Abbreviating "About Me"

I know this is a terribly elementary question but here goes. I'd like to have just a sentence or two, at most, of my "About Me" blurb to show on my main page. A viewer would then click on a link to view the complete text. Is there anyway to do this? I've been looking through Blogger Help and can't find anything.
Thanks!


This Post was written by Christine from Christine Cooks

Flickr

I currently use pbase as my image hosting service, but am considering shifting over to flickr next year when my subscription runs out. I like the way things look over there, and the sociability/tags/etc appeals to me as well.

So to those of you using flickr- what are your thoughts on the service?


This Post was written by s'kat from s'kat and the food.

Blogger Previous Posts - Can more be displayed?

Previous Posts displays 10 posts prior to the most current. Does anybody know of a way to increase the count of post page links that will display on the sidebar? There doesn't seem to be an explicit counter in the sidebar html.

I couldn't find any solution on blogger help.


This Post was written by Peter Cherches from Word of Mouth

[HTML] Header Help

I have a brand new header for my blog that would fit across the entire top of the page but I don't know where in my HTML/CSS to insert it... can someone help me? Thanks!


This Post was written by Michele from Chef Michele's Adventures

[Blogger] Archiving by Category

Hi Everyone,

One more question: Can someone break down for me the process of creating categories for my Blogger blog? Right now, everything is archived only by date. I'd like to group my previous posts into several categories that are easy to search by readers.

Thanks again.


This Post was written by Emily Stone from Chocolate in Context

[Rights] Copyrights, Reserved Rights, and Creative Commons

Hi,

This is another gritty legal question.

Does anyone have any advice about how to claim the copyright to your blog? I know that many bloggers have a Creative Commons license, while many others (more and more, I think) are simply asserting "All Rights Reserved" on their sites. My general understanding (though the vagueness of my knowledge is anxiety provoking) is that I am automatically the holder of the copyright for my own work and I am therefore protected against others illegally reproducing it without my permission. However, making some kind of statement about my rights on the site would no doubt be safer and more professional in the ever informal world of blogging.

A Creative Commons license seems like a good option, since it actually encourages other people to make use of my work, instead of restricting them. What have other people's experiences with these licenses been? Pros? Cons? Effectiveness? Also, I got a bit lost in the six different licenses that are on offer. Any comments on whether a more restrictive or more loose license works better?

And, of course, there's the "All Rights Reserved" option. I have two questions about this. Have you guys (either using it yourself or finding it on other blogs) found this kind of copyright claiming to be helpful or hurtful? And do I simply "reserve" my rights by printing the aforementioned phrase on my site, or do I need to officially register with the US Copyright Office?

Any thoughts? All of you comments will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!


This Post was written by Emily Stone from Chocolate in Context

{Of Interest} Journalist seeking tips

Thought this might be of interest to some of you, its from ProfNet:

"I'm looking for chefs to give me creative and fresh cooking tips for the Tip of the Day on Self.com. For example, what is the best way to chop an onion? What is the single best kitchen tool everyone must have? What's the best way to make a dish healthier? What is the thing you do that you pass along to friends? What do you see people mess up time and again? I'm on a tight deadline. Please send me specific and detailed tips -- not just bulleted tips -- by e-mail with your contact information so I can follow up. No phone calls, please. I'm a freelancer. Contact: Anna Roufos
Deadline: 07:00 PM US/Eastern APR 18
Email: aroufos@hotmail.com
URL: http://www.self.com"




This Post was written by Rachael from Fresh Approach

[Tech] Web usability

Just thought I'd pass on a great site for web development. It's geared toward improving web usability. The articles are pretty interesting (from a technical standpoint) and informative.

It's mostly for commercial sites, but we all take our blogs pretty seriously and the lessons learned could help improve the quality of our sites. I know it's improved mine.

You can even subscribe to their newsletter for regular postings.

This Post was written by William from Never Trust a Skinny Chef...

