6 tips for writing better dialogue

Today I'm happy to welcome a guest post from Laura of WaldenMommy: Life Behind the Red Front Door. Laura is offering us advice on improving the dialogue in our fiction writing.

Guest post by Laura of WaldenMommy: Life Behind the Red Front Door

A few weeks ago I eagerly downloaded a book onto my e-reader. I was excited to read a new piece of fiction, but my excitement quickly turned to disappointment the deeper I got into the story. Clicking my tongue in disgust, I flipped through the story, hoping it got better. It didn't.

"If it's that bad, stop reading," suggested my husband, who was trying to read but couldn't because I kept making "I am completely disgusted" noises at the book.

"It's like a train wreck!" I complained. "The dialogue! It's horrible! Look at this!" I shoved the e-reader in his face and he blinked, trying to see the screen. "See that? Is that how people talk? Does anyone talk like that? NO!"

Quickly, he read the offending passage. "Uh, what is this book about? Is that a board room scene? They sound like they're in a business meeting." My groan was nearly loud enough to wake the baby.

"You just proved my point! The characters are supposed to be on a date!"

Dialogue is something that can make a book laugh-out-loud funny or so horrible you send the e-reader sailing out the window. I've muscled through books that were otherwise very good (great story line, interesting characters, realistic scenes) but were painful to read because of the dialogue. Character relationships were shown but lacked a well-rounded development because the dialogue between them was unnatural. Poor dialogue can put a damper on an otherwise fantastic novel.

Writing spoken words can be hard for some authors. However, here are some tips to polish your dialogue skills:

How to take a blogging break … but keep your blog going

Today I would like to welcome Dionna from Code Name: Mama, who has written a guest post about taking a rest from your blog while keeping up your readership.

Lauren's note: When I was expecting Alrik, I was brainstorming ways to continue my blog for the sake of my readers and my advertisers while taking a highly valued babymoon. Now Dionna's in the same boat! For you it might be a vacation or family trip or just some needed time to disconnect from the screen. These are Dionna's ideas for stepping away from the blog but keeping up a basic amount of posting.

New babies, vacations, outside obligations, blogging burn-out. All bloggers need a break sometimes — it can even be healthy to plan a regular break into your annual blogging schedule. If you're worried about losing readers and subscribers during your absence, here are some tips that might help ease your mind.

1. Republish your own guest posts.

Have you had guest posts published at other sites? Run those! Unless you made a deal to the contrary, you still retain the copyright. Just be sure to check the other site's guest post policy to make sure you're within its exclusivity terms.¹ Include a note that it's been republished from a post previously seen on the host blog, with the appropriate link.

2. Repost old posts.

Readership changes from month to month, year to year. If you've been blogging awhile, surely there are old posts you can rerun. If you republish posts from when you were a beginning blogger with less of a following, you may be pleasantly surprised by the increased response to old posts. Include a note again mentioning that it's been republished (and possibly edited) for any hardcore archive delvers among your readers.

3. Book guest posters who will promote their own posts.

If you're going to be AWOL from your blog, you'll likely also be taking a hiatus from social media. Call on guest posters you trust to promote their own posts on their blog, Twitter, and Facebook and to respond to commenters. Don't hesitate to tell them that part of the deal is they need to interact, since you'll be taking a break.

4. Skip regularly scheduled posts.

Do you have a habitual post you put up every week (Wordless Wednesday, recipes on Friday, Sunday Surf)? Skip it, and don't feel guilty AT ALL.

5. Schedule some quick shots.

Try to schedule a few posts ahead, but don't make them be ambitious. There's something to be said for short, 1-2 paragraph posts — think of them as the blogging equivalent to a witty or insightful status update.

6. Warn your readers.

Let your readers know in advance you will be taking a break. Turn it into a post asking for guest posters! Your readers will understand, and they will welcome you back when you return.

Dionna is a lawyer turned work-at-home mama of an amazing son and an incredible new daughter. You can normally find Dionna over at Code Name: Mama where she shares information, resources, and her thoughts on natural parenting, consensual living, eclectic learning, and compassionate advocacy.

Photo courtesy sylvie szafranski on flickr (cc)

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1 For example, here is the guest post "exclusivity" policy for Natural Parents Network: "While contributors to Natural Parents Network maintain the copyright to all their work, we ask that you not post your submission anywhere else (including your own blog) whether paid or unpaid, for 90 days after publication on Natural Parents Network. This exclusivity adds value for our readers without our asking you to give us copyright on your work. Similarly, we will wait 90 days to republish any previously published article."^↩

Lauren's link love: Keeping it real

This is me being a genuine weirdo.

Once again, I'm bringing you a Sunday Surf-like experience of the best recent links I've found for the bloggers and writers out there.

• "Social media interactions: How not to be an asshole" from This is Worthwhile: Your online space is your personal space. Everyone else can back off already. This was written to apply to Facebook, but I keep thinking of how it also applies to blogs and Twitter and so on as well. Jessica's saying, and I have to agree: If you don't like what someone's saying, why are you reading it? Don't get up in their face; just go away. What do you think about this perspective? (See also: The highly entertaining "post where I alienate people once again" at Scary Mommy. Assuming you don't mind the f-bomb used to hilarious effect.)
• "Blogging Basics: Where to Find Ad Buyers" from 3 Boys And A Dog: I thought looking to Facebook ads & other blogs' ads was such a clever idea for finding potential advertisers.
• "What Should Fiction Writers Blog About?" from There Are No Rules: On blogging topics as a novelist.
• "Manifesto: I Am Not a Brand" from MaureenJohnson on BlogHer: Be real.
• "The 8 Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers" from Annabel Candy on BlogHer: Yup.
• "Apostrophe's are for contraction's and possessive noun's, not plural's" from #!/usr/bin/mom: "Many people seem to find the proper use of apostrophes scary and confusing, but the concept is really quite simple: Apostrophes are for contractions and possessive nouns, not plurals. Remember that, and you'll likely use apostrophes correctly 99% of the time." My mother would love this article. She routinely writes letters and emails to the newspaper and advertisers about incorrect apostrophe usage, threatening to take away their apostrophe license.
• "My purse was stolen #bestthingthateverhappenedtome" from Dating After 40, Okay Hoping to Date After 40: Hilarious description of CSI overkill, and a clever way blogging can help promote a mystery (or any) novel.
• "How to Write a Query" from Agent Query, via Her Bad Mother