Last minute tips! The #atozchallenge is almost here!

We are just days before the Challenge begins. I hope everyone is feeling pretty good at this point and is ready to go!

Here are a few tips, in no particular order!


**SELL YOUR BLOG POST! Funny or serious. Intriguing or cryptic. Tell us something to make us click on your link!

For example...

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Name: Heather M. Gardner
Blog: The Waiting is the Hardest Part
A to Z Theme: Zombies and the people that love them.
Letter D: Decay. It was bound to happen. How to remove those pesky stains.
Link: [Add link]
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** Use the hashtag!! #atozchallenge

** While you're searching through the participants comments, you can either right click on a link to open in a new tab, or highlight/right click to open in a new tab. Either way, open links in a new tab so you don't lose the main page you're working on.

** You don't have to post a 'clickable link' in the comments. You can copy/paste a link in the comments. Either way, just make sure its to your individual letter blog post and not to your main blog page.

** If you like the post you're reading on someone's blog, SHARE it with the world.

** Readers may want to SHARE your post with the world. Make it easy for them. Do you have social media links on your blog for them to use?

**Make it easy for readers to leave comments on your blog. Turn off everything that might hamper them for April!

** On the Main Challenge blog, double check where you're posting your letter blog post. (You don't want to place it/reply under another participants comment).

GOOD LUCK and HAVE FUN!

Announcing: The A To Z Challenge Simulcast Blog!

You might recall last year that I wrote a post on this blog that talked about using IFTTT to simulcast a Wordpress blog onto a Blogger blog. Several of you asked if it were possible to go in the opposite direction, i.e. post to Wordpress whenever you post to Blogger. Of course it is, and Janet over at Janet's Smiles is doing that now.

We had discussed the possibility of doing that with this blog, and at the time decided no, there was already too much confusion, and we were already throwing too much new stuff at you as it was. We rethought this when we started getting messages that Wordpress people were having trouble posting comments to this blog, most recently from Linda over at Life In Progress, who asked "is there any chance you could get a WordPress blog up and running simultaneously?"

Consider it done.

If you're having problems posting comments to the Blogger site (this one here), you can post your comments to the new Blogging from A to Z April Challenge simulcast blog at

http://atozchallenge.wordpress.com

Please keep a couple of things in mind:

• http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com is and will remain the official blog for the A to Z Challenge. We have only established the Wordpress simulcast blog as a way for you to post comments if you can't post them to the official one. All that will be on the Wordpress blog will be duplicates of the posts on the official blog.
• Blogger users can comment at the Wordpress site. You will need to enter your name and email address (which, as always, will not be displayed). If you enter the URL of your blog, readers can click on your name and go to your blog.
• You won't have to do any fancy coding to leave the URL of your posts in the comments on the Wordpress site. Simply paste the URL into the comment, and Wordpress will make it clickable.

We hope this will make the process of leaving comments for the A to Z Team and others to read simpler and less aggravating.

In an upcoming post, I'll address the issue of leaving comments on both platforms.

If you have any questions, you can leave them for us on either blog.

This is a test post - please ignore

Testing new functionality. More to follow. Stay tuned!