Help With the Blog

If you can't find an answer to your question about the blog from this list, email the administrator, Eddie Callaway at birdfreak@birdfreak.com

Logging On to Write a Post

To be an author for the blog, you must be a member of NCIOS and have a user name and password.

If you have not signed up to be an author at one of the club meetings, you can do so by emailing the administrator, Eddie Callaway, at birdfreak@birdfreak.com . Please include the following:

>User name you want (this will be your sign in name)
>First and Last name (as you would like it to appear when you post)
>Email address
>Password (please pick one that is not used for other things like online banking, etc.) *You can always change this later*

Once you have a login name and password , you can click the login link on the blog homepage and enter your user name and password. Once signed in you are free to post and comment on other people's posts.

Help Navigating/Using the Blog

Each blog post can be given a category that it is posted under. For example, if you are posting a bird sighting, it should be filed under 'Bird Sighting'. The categories can be clicked on to find like posts. If a category is not picked, it will default to 'Birding'.

Also, each blog post is archived based on date, so posts made in February can be called up to find info posted during that time period.

RSS Feeds - What are they?

RSS is an acronym that really doesn't matter what it stands for. What it means is this: a user can 'sign up' for an RSS feed so any time the blog is updated - a new post is made - the user is notified. This can be done in many ways but the top two are this: you are emailed when there is an update or you have a program called a reader that updates you.

You can subscribe to rss feeds for both posts and comments . An example of why you would subscribe to the comments would be if you posted a question about a bird or birding hotspot and wanted to know when someone replied . You can always unsubscribe from the feed - this will not change your privileges as an author.

What's a reader? There are many types of readers but they all do the same: they let you subscribe to a blog's feed to get notified when a post has been made. Thus, if you read many blogs, you can have many feeds come into your reader so you do not need to check each blog's website to find out if something new has been posted.

One of the easier readers to use is NewsGator ( newsgator.com ) but Google, Yahoo and others offer readers. Some readers are programs that install on your computer while others are web-based. I do not have a real preference to which to use; it is all personal opinion.

If you only read one or two blogs and don't have a spam-filled email inbox, subscribing by email might be the best choice. Then you can be notified without having to deal with another program or having to set up the reader. Just enter your Email in the box and pick subsribe. Follow the directions and then you will be emailed every time the blog is updated.