Recipe Feedback Etiquette

So... here's a silly etiquette question. I've had a recipe I saw in the Christmas IMBB cookie round up bookmarked on my to-do list forever! Its a gorgeous cookie, looks dreamy and uses interesting ingredients I have never used in cookies before.

I just made up the recipe and it is horrible. Even the batter sucks (yucky gritty texture). Its not that I mis-measured an ingredient... it seems to be that the main ingredient is just not suitable for making cookies. And I wasted four eggs on this, which gives me slight grumblies.

I live in fear of this happening with the recipes I post on my site. However, its a good fear- it keeps my recipe writing honest.

So Miss Culinary Manners, would leaving a questioning comment on the original post about the cookies (from eons ago) be appropriate, or should I just drop it and move on?

This post was written by McAuliflower of Brownie Points

[img] online photo cropping and resizing tool

i usually come here when i need help (and thank you to you all who are always ever so generous with your guidance)...but today i get to share!

www.pixoh.com is an online photo editing tool i've been using now for a few weeks. i am not sure if anyone has mentioned it here before, but just in case it hasn't been mentioned, here it is. it's nothing as fancy as photoshop, and it's still a work in progress they say, but when you need to simply crop and re-size on the fly, it's pretty magnificent.

as a side note, i highly encourage bloggers to please crop and re-size their photos before uploading them to your blogs. (this has been mentioned here at scool before.) i have been finding that some bloggers are uploading ENORMOUS photos and resizing them by using "width="xxx" in the [img] tag, which makes the site load fairly slowly.

sarah from the delicious life

Editing Comments

For those of you who have blog software allowing comment editing, do you ever edit a user's comments? Under what circumstances? I found myself doing that this morning to correct a misspelling on a comment, and wondered to myself whether I should actually be doing it or not.


This Post was written by Jen Maiser from Life Begins at 30.

Learning Movable Type

I apologize if I have written this post before ... I have certainly thought about writing it several times, and was reminded of it again tonight as I was poking around the web looking for a solution to a Typepad question.

Our own Elise Bauer of Simply Recipes is officially a BAD ASS CHICK. Not only does she run the hugely successful Simply Recipes, but she also founded a wildly informative website called Learning Movable Type.

There have been several "Full Circle Elise Bauer" moments at this house when, completely unplanned, I have been reading Simply Recipes next to my boyfriend who is reading Learning Movable Type. This site is a real asset to the blogging community.

The reason I am bringing it up here is to alert anyone using Typepad or Movable Type to her site, as it has helped me immensely in customizing my site. Don't forget that Typepad is essentially hosted Movable Type. So while there are some limitations, many of the tutorials offered on LMT translate to us Typepad users as well.


This Post was written by Jen Maiser from Life Begins @ 30.

[blogger] "Read More!" - how to make it conditional?

Dear friends at Food Blog S'cool,

Thank you for your warm welcome the other day. I'm new at blogging and have been at it for about 3 months now. My blog has lots of technical problems and things to iron out and I look forward to learning here about how to make it a fun and easy food blog to navigate.

Here's my first problem:

My blog is has lots of photos, and I also like to write about food. Sometimes lots of both can get unwieldy on a front page. I decided that the last thing I want to do is make it a chore for my visitors to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the front page. I want the front page to be easy and pretty and have options to click, and although I'd love it if people read my written work, I don't want to force people to read or even spend their time scrolling down the front page if they don't have the time or desire to read it.

I've managed somehow (and I say this sincerely because I don't know how to do much) to put in the tags in for it to begin on the front page and continue with more text, recipes or more photos, when you click on the "read more!" button at the bottom of the post.

This is wonderful when there is more to read - but I somehow have made a mistake and the Read More! always shows up at the bottom of each post, even if there isn't anything more to read.

Can someone explain to me how make this show up at the bottom of the post only when there really is something more to read?

