Before we do that though, it's time to announce the winner of last week's give away! Ms. Random Number Generator, do your thang!
Amy has a super faboulous blog with such great eye candy (look at her quilts for crying out loud! BEAUTIFUL!!!) it'll make you want to slap your mama (but don't- that's disrespectful). We're also Instagram friends so I'm super excited that she won this give away. Congratulations, Amy! :)
Now- onto the lovin'!
The peeps at the Cincinnati Modern Quilt Guild meeting a couple of weeks ago shared all of the ways that we crafty folk can use social media to get encouraged in our hobbies! When they pulled up Google Reader on the computer a picture displayed from Google stated that Google Reader isn't going to be available after July of this year. There was gnashing of teeth! Ripping of clothes! It was dirty, people! Not really, I just like to reference the Old Testament whenever possible. :)
Seriously though, everyone was stumped! How are we going to read blogs now?! Google Reader is such a great way to read blogs all on one page without having to click around all day and for an organization magnet like myself, that's key- I love having all of the blogs that I read in one place! Enter the best solution I have found, friends- bloglovin'. (The blog title is all making sense now, isn't it?
Why do I love bloglovin'? Let me count the ways. First, let's do a little comparison of how the actual website works. Below is a screen shot of Alicia Paulson's Posie Gets Cozy blog-
Seriously, this blog is about as cute as they come! Alicia and her husband, Andy, are adorable, their baby is adorable and- wait for it- their dog and kitty cat are adorable too. I seriously could not love them more! I'm going to stop talking about them so as to not sound like a stalker, but you get my drift.
Anywho, see how the screen shot above shows how pretty Alicia's blog is? There's the light blue background, pretty picture on the top and lots of gadgets on the sidebars. Here, however, is how her site- and the same post titled Little Leaves and Petals- looks when it's opened in Google Reader.
Crazy, huh? No light blue background, no picture on the top, no sidebar prettiness- nada. However, I was fine with the lack of prettiness on Google Reader because all I had to do was log in and on the left hand side would be a list of all of the blogs I follow with how many posts by them I haven't read. All I had to do was click on that blog name and, badda bing badda boom, the post appeared on the right! Lack luster as it was, it was pretty darn efficient. Wellllllllll, friends, bloglovin' is just as easy to use as Google Reader AND it keeps the integrity of the posts.
When you log into bloglovin' (you sign up here first), you can either import all of your Google Reader blog subscriptions all at once or copy and paste URLs into the "Search for blogs..." option. Once you are following blogs, this is how your bloglovin' screen will look when you log in
On the left are all of the blogs that you follow, like on Google Reader, and on the right are snippits of posts that you haven't read. To read posts, just click on a blog name on the left. When the blog you've clicked on pops up on the right, click the post title and then that post will pop up in another screen. Here's how the same Posie Gets Cozy post looks when I click on it in bloglovin'-
It looks JUST like the actual post on the website- pretty blue background and all!!! Huge difference from the dumb Google Reader look huh, To advance to the next unread post you have, just click the button that I've highlighted in the picture above. Also, to leave a comment you just scroll to the bottom of the page and leave a comment like you would if you were outside of bloglovin' and on the actual blog website. Big improvement from Google Reader, because if you wanted to leave a comment on posts read there you had to scroll to the top of the post you were reading in GR, click on the title, be re-directed to the external site and leave a comment.
So, while I was one of the teeth gnashers and burlap wearing folks over the Google Reader shut down, I have changed my ways yo! bloglovin' is definitely mucho better than GR- the integrity of the posts and site are consistent, you get to see all of the site pretties and not a dumb blank GR page, you can easily togle between unread posts and leaving comments is much easier. If you're looking for a new reader, check it out! Oh, and you can follow {me and elna} while you're at it by clicking here. :)
Haven't decided how to keep following people yet, electronically speaking. In the wild I'm an excellent tracker :)
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