A to Z tips - Keeping track of the blogs you visit during the #atozchallenge

Half the fun is the blogging.
The other half is the visiting.

It is basic A to Z etiquette to visit back the people that have visited you and left comments on your blog. In addition, we also recommend visiting a couple of people from the sign-up list every day, to promote blogging friendships and to support each other's work.

But even if you only visit 5 new blogs a day, keeping track of all of them can become daunting. Since the list numbers change over the course of the challenge as inactive blogs and broken links are deleted, simply visiting by number is not always the best way to go.

Here are some other things you can try. I have done them before and they worked for me, but you'll have to try to see which one works for you best:

1. Bookmark your favorites
Create a new folder in your Bookmarks on your browser, and bookmark any blogs you came across that you definitely want to visit again.
(I usually just clicked "Open all bookmarks", got my morning coffee and cereal while the browser loaded them, and then leisurely clicked through them every morning)

2. Follow / sign up
Even better: Sign up for the blog itself! Bloggers love to see their follower numbers go up during A to Z - they tell us that people didn't just walk by, they want to stay to read more. If you see a blog that you definitely want to keep reading, during A to Z and beyond, make sure to click Follow (if they have a Followers gadget), or sign-up for email notifications.

3. Feedly
If you want to take blog-following to a more organized level, create yourself a Feedly account. You can add any blog to it (Wordpress, Blogger or otherwise), organize them by themes, and it will put all of their new posts into one newsfeed you can easily look through.
WARNING: Feedly allows you to read blog posts without actually going to the blog site. Make sure you go to the actual blog and leave a comment there. It's only polite. 

Important reminder: Make sure to visit blogs that are below you on the list. If everyone starts at the top, people towards the end will get a lot less much deserved attention.

A to Z Tips - Creating a signature for the #atozchallenge

Here is a tidbit that you might find useful come April.

Visiting blogs and commenting on them is a huge part of the A to Z experience. And so is visiting back! If you want to make sure that people whose blog you commented on can find you and visit you back easily, it is very useful to have a hyperlink signature at the end of your comment.
Here is how that works:

Fill out this template with your own information:

[Your name or Twitter handle] from

<a href="yourblogaddress">Name of Your Blog</a>

You can add more lines if you have more blogs.
For example, my signature looks like this on code:

@TarkabarkaHolgy from

<a href="http://multicoloreddiary.blogspot.com">The Multicolored Diary</a>

<a href="http://hungarykum.blogspot.com">MopDog</a>

And looks like this when you see it at the end of my comments:

@TarkabarkaHolgy from
The Multicolored Diary
MopDog

IMPORTANT: SAVE YOUR SIGNATURE somewhere where you can easily find it and copy-paste it. Me, I have it saved under Drafts in my Gmail box. Every time I go visiting, I just Copy the code, and then Paste it at the end of my comments.

Also: Some commenting formats, like Disqus, don't read HTML. In those cases, just copy and paste your blog URL. The important thing is to leave an address so people you visited and easily visit you back, without having to sift through your G+ profile or your Blogger lists.

Where to Find Images for your #atozchallenge Posts

If you're like me, you LOVE having beautiful images in your blog posts. The addition of a carefully chosen photo can enhance the understanding of your words or add a funny context to make your blog post even more enticing.

“And what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversation?” 

And since I'm a book reviewer, photos and pictures come easy to me. I can simply download the cover of a book and slap it into my post. It's free to use to promote the author's book. 

See? Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy!

The next easiest way to incorporate photos into your blog is to take them yourself. I'm not a photographer and if I add a photo, it's usually one of my pooch.

Sometimes Bailey cooperates and sometimes he couldn't be bothered with my good-boy treats. So what's a blogger to do when in need of a photo and you lack the resources (or skills) for photos for your blog posts?

You turn to Google. To be sure, copyright infringement is a real thing so you can't go around downloading photos and images and adding them to your posts. You must use copyright-free images. There are plenty of websites around and because I'm a librarian, I've done the research for you! 

You can start with Wikipedia. They maintain a list of public domain resources that are free.

The Library of Congress also maintains resources. Theirs are more historically oriented and take some digging. 

Viintage.com offers stunning beautiful images of old posters and other, well, vintage type images.  I used the word image alot in that sentence did i?  

One of my favorites is morguefile.com which contans photos of just about everything. Some are random photos taken by regular people and some are quite good.  

I just downloaded this beautiful image from pixabay.com 

I could go on but I suspect you're getting the idea. Go to the list at Wikipedia (see above) and check out their resources.

Have fun finding resources! 

There are no bad pictures; that's just how your face looks sometimes.” 

― Abraham Lincoln