Help
This page contains help information for navigating AKA Bird Nerd Blog.
AKA BIRD NERD HELP
Above you see a header for the AKA Bird Nerd Blog. Let’s start off by talking about the yellow bar with all the links. A link is a part of a blog that, when clicked, will take you to another screen or to another website. When you move your mouse over a link, your cursor changes from an arrow to a hand.
Home
The Home link takes you to the blog’s main page. The main page includes the most recent postings. Five to ten are usually shown. To go to more postings, you go to the bottom of the screen and click on next page. The last posting made is always at the top of the list, and then the postings below that one are shown in the order they were posted. You may access posts in a linear fashion using this method, but remember the very first posting would be at the bottom of the list – usually several screens deep. There are ways to circumnavigate this linear method by using the blog sidebar. I’ll tell you how later.
The photo above shows a typical photo post. If this were a text post (without any photo), it would look the same except with no photo. Duh!
A posting has a Title – shown in big yellow letters – and a post. In this case the post has an uploaded photo that is part of the post. This posting has hardly any words, but I could have written many paragraphs under the photo. The date and who posted the post is added by the system. The poster does not write this data.
Notice the photo has a yellow border. That means it is a link and will probably show you a larger photo when you click on it. I’ll be talking more about that later. The Tag – Field Guide Photo – tells you which category this post is in. I’ll tell you more about categories later. You will not see the word “Edit” unless you made the post. You cannot edit someone else’s post. If the yellow “Edit” is shown, you can click on it to edit your posting.
You can click on “Add Comment” to write a comment about this posting. If the author of the post does not wish to receive any comments, when you click on the link it will say that Comments Are Closed.
If you click on the Title of the post (the big Yellow Letters), you will be taken to a screen that shows just this one posting, all the comments written about it (if any) and a comment box for you to add a comment if you want to. If you click on the category tag (in this case Field Guide Photo), you will see all the posts on the system that have the same category.
About Us
Click on the “About Us” link to learn more about the owners of this blog/website.
Contact
Click on “Contact” to leave a message to the blog owners. Feel free to ask questions, make suggestions and point out mistakes.
Field Guide
The “Field Guide” link will take you to a list of bird species. Click on the name of the species group to see more. You will get the common name of the bird, the scientific name, and some links that will take you to an online Field Guide at Cornell University, Seattle Audubon Society or the What Bird website. You can also search for a photo of a particular bird. I will talk about using the “Field Guide” to its fullest potential separately.
Fun
The “Fun” section is one of my favorites. You will find Word Search puzzles, Scramble Puzzles, Crossword Puzzles, and Quizzes. The Daily ID Quiz gives you a different bird each day to practice your ID skills. In fact, all the puzzles are designed to help improve your bird ID skills. Guest Photographers have made their photos available to make these fun activities possible.
Gallery
Click on “Gallery” to see information about the photos posted by David and Shawn, and how to access just David’s photos, or just Shawn’s photos.
Guest Photographers
Click on this link for a listing of all the photographers that have graciously allowed us to use their photos. I’ll take this opportunity to again state that photos used here are by permission, and no photo may be copied for any purpose without the permission of the photographer. Click on the photographer’s name to see if a website link is provided.
Help
Clicking on “Help” brings you to this page.
Links
Click on this link to take you to the “Links” page. I have listed a few of my favorite websites along with a description about the link.
Well, that concludes the explanation of the links listed in the Header.
The Sidebar
The sidebar can easily be changed by adding little programs called Widgets. Sidebars are usually quite long because we bloggers just have to have that next cool Widget we find. I’m going to go over pieces of the sidebar as currently shown on the blog.
The big yellow square has something to do with RSS Feeds. Being new to blogging, I’m not sure how it’s used.
The Search box is where you can type in a category or keyword to search the blog for a match. A list of all the posts or pages that have matches will be displayed. Click on any Title to go to the location of the post or page. Links don’t show up in the search results. You have to click on the Title to get to the actual place where the post or page resides to be able to click on a link.
The calendar Widget is really important. The days that a posting was made are shown in yellow. Let’s say you are a regular visitor, but you missed a couple days. Just click on the day to see what was posted. This can help you go back to the very beginning of the blog and move towards the present. You can see that the very first posting on this blog was done on Feb 4, 2008. When a month passes, you can go back to it. It will show up below the current calendar.
Category Descriptions
At present I have eight categories. Categories are extremely important when it comes to blog navigation.
Bird Photo should take you to every photo that is a bird. I know that Shawn consistently uses this category. I have not consistently used it. In the beginning I was toying with the idea of allowing others to post on the blog and this category was primarily for them. However, it needs to stay because Shawn has used it.
Field Guide Photos are used to help you identify birds. Most, if not all, of the field guide photos were taken by guest photographers – with permission.
The Field Trip category is for bird walks in particular places where we want to talk about the place as well as the photos.
The Gallery is for David’s photos only. If you click on Gallery you will only see the photos posted by David.
The General category is for posting an article, to initiate a topic or to post a non-bird photo. It could be about binoculars, a good bird site, photography equipment, an interesting article.
I have a link to the Links page up in the Header. The category Links is different. It is strictly for posting. If you have a favorite birding (or related) link that I don’t have listed, please provide the link URL (address) and a description of the site. Leave comments open so others may respond to your posting – add their two cents worth!
The News category is basically a way for me to keep you informed of changes to the blog and to AKA Bird Nerd as a whole.
Click on the Weigelt Photos link to see all postings by Shawn.
The Power of Categories – How To Use Them To Navigate
Get into the habit of using the Category links for navigation. To see everything posted in the Bird Photo category, just click on Bird Photo. To see Field Guide photos click on Field Guide. To see David’s photos, click on Gallery. To see all the text postings (or non-bird photo postings), click on General. To see if anyone has shared a link, click on Links. To keep abreast of any changes to the blog/website, click on News. To see all of Shawn’s photos and postings, click on Weigelt Photos.
Pages
The Pages section of the sidebar is almost a duplication of the links you find up in the Header. I’ve already explained them at length. The only additional thing I want to point out is that the Field Guide page category has sub-categories. There will be a long list of them when the guide is completed. It will make my sidebar a mile long, but it will make navigation to certain species information much easier. At the time of writing this, there were 18 sub-categories. You can skip the Field Guide main page by clicking directly on Grebes, for example.
It is important to know that Pages are different than postings. Postings are date specific, and listed in reverse order. Pages are created by Shawn and I. The only way to comment on them is to send us a contact message.
Here are the next 4 sections of the Sidebar as currently configured. The Archives is a long list and go back to February of 2008. You can go back to previous months to see the postings as their links show up.
Don’t ask me why the next section is called Meta. You can ignore it. Basically it is used for Shawn and I to sign in and out of the blog.
The third section is a quick way to go to the links I have on the Links page. You have to click on the Links link up in the Header to see descriptions of these websites.
The Blogroll is a place where Shawn and I can put a link to our favorite places. The links don’t always lead you to a bird related website/blog. After all, it is our blog!
WordPress Stuff is mainly for us as well.
The next two sections show Recent Posts and Recent Comments.