Saturday 9 July 2011

Following

You know how it is, you think you know how to do things and then something comes along and shows you you're an 'innocent'. Well this morning was one of those.

I have several people who I 'met' on my OU creative writing course who decided to start writing blogs or pick up their blogs again when the course ended. Some here on Blogger.com and some on Wordpress. I found no problem at all in becoming a follower on Blogger, but I didn't know how to become one on Wordpress. I think each site has an inbuilt hatred of its rival and tries to make it difficult, so no pointers are given.

This morning I was looking at one particular blog, Solway Scribbles, and I couldn't work out how, even though it was on Blogger, I didn't show up as a follower as I had become one the first day it opened for business. On a bit of investigation I discovered that Blogger randomly decided whether or not I would become a 'public' or a 'private' follower. The reason it has to be random is that I've never said that I wanted to be one or the other but assumed that if I pressed the follower button it would let me be a follower, but on Solway Scribbles I was in a different part of the follower bit than all the others. It turns out that for all the other blogs I follow, bar one other, Blogger decided to make me a public follower, but for this particular site and also for Eileen Thornton's it made me a private follower. Why? I haven't a clue. But it led me to part of the Blogger site that I never knew existed.

The outcome of all of this is I've discovered how to follow who I want where I want. I've also discovered how to make myself private or public. I've also discovered that I feel a bit of a idiot (no comments thank you Mr Bassman!) because I've been writing my blog now since February 2010 and I never looked beyond the actual writing it bit.

So to Eileen and Mari, you weren't really being followed privately... well you were, but not of my doing. Well ok it was my doing, but not knowingly.

And here ends my lesson in following, and if you all follow all of that then you're doing well!

4 comments:

  1. Thank you for the follow, Vee. I noticed that I had another follower, but for some reason, I can't see who my followers are, not even when I go from the dashboard. I can't even see your followers. It must be something to do with my brower, as they all come up when Phil looks at my blog on his PC. I guess these things are sent to try me, rather like our TV saga.

    Cheers!! More wine is needed, I think.

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  2. Ah access at last! Are you sure you weren't locking me out? I hope your RSI is improving. Obviously caused by too much writing (nothing to do with computer games). I had the same hidden followers prob.as Eileen but found out that they can be seen in Google chrome but not Internet explorer. Thanks for investigating Vee, I look forward to being able to comment on your posts now.

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  3. Well thank goodness that one worked Mari. I was getting a bit worried in case Blogger was randomly deciding who could comment or not.

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