Guest Post - Tech Help for Bloggers

Thank you very much to Jenelle of Echinops and Aster for letting me guest post in her series 'Tech Help for Bloggers'!

For those who haven't been here before, TGIFF is a 'roaming' party. Each Friday, the party is at a different blog, partly so M-R and I don't have to have a  finish every week, and partly to help other bloggers commit to finishes as well as build their blogging skills and exposure. For more info, check out the tabs at the top.

A linky party describes a 'widget' you embed in a blog page to allow other people to post links to your page. These can be links, text, photos, or a combination.


There are a few different 'hosts' of widgets that can be used. We generally refer first timers to Inlinkz, which has a great video tutorial, and gives you free text links (without pictures) and one free picture linky set. After that, it's $2/month.
 

Instead of reinventing the wheel, it's easiest to watch the video produced by InLinkz to see how to work it. Essentially, I click "Create new collection", give it a name, set a start and finish date, and then specify whether I want it to be pictures and hyperlinks, or just hyperlinks. Inlinkz gives you a code which you paste into the html page of your blog. (In blogger, there is a 'compose' and a 'html' tab - the code must be entered in the html tab).

The hardest part we find for TGIFF hostesses is the date, given the different time zones around the world. If your blog is set in Australia time, for example (we're WAY ahead of much of the rest of the world!) and you set your linky party to start the same time but in the US, it won't show up on your blog until that time in the US. (Annoying - catch up people!). I always advise TGIFFers to set it to start the day before they actually want it to show up, and control the timing of their post from their blog. If the linky has already started and there's no blogpost, no one will see it anyway, but it will be ready when you post.

If you haven't joined a linky party before, I've created a text-only one below. You can add and delete your own link if you wish. Add the link of your blog or just your name if you are loving this Echinops and Aster series!!