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Mary G
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Do y'all like Blogspirit -- I like that it looks like Typepad but is free. Is it hard to use? Any comments, advice, etc. would be wonderfully and warmly accepted....particularly if you've been using Blogger.
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MaryG
3 boys (22, 12, 8)2 girls (20, 11)
my website that combines my schooling, hand-knits work, writing and everything else in one spot!
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JennGM
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Mary,
Amyable is the expert. I use it because it's free. For now dh will not pay for blogging  although I would love the extra easy features of Typepad.
The templates are tweakable, but it takes extra time and HTML familiarity. I haven't had the time to make nice banners and figure out how to make those lovely sidebars with delicious book covers beckoning. 
My biggest complaint right now: I can't seem to get the timeframe to work when "Publish On" is checked. My settings for timezone have been wrong, and times I thought the entry was to be released it wasn't, or had been too soon.
But that's just a mere inconvenience.
So far, I like it quite well...but Amy has tried several. This is the only one that when I was searching around that pleased me the most.
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Jennifer G. Miller
Wife to  & ds1  '03 & ds2  '07
Family in Feast and Feria
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amyable
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Expert...I like the sound of that.
Seriously though, Jenn told you all I would have said practically!
I like blogspirit mainly for the reason Jenn gave - it looks and acts much like Typepad, but is free.
I used to use blogger, but with what I wanted to do now, I wanted the easier sidebar lists to have blogrolls, book lists, etc. Blogger doesn't do that as easily. I don't know why, but I just LOVE seeing the book or DVD covers on everyone's blogs and I wanted that for myself. :) Blogspirit does that just as easily as Typepad, I think.
I'm not sure what else to say - do you have any specific questions? It's free if you just want to sign up and fool around with it - you can then just delete it if you don't like it after all. 
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Amy
mom of 5, ages 6-16, and happy wife of
The Highly Sensitive Homeschooler
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amyable
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Oh and I got freaked out when things were in French at first but I gathered that I had to check my email for an activation code. After that you can go into your blog and change your language to English.  There was enough in English to very easily figure out how to do that.
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Amy
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Taffy
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I've recently moved to BlogSpirit for all of the reasons already mentioned. I was on homeschooljournal.net which is also very good but I was spending too much time trying to figure out code for adding links, etc. With BlogSpirit I don't have to know hardly any code at all!
I'm looking forward to getting a digital camera to have even more fun with it!
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Susan
Mom to 5 on earth and 1 in heaven
Susan's Soliloquy
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Mary G
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Amy, Jenn and Taffy
Thanks so much for the input. Are any of you Amazon associates -- is that a problem to use those links? Since I know some html, tweaking should be easy then?
I've been reading a book called, Blogging in a Snap that goes through tweaking Blogger -- I'm thinking much of the html code would be the same.
Any other comments.
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MaryG
3 boys (22, 12, 8)2 girls (20, 11)
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Taffy
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Mary,
I'm an "Amazon Associate". Not only is it easy to put the links on (I am someone who knows virtually NO HTML), I really like the appearance a lot more - more neutral and less like an advertisement.
Just my opinion,
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Susan
Mom to 5 on earth and 1 in heaven
Susan's Soliloquy
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amyable
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Hi Taffy - I just checked on your blog and when you hover over your book links, the amazon link says "blogspirit-20" which means that blogspirit is getting the money.
If you personally have signed up with Amazon Associates, you'll want to get your own link in there.
I don't know of an easy way to do it, but if you'd like, I can tell you the complicated way, lol. 
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Amy
mom of 5, ages 6-16, and happy wife of
The Highly Sensitive Homeschooler
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JennGM
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amyable wrote:
Hi Taffy - I just checked on your blog and when you hover over your book links, the amazon link says "blogspirit-20" which means that blogspirit is getting the money.
If you personally have signed up with Amazon Associates, you'll want to get your own link in there.
I don't know of an easy way to do it, but if you'd like, I can tell you the complicated way, lol. |
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Sigh...I want a nice, neat little url like on Lissa's or Elizabeth's blogs. When I "get a link" from Associates it's a mile long, and then it doesn't seem to keep my id in there. Any help for me?
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Jennifer G. Miller
Wife to & ds1 '03 & ds2 '07
Family in Feast and Feria
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amyable
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I haven't had any luck using the long links supplied by Amazon.
What I've been doing is using one basic link format and putting in the ISBN and my username myself... it's something like http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/theISBN#/myusername/
That first part up to the isbn# is always the same.
I don't know if this is valid, but it's the only thing that works. I use the pictures that blogspirit supplies through amazon, though. I had to tweek the "list template" to get blogspirit's amazon link to go away and then I have to edit each and every book that comes up to supply my own link. I don't know if it is worth it! 
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Amy
mom of 5, ages 6-16, and happy wife of
The Highly Sensitive Homeschooler
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Cay Gibson
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JennGM wrote:
| When I "get a link" from Associates it's a mile long, and then it doesn't seem to keep my id in there. Any help for me? |
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Jenn,
Try Tinyurl for shorter links.
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Cay Gibson
"There are 49 states, then there is Louisiana." ~ Chef Emeril
wife to Mark '86
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Cay Gibson
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I see there is a Blogging for Dummies book.
Has anyone ever read any Dummy books? I'm wondering if it would cover everything we need to know.
Thanks for mentioning this book, Mary. I wasn't aware there were books on blogging.  Duh! I should know better. Where there's a market, there's a book.
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Cay Gibson
"There are 49 states, then there is Louisiana." ~ Chef Emeril
wife to Mark '86
mom to 5
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Cay Gibson
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Amy,
Could you post here how you did the banner on your blog? Step by step please.
I've paid with typepad for 2006 and really love it so I'll stay with it through the year. But I'm always looking for a freebie and blogspirit does have the same *look* as typepad.
Thank you!
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Cay Gibson
"There are 49 states, then there is Louisiana." ~ Chef Emeril
wife to Mark '86
mom to 5
Cajun Cottage Under the Oaks
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Mary G
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Cay Gibson wrote:
I see there is a Blogging for Dummies book.
Has anyone ever read any Dummy books? I'm wondering if it would cover everything we need to know.
Thanks for mentioning this book, Mary. I wasn't aware there were books on blogging. Duh! I should know better. Where there's a market, there's a book. |
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Cay,
You know me -- always try to find a book to answer my questions !
The Blogging for Dummies book is great -- Brad Hill talks about the differnt kind of blog spaces out there: merely social (AOL and Yahoo!360), Blogger and Typepad as the next step up, and then go alone software when hosting your own site. He also gives lots of tips for tweaking and making the blog experience better for you (including advertising your blog and driving an audience to your site). The same guy has written others about blogging including podcasting, moblogging, etc.
He does a good job of giving you the vocabularly you need and the answers to most questions.
The other book, Blogging in a Snap is focused on using Blogger and tweaking it to do what you want.....
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MaryG
3 boys (22, 12, 8)2 girls (20, 11)
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stefoodie
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wordpress.com is another free service you might want to look at -- LOTS of free, really pretty templates too. and of all the blogging software i've tried, it's my favorite. though you'll still need to put in the amazon links yourself.
if you don't mind paying for a host though and don't mind tweaking things yourself, wordpress actually has a plug-in you can install and activate. once you've got it set up to put your associates id in, it's an automatic thing. there's a window that comes up with a search field, then once you've got the item you just press select and "insert in post" and you're done. it's a great time-saver.
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stef
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amyable
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Cay Gibson wrote:
Amy,
Could you post here how you did the banner on your blog? Step by step please.
I've paid with typepad for 2006 and really love it so I'll stay with it through the year. But I'm always looking for a freebie and blogspirit does have the same *look* as typepad.
Thank you! |
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I'm kicking myself Kay, because I know I PM'ed you the directions about a week ago, but now it isn't even in my outbox so I think I must have done something wrong, and I didn't save a copy.
Here is what I remember. Go into your blogspirit account, click on "design" then "advanced settings". Then choose "edit" for the stylesheet section.
In the HTML you will see several places where it says /*code for your own banner here*/. To get the picture where mine is, above the title of my blog, look for something similar to the following
#banner-img {
display: none;
background: #990066;
displa y : block;
backgr ound: #990066 url(http://amyable.blogspirit.com/images/larssonwindow1.jpg) no-repeat;
background-position: center;
height : 350px;
Put in the color codes you want (I don't think I changed what they had for mine) and your own URL.
Your URL for your picture will go where I have the http://amyable stuff. You can upload a file into your blogspirit account if you go into your control panel.
You have to make sure the HTML correct for it to work though, sometimes there are spaces where there shouldn't be, or semicolons missing, etc.
I advise you to cut and paste the whole HTML jargon of your stylesheet into a Word document BEFORE you go messing with it. Ask me how I know . That way if you botch it beyond hope you can just replace it with a working version that you had copied. I would copy a version every time I got something to work that I was trying to change (i.e. as soon as I liked the color scheme, then again when I got a picture in, then again when I got it centered, etc.) But that is because all the HTML I know I taught myself by fooling around with blog templates.
HTH, please ask questions to clarify where I wasn't clear.
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Amy
mom of 5, ages 6-16, and happy wife of
The Highly Sensitive Homeschooler
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JennGM
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stefoodie wrote:
| wordpress.com is another free service you might want to look at -- LOTS of free, really pretty templates too. and of all the blogging software i've tried, it's my favorite. though you'll still need to put in the amazon links yourself. |
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I always thought it cost $$ so I didn't even look into Wordpress...I'll have to take a peek.
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Jennifer G. Miller
Wife to & ds1 '03 & ds2 '07
Family in Feast and Feria
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Taffy
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amyable wrote:
Hi Taffy - I just checked on your blog and when you hover over your book links, the amazon link says "blogspirit-20" which means that blogspirit is getting the money.
If you personally have signed up with Amazon Associates, you'll want to get your own link in there.
I don't know of an easy way to do it, but if you'd like, I can tell you the complicated way, lol. |
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Thanks for this Amy, I didn't realize this at all!  I'll try out the advice you gave Jenn and see if I can't change this...
Maybe I'll go back to a wordpress blog after all!
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Susan
Mom to 5 on earth and 1 in heaven
Susan's Soliloquy
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Lissa
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JennGM wrote:
| Sigh...I want a nice, neat little url like on Lissa's or Elizabeth's blogs. When I "get a link" from Associates it's a mile long, and then it doesn't seem to keep my id in there. Any help for me? |
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When I get the AA code for the links, it's really long too. A whole paragraph full! But I've never had any trouble with it...I just paste it into my post and alter the linked text if necessary.
Jenn, want to walk through the steps of your process and see if we can pinpoint where the trouble is?
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Lissa
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Mary G
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Amy -- I just noticed your cool banner -- especially the knitting on the table -- where did you get the graphic?
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MaryG
3 boys (22, 12, 8)2 girls (20, 11)
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4Real Forums : Living Learning
Topic: Blogspirit Users
