How to Use This Site
This may seem like a useless page. I mean, how hard can it be to use a blog site, right? But, there are some extra features on here that I want to be sure you know about. In other words, there's more here than meets the eye. ("Trans-for-mers ... ")
There are three parts to the this one-page guide: the site's Sections, the Site Tools, and the Blog Tools. Scan them all, so you don't miss anything important or interesting. See you at the bottom of the page!
Sections of the Site
The site is divided into the following pages or sections, all of which you get to through the top nav bar:
- Home -- This is the front page, and is where Bruce's Blog lives. Most sites will link here, and the RSS feed is from here. If you ever get lost wandering around the site, just click the Home link at the top and you'll be right back to the front page.
- Poems -- This is a page with links to other pages. It contains poems I've written as well as ones I like. You can read a brief description of each poem before leaping out to it. Most of them open in a new window or tab. If you want to comment on the poem, or on poetry in general, you can click the link at the bottom of the poem to go to the P/E Comments page, or you can go straight there by clicking the Comments link on the nav bar.
- Essays -- This is another page with links to child pages, just like the Poem page. It contains essays I've written, and also ties to the Comments page.
- Poem/Essay Comments -- This is a place to leave comments on individual poems or essays, or on poetry or writing in general.
- About -- As the saying goes, "duh" ... the ubiquitous "About" page, with notes about the site and about me.
- Guestbook -- More duh. Sign in if you'd like, to let me know you were here.
- The Bruce Page -- Somewhat experimental page with widgets and other stuff I'm trying out. I hope to clean this up and make it a collection of links and such to more info about me and to other places I hang out.
- Email Bruce -- Still more duh. Drop me a note if you want it kept private, as opposed to the guest book.
Site Tools
This is a Squarespace site, and as such it comes with some nice tools built-in. In addition, I've added some I've found that I think people will find useful. If you see something on another site that you think I should add, let me know.
- Email Updates -- click here to go to the sign-up form for email updates, a weekly listing of new stuff.
- Blog Filter -- click a link and only see blog entries in that category. Nice if you only care about reading a part of my eclectic rantings.
- Recent Posts -- last 10 blog posts in all categories
- Site Search -- a site-wide search tool, with some advanced capabilities.
- RSS Feed -- the feed for the blog (only). I can also do a feed for just a single category; if you want that, drop me an email and ask.
- Universal Bookmarker -- click to add to a number of bookmarking tools and sites.
- Social Media Links -- links to me on Facebook and Twitter
- Login -- only for me, so I can get to the admin section.
Blog Tools
They're not real obvious, but at the bottom of each blog post are a number of tools you can use. Here's what they look like, with a brief explanation:
From the top and left:
- Date and time of the post
- Comment link, with the total comments on this post
- ShareThis link, so you can quickly share the post to a number of social media and bookmarking sites
- Email link to email the post
- Print link to print just the post
- Printable view -- if you are inside the blog post, you'll also see the "Printable Page" link.
- Category (one or more) that the category is in. If you click the category name, you will get a list of posts in that category (like the filter on the right).
- Tags for this post. If you click one of the tags, you will get a list of posts with that tag.
Well, there you have it -- all you need to be an expert user of brucemaples.com! Spend some time looking around, and come back often. I'm glad you dropped by!