Thank you!

This Post was written by Lucy from Lucy's Kitchen Notebook

Removing Blogger Navigation Bar from Websites

Two Questions:

First:Can anyone tell me how to completely remove the blogger navigation bar that goes across most of the blogger web pages? I've run across quite a few that managed this, but wasn't sure what in the world to do to accomplish this on my own blogger sites.

Second:Does anyone know if it is against blogger 'rules' to do this?
Thanks!


This Post was written by Alicat from Something So Clever.

[Domains] How To Switch To A "Real" Domain?

When I started blogging I went with Blogger and a URL that was sort of a condensed version of my name. Not long after I killed all my old content and starting doing tea only, but kept the old URL.

I have teaguyspeaks.com (and .net) registered, but I haven't made the change to that domain yet because my I put so much effort into getting my current blog URL out there.

How much of a factor is a "real" domain name in getting traffic to the site and has anyone made the change from a Blogger or similar type domain to hosting under their own domain name. How did you deal with changing URLs?

This Post was written by Bill from Tea Guy Speaks

Shrunken margin between columns in IE

All of a sudden the margin between the left & right columns of my Blogger blog is very narrow in IE. It looks fine in Netscape. I usually work with Firefox at home, but I'm in my office now.

Does anybody have any ideas on what's going on or how to remedy it? I can probably make some HTML changes to widen the gutter, right?

This Post was written by Peter Cherches from Word of Mouth

Does My Blog Look Good in This?

I'm in the unenviable position of having an ISP that is having server problems. Since last week many people may have had problems viewing my site. Hell, I've only suceeded in posting three times since last Wednesday. I'd just like to reassure everyone that Tomato is still up.
My ISP, Smartyhost, saysthat the problem will be solved in the next week or so which makes me woner whether i should change host now. Anyone got any ideas?
How long will my site be down while I redelegate my domain? is it worth the effort?

[Links] How to link Midway through a Post?

Does anyone know how I can do this?

Say I wanted to write three mini-restaurant reviews in one post.

So then I would have

Review one
some words

Review two
some words

Review three
some words

But now in my restaurant review index I want to link to each one separately, from its starting position in the post, wherever it might be.

Can I specify a position or a line number or something in my link?
I am sure I have seen this done, but can't remember when or where.

Thanks for any info.


This Post was written by Sam from B&P

Happy Birthday Food Blog S'cool

A year ago, on this date, I started Food Blog S'cool on a whim. I can't believe how much it has grown in the last year. I want to thank you all, pupils and teachers, for being a part of this community and for being generous with your time and knowledge.

We have another bunch of new pupils, today. Since my feelings were hurt last time by the potential pupil who didn't want to risk becoming a rutabaga, I couldn't help but have a silly joke with myself by making the next class be Swedes. Swedes, in case you don't know, is what the English call rutabaga.

Rutabaga, Swedes, whatever, please give a hearty welcome to all our new pupils...
Restaurant Girl
Make Life Sweeter
Erin Eats
Cookbook 411
Sailu's Food
Adventures in culinary curiosity
The Serendipitous Chef
Mama Cooks
Lucy's Kitchen Notebook
Adding Flavor
Kung Foodie
Cooking 101

This Post was written by Sam from Becks & Posh

Typepad list of blog "bling"

Typepad has recently introduced a 'widget gallery' (with the tagline "Point.Click.Bling."... cute...). They are grouped under categories like commerce, search, publishing tools, and so on. Some services like Feedblitz and Technorati have already been talked about on S'cool, but others were unfamiliar to me, like MyBlogLog.

Although the one-click instructions are for Typepad sites, the services offered can be used by anyone. Just click on each service name then the logo to get to the actual service page(s). If you like to "bling out your blog" this may provide at least some hours of fun. The overview page is here.

This post was written by maki from I was really just very hungry.

IE/Blogger conflict

Is anyone else experiencing problems with their blog when viewing in Internet Explorer? Suddenly my page isn't displaying properly - the righthand sidebar has vanished completely (it hasn't even been bumped to the bottom of the page) and you can only see one entry!

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeellllp!!!!!!!!!!

It doesn't happen in Mozilla Firefox and I haven't changed ANYTHING in the template in the last few weeks, and when I last changed it it displayed in both Mozilla and IE perfectly!


This Post was written by Fahara from Souperior

[Technical] How Does Technorati Work?

Hi Everyone,

First, I'd like to thank you all for letting me join your class and for being so welcoming. Second, I'll tell you about a problem I'm having and hopefully you can help!

Technorati seems like a pretty useful tool, so I've registered and linked to it from my site. But, at the same time, I don't really get Technorati and their help section is almost nonexistent.

I'll start with the most basic question. Could someone please give me a general overview of the tags? What exactly are they used for and how you can get the most benefit out of them? And how do you attach (right word?) tags to individual posts, as opposed to your whole blog?

Now for the more complex stuff: Technorati does not seem to be working for my site in its advertised capacity at all. That is, it's just not tracking blogs that link to mine. I know of several sites that have links to mine, but the only things that ever come up on a Technorati search are two links that are six months old (one from a friend's site, one that is utterly unrecognizable).

My guess is that some piece of code (either in my own template or on something that I filled out on Technorati) is incorrect. But I'm not a coder--I'm a writer and a sometime cook. I do fairly well with code as long as the stuff is translated and the rules are explained to me like those of any other language.

Any ideas? Could someone help?

Many thanks!


This Post was written by Emily Stone from Chocolate in Context

(Misc) Sticky Date News

The lovely Ali assisted me with redesigning the Sticky Date website. I've added a spot where I will put round-ups from events, so if you're running or hosting an event and want your round-up included there (nice point of reference and a trip down memory lane), just e-mail me the permalink after the event is over. I've started loaded some already. Hope this helps everyone. :)

True Love: Food Blog Romance

This is my favourite food blog story of the year.
Lot's of you know I am soppy, yes I shed a tear or two of sentimental joy when reading it.
Congratulations to Molly!


This Post was written by sammy from becks & posh

What does an "adapted recipe" mean to you?

I share a lot of recipes from cookbooks and use the following definitions regarding recipes:

1. If I follow a recipe exactly and it's not available to link to online, I don't include the recipe but instead include a vague description of the ingredients and describe how it tastes.
2. If I make minor changes to a recipe (a change to ingredients), I include it as an adapted recipe of X.
3. If I got a combination of ingredients idea from a particular recipe or a recipe somehow inspires me to come up with a recipe, I credit it as a recipe inspired by X.

I see a lot of recipes listed as "adapted from" and I'm wondering what that means to others.

Also, I've noted some disclaimer statements on some sites. I'm wondering why people include these.

Thanks in advance for your input


This Post was written by Catherine from Albion Cooks

World Map of Food Bloggers

Hi food bloggers,
I thought it would be interesting/cool to create a map of all of us food bloggers, since we do seem to hail from all across the globe.

Go here to add yourself/your blog to the map.
http://www.frappr.com/foodbloggers

Make sure you include your blog name/URL in the "Shout out" part of your profile, so others can visit your blog when they click on your map pin.


This Post was written by Genevieve from bribe me with a muffin.

[Blogger] Templates & Backgrounds

Two questions. The first is mostly an opinion question. When I started a blog on Blogger I chose a black background because I thought it was more eye catching. Now I wonder if black backgrounds are also more difficult to read. Any thoughts?

The second question is related. Has anyone changed to a new template/background on a Blogger blog? I know you can do this through the control panel, but that wipes the template clean and starts with a new one. Does anyone know how to switch to a new template just by fiddling with the code? I guess it would also help to know the code for each of the preset templates.

This Post was written by Bill from Tea Guy Speaks