The Blog Answerman

Whatever you do ladies and gentlemen here in the United States, if you are registered to vote please do so.  This is the biggest election in our country’s history and We The People need to be heard loud and clear in Washington D.C.

It is time to send a message to those who would rather do things their way instead of listening to the public who put them into office in the first place.  It is time to take control of our country back from people who obviously don’t know what they’re doing.

Please vote everyone!  Vote like your life depends on it because it may do just that.

Despite having quite a few features available, the Today.com blogging platform is not without its limitations.  The good news is that there are free services available that can add all sorts of features to your blog just by signing up and adding some widget code to your blog.  Here are two of my recent favorites:

1.  Slideshare
This site allows you to add slideshows and even Microsoft PowerPoint presentations to your blog for free. Just sign up, upload and insert the embed code into your blog.  Simple!

2.  FeedBurner
It is your blog’s RSS feed on speed.  FeedBurner allows your blog’s feed to be served to thousands of new readers.  Their network is tremendous!

Okay, time for an important lesson for new bloggers and one that can sometimes be painful to learn on your own.  Today’s post is about a process known as hotlinking.

In particular we need to discuss the process of hotlinking to images on someone else’s server without their express consent.  For starters, it is stealing and although it happens every day it is illegal to do so.  Beyond that, such links can cause your page to load more slowly for the end users.

It was brought to my attention today that a new blogger used a hotlink for an image on their blog only to have their readers greeted by a pornographic image later.  That’s a common practice for people who have their images used without permission, so you can see it is a big problem.  On top of that, it costs the image owner money because you are using their server resources and they aren’t getting anything for it.

There’s a simple solution, so pay attention kids!

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Today’s question comes from Robin from U.S. Free Work From Home. Robin asks:

With the more widgets you have, does it make your pages load slower on this system database?  It could just be my service, as I have been having trouble with Charter.

In general, the more of anything that you have on your web page can cause it to load more slowly.  When it comes to widgets though it largely depends on the content of the widget itself, because it is increasing the number of locations called upon to get the information to the end user.

Let me try to explain it this way.   For the most basic of sites there are only two primary factors involved - point A (the web site host server) and point B (the end user’s Internet Service Provider).  A heavy load of traffic on point A can cause a slow down, just as a sluggish response on your ISP can.  To add to the potential bottleneck, consider this:  when a widget is requesting information from a point C (such as is the case on your website with Blogrush - the info loads from their servers when the page loads), any problems with point C’s server can cause the site to load slowly for any end user.

I hope this clears up any confusion; if not please don’t hesitate to ask me to clarify!

Answerman, I have a question about the Categories.  I set them up so that they are nested, with Parent categories and then categories that go underneath the Parents.When I write a post, the checklist for the Categories shows up as nested, but on the published blog itself, the list is flat — all of the Categories, whether they are Parent categories or lower-level ones, show up on the same level, in alphabetical order.

Is there any way I can change this so that the Categories list displayed on the pubished blog shows up in nested form?

I’m using the default template, in case that makes a difference.

Thanks, Answerman!

Ms. Terri
lostfan.today.com

Ms. Terri,

Unfortunately, the problem you are describing is related specifically to the design of the theme itself, and is a common one among many (if not most) of the themes that are currently available.  I have tested several of them myself after receiving your question.

I am going to continue to look into this issue further and see what can about it in the future, but for now I’m afraid to say that it is just something we are going to have to deal with for the time being.

The good news is that at least the categories show up alphabetically so they appear to have some semblance of organization even if it is not sub-categorized the way you intended.

Today’s question comes to us from Virginia, host of Conservative Politics Today. She asks for an explanation of the buttons that are available in the basic editor mode and how to use them.

The biggest difference you are going to notice - especially if you aren’t familiar with HTML coding - is that you have lost your WYSISYG (”What You See Is What You Get”) screen, so you are looking at raw code that may take some getting used to. That being said, it isn’t impossible to learn to use the basic mode, it just takes a little understanding, so let’s get down to it!

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