SeanDareOnline.com

SeanDareOnline.com is full of features you may not even know about. Here you will find a guided tour of SeanDareOnline.com’s features so you can take advantage of all the benefits while reading SeanDareOnline.com. This page is broken down into three sections: Posts, Sidebar and Categories. For example in the “Posts” section you will learn about all the features available inside a post itself. Let’s go ahead and start there.

Posts

Announcement Posts - If there is anything important that needs to be announced to my readers I will post it in an Announcement post. Announcement posts stay at the top of the list of posts until I change it’s status to a “normal” post. (Normally the most recent post is at the top of the list.) Once I change the post’s status back to “normal” the announcement will return to it’s place in the chronological list. You can identify announcement posts because I will put the word “Announcement” followed by a hyphen in the post’s title. NOTE: While an announcement post is active all new posts will show below it in chronological order, so scroll down to see if anything new has been added.

Sticky Posts - Occasionally I will write a post that I want to keep at the top of the page for the entire day, even if I write something else after it. (Normally the latest post is at the top of the list.) When I do this it is called a sticky post. At the end of the day the post will return to it’s normal place in the chronological list of posts. Typically I will not identify a sticky post as such. NOTE: While a sticky post is active all new posts will show below it in chronological order, so scroll down to see if anything new has been added.

Permalinks - The title of each post is a link to a page for that post. This is called a permalink in the blogosphere. When you click on a title’s permalink you will be taken to that posts page where you can leave a comment. While you are on the post’s page take a look at the top of your web browser and you will see the address has changed from http://seandareonline.com/blog/ to a format for that specific blog entry like http://seandareonline.com/blog/2008/04/08/name-of-post. To go back to the main blog page just click on “Home” in the navigation sidebar, or click the title that says “SeanDareOnline.com” at the top of the page.

Sharing - At the end of each post you will see two “sharing” links. The first one you will see, called “Share This”, allows you to share a blog post with friends in one of two ways, via email or on a sharing website. To email just click on the “Share This” link at the end of a post and choose the email tab. From there you fill in the blanks and click send. That’s it, an email is on its way to your friend with a link to the post on SeanDareOnline.com. To share a post on a sharing website is even easier. Click on the “Share This” link and then choose a sharing website from the list. You can share a post on Digg, Del.icio.us, MySpace, FaceBook, and many many more.

Sphere - Below the “Share This” link you will see a link called “Sphere: Related Content”. When you click on this link a window will pop up with links to other bloggers, the blogosphere, and websites who are talking about the same topics as the post you just read on SeanDareOnline.com. This is a great way to read other viewpoints or learn new information about a topic that interests you.

Comments and Ratings - At the very end of each post is a comment link, which takes you to the same page as the permalink, and a five star rating bar. I read all the comments on SeanDareOnline.com, and respond to many of them. I also religiously check to see how posts are rated. The rating system is an easy way for you to tell me what posts interest you and which ones don’t. If a post is rated highly then more posts on that topic will be written. If a post has a low rating, or no rating, then that topic might be ignored in the future. So let your voice be heard, leave comments and rate posts!

Click to Continue - I like to make a post visible in it’s entirety on the front page for a while after posting it. However, after a post has moved down the page some I will show only the first two or three paragraphs and hide the rest from the front page to save space. You can view the rest of the post by clicking on the link at the end of the post that says “Click to continue reading “The Name Of The Post”". If you choose this option the partial post will fade away and the entire post will fade into it’s place.

Sidebar

The sidebar, found on the right hand side of every page in SeanDareOnline.com, contains a wealth of information. Everything from the navigation menu to the RSS feed subscription link are found in the sidebar. Many of the features are self explanatory, like the Navigation menu or the Links menu, and others are a little more complicated. I will only cover the area’s I feel need explanation here.

Search - The search box is a nice feature of SeanDareOnline.com. As I add more posts you will have more and more difficulty finding an older post. The search box will allow you to search for any keyword used in the entire site. So, if you remember me saying a specific word or phrase, but can’t remember the title of the blog post, then just type what you do remember into the search box, hit enter on your keyboard, and SeanDareOnline will return all the results for you. Simple really.

RSS feeds - RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. If you are using Firefox (recommended) or IE7 you already have an RSS reader built in. There are other great programs that pull down RSS feeds as well, such as Thunderbird (what I use). Once you add the RSS page to your RSS reader the reader will pull down any new posts automatically. In Thunderbird they show up like new emails. This way you don’t have to visit my site every day to check for new content. Instead you can let the RSS reader check for you. Refer to the instructions for your RSS reader for information on how to set it up to read SeanDareOnline.com.

Poll - New polls are added all the time. Usually when I start a new poll I post an announcement alerting everyone. Polls are a fun and easy way to tell me, and other SeanDareOnline.com readers, what you think of a specific topic. Questions can range from the simple, what is your favorite color, to the confrontational, who are you going to vote for.

Blogroll - Merely a list of blogs that I like and read every day. I add and remove from this list periodically so keep an eye on it.

Categories

Even though “Categories” is technically a part of the sidebar; it is an easy way to navigate to certain types of posts and I feel it deserves it’s own section in this tutorial. If you want to read everything I have written in a category all you need to do is click on the category in the list in the sidebar and SeanDareOnline.com will sort out everything that isn’t tagged with that category. This is especially helpful with essays which are usually long enough that they span multiple posts.

Blogging - Here you will see posts on writing a blog, software used when writing a blog, web hosts, new features to SeanDareOnline.com, etc.

Camping - I really enjoy camping and hiking. Like most people who enjoy these two activities I like to discuss gear, past and future trips, techniques, etc. Posts in the category will be related to camping and hiking and the equipment used to camp and hike.

Christianity - If you have read my About page then you know the top two reasons I started SeanDareOnline.com are to Glorify God. In this section you will see posts relating to my walk with Christ and the struggles I have keeping on the narrow path.

Essays - The third reason I started SeanDareOnline.com is to provide a forum for my writing. Essays are short stories I write in an effort to improve my writing skills and to develop my writing voice. Essays take a lot of time to write so don’t look for one every day. So far I have posted a new essay every week or two.

General - For posts that don’t fit any other category. duh!

Writing - This category has posts about writing and the struggles associated with it, but are not the essays themselves. Here you will see posts with back-story to specific essays or posts on tools used in the writing trade. It will also document my attempt to write, publish, and most importantly, sell my future novels.

I am always striving to make seandareonline.com more reader friendly. If you have suggestions for posts topics, or improvements you would like to see, then I want to hear from you. You can email me at sean@seandareonline.com. I also read every comment made to this blog so feel free to leave one on whatever post strikes your fancy.

- Sean