Are you making the most of link parties? I know I'm not

I thought you might be interested in this article "Making the Most of Link Parties" from Snippets of Inspiration. Do you agree with her?

Do you want to leave clickable links in comments? Here's how

How to code a link in a comment on someone else's blog

An article for you on using Gmail shortcuts

Blogelina has posted an article called "37+ GMail Keyboard Shortcuts – Use These Tricks To Email More Efficiently!"  I don't use many of these shortcuts but am going to try out a few as a result of having read this.

How to verify your blog for Pinterest

I found this article about how to verify your blog for the purposes of your Pinterest account - it worked for me - but I must say I am always terrified any time I have to go into the template section of the dashboard!

I will also be keeping an eye out for any good basic guides about Pinterest for you.  If you know of any please just let me know.

Testing a replacement for Google Reader – Bloglovin

I have now signed up for Bloglovin and have imported all my Google Reader Feeds into it – this only requires a single click to do (although it did take a while). I am going to run both readers in parallel for a while to judge whether Bloglovin is the best alternative for me.  I'll let you know how it is going.

It was easy to put the follower widget onto my sidebars, so that worked well.

At this stage I can't figure out how to get a more compact view – apparently there is a way to change your view settings – but do you think I can find it?  Anyone out there know what to do?

A link to more tips for better photos

Amy from Foods for the Soul posted a really important piece of advice about food photography - I guess it applies to all photography.  It is about the composition of photos and the rule of thirds.  I now realise that this is one of the many things I have been doing wrong with my photos!

Click here to go to her post.

Ok - you have to read the article this links to... best laugh I've had for yonks

Okay, for a real laugh with a touch of truth head over to Kludgy Mom to see this post!

Your Email Address and Your Blog

If you are going to connect an email address to your blog, I have some advice for you (for what that is worth):

1. Create a special email address for your blog/s – at the very least don't use your work email on your blog

2. Make the email address easy to locate and to use

· Put it onto your contact page and/or sidebar prominently

· Put it as it is – not with typed "and" and "dot" in it. I notice a lot of people use that approach but it just makes for extra work for people trying to contact you.

· Put it into your Blogger/Wordpress profile and maybe in your Google profile as well.

3. Don't hide your email address in the fine print (like disclosure policies and the like). If its there somewhere people will find it but will be put to extra trouble.*

4. Turn off the default no reply comment setting on your Blogger blog – see here for how to do this and why it's important.


All this is particularly important if you are wanting to be contacted by sponsors and/or advertisers etc.

* I think the reason people do this is to cut down spam. I have noticed spam to my gmail account has increased since I put it onto the blog but it goes straight to the spam folder and so isn't really an issue for me.

Watermarking images using Picmonkey

I thought you might all be interested in an article by Tempting Thyme on how to make a transparent watermark for your images in Picmonkey.  I don't use Picmonkey so can't vouch that this works but it looks to be a good tutorial.