Thursday, October 12, 2017

A Couple of Blogging Tips

Here are two tutorials; the first is the tutorial for how to find out some stats on your blog. Normally I rarely pay attention to these, but during giveaways, it's nice to determine whether the person picked actually does follow you if they are getting an extra entry for doing so, right? You know how you can subscribe to favourite blogs by email so you never miss a post; well, as a blogger, how do you find that list of subscribers to your blog? I use blogger, so I do not know if this applies to Wordpress or other blog formats. Disclaimer: I am no tech savvy person! All I know is from Googling stuff or trial and error.

1. First of all, go to feedburner.google.com. You may have to sign in to your Google account. Once you do, you should get a screen like this:
2.  Click on your blog name. It will take you to the Feed Stats Dashboard where there are four tabs. You will automatically be in the Analyze tab (I love Troubleshootize - they have a bit of a sense of humour no? Look at the phrase after 'My Feeds' in the photo above!
Click on the Subscribers tab on the left side of the page.
3. Scroll down (under the green circle) to Feedburner Email Subscriptions and click on it. You will see 'Manage Your Email Subscriber List' pop up. Click on it. The page looks like this (I've scrolled down part way, but cut off the first actual email address to protect that person's privacy):

Note that you can get to this page by clicking the Publicize tab and going to the left menu and clicking on 'Subscription Management' if you prefer. You will see that I have 461 subscribers, but on the first page it shows 385. I believe that is because some of the subscribers never complete the subscription process. You sign up, and then you get an email to confirm your subscription, right? I think some people never confirm it. I'm pretty sure that in the status column beside the subscriber's email address 'unverified' means that the person did not confirm. Feel free to correct me in the comments below if I don't have this right.  Note that you have the power to both delete a subscriber, and to deactivate delivery of your posts to a subscriber. 😮😳

It is pretty easy to scroll through the list to confirm a winner's subscription. You can click 'Email Address' to sort alphabetically, or 'Start Date' to sort by date.

Hope this helps!
To find your followers on bloglovin', go to your profile and click on Followers. Easy! However, there doesn't seem to be a list format, or a sort feature...

picmonkey woes

The day I had to send my tutorial for Let Your Star Shine for publication on Sew In Love With Fabric, Tish texted me to say picmonkey was apparently no longer free.  wtf was my response and panic ensued.  Once I calmed down, and no more bad words were flying around, my thoughts went like this:

There is a way to edit photos on my laptop...😼 ...sigh, but I still have to bring them in from iCloud...

or...can I do it right in iCloud?🔮...

... or wait, could I do it on my iPhone?🙌🙏💪

A quick Google and yip-yip-yippee I could. Yay!!🎉🎊 Now I don't have to rely on a third party, be at their whim as to them suddenly charging me for their service like picmonkey, or suddenly removing the ability to embed a link on a button I make, like photobucket, grrr.

Here is the second tutorial for today's post.

If you are like me, and take your quilt photos with your iPhone, simply do this:
1. Bring up the photo on your phone.  Tap 'Edit'.
2. To enhance the photo, tap the wand icon in the top right. It turns golden.
3. Tap the little circle with 3 dots in it, aka apparently a hamburger. Then tap the felt pen 'Markup' icon.
4. To watermark your photo, tap the +. Tap 'Text' where you will get a textbox in which to write.
5. If you want a different font, tap the AA where you can choose, and you can use the slider to resize it. Tapping the black circle (not a good colour on a black background, right) will allow you to choose the font colour. To write in the box, tap it, and tap 'edit' which will have your keyboard pop up.
6. To move the textbox, simply drag it where you want. Note that you need to touch the textbox to get the little side circles or 'handles' to appear if they have disappeared (ask me how I know) so that you can drag it to where you want it.

You can crop your photos too, very easily. Tap 'Edit'.
1. Now tap the crop/rotate icon at the bottom beside the word 'Cancel'. You can rotate, yes, but if you 'grab' as in put your finger on, one of the four corner frame thingies (great term, remember I'm no tech guru) you can pull in the corners to crop your photo. You can move the crop area wherever you want it by simply dragging it to the part of the photo you desire to keep.

Voilà! (French for 'there or here you go!' or 'here you are!' - I can hear my mother correcting my Canadian English to British English) just please don't write 'Viola!' thinking you've written a French word, because you haven't, that's either a member of the violin family or a flower, take your pick. 😁


One quick fabric tip (enough of the tech stuff!): did you know Connecting Threads (affiliate link) doesn't just sell their own line of fabrics? However, Emma and Myrtle by Amanda Jean of crazymomquilts and Glacier Peak, two new ones I particularly love, keep calling me. Just sayin'... A few months ago, I snagged several lines in the clearance section which I keep forgetting to show you:
As you can see from the one selvage I was sure to show, these are five pieces from 'Hazel' by Allison Harris. Under $5/yard, yes please and thank you!

Here are four pieces of various C&S as well as a Valori Wells, whose fabric I really like, although I don't own very much, hmmm...but this--?! Books! Blue! Into my cart it went in a flash. All under $5/yard.

Always pays (yourself, right?!) to check the sale or clearance section in quilt shops, be they online or IRL. What I particularly like about Connecting Threads is that they ship to Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom free if you spend $75. That's pretty darn sweet.



10 comments:

  1. Love those blues and aquas again

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  2. Bobs your uncle and fannys your aunt with the tech stuff . I had just said to Yvonne in an email I could do with a tutorial in blogger and up popped your post ! I knew connecting threads posted free to Canada but didn't know the uk . Nor did I know how to sign my photos . A great post all round for me !

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  3. Hah! I knew I could edit my iPhone photos but had no clue about the watermarks. Thanks!! I think it's because the little circle with three dots is so tiny I never noticed it before. :-\

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  4. I still need hand holding I guess, I still can't figure out how to see my followers from bloglovin. I feel as dumb as a box of rocks!

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  5. Great tips! I had that same reaction when I heard about picmonkey.

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  6. Thanks for sharing this! I'm going to go check it out. :)

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  7. Thanks for the tech tips! Connecting Threads is pretty much my go to (it's also on my banned list if I'm on a fabric diet. They are like dessert, way too tempting!).

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  8. Thank you for the tech tips. I’ll have to come back and read this again ..... the photo info sounds particularly useful. Have to see if I can follow your tips.
    Thanks again, Sandra.
    Barbara x

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  9. Good tips to follow and use, Sandra! One thing I wish Blogger would have is to tell us WHO unfollows our blog by name. They'll let us know we have an "unfollow", but the name is protected...grrrr. I don't have an iPhone, but I think I can do most of what you wrote about on my Samsung. Thanks so much!

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  10. Thanks for sharing the tutorial. Will definitely check it out. I was also not happy with picmonkey. I'm temporarily using be funky until I find something else.

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