t you? So it’s nothing personal. I also moderate to keep out those few bad apples who might post some nasty language just for the fun of it (sort of like people who do graffiti on walls for no sensible reason).

Ultimately, by me moderating the comments section of each post you get better quality of content. And you don’t waste your time reading comments that are totally irrelevant to the blog topic. This should have no effect on the comment you leave at that post other than that it may take a few hours before your comment actually becomes visible to other readers. So just enter it, hit submit, and forget about it for a few hours.

Enjoy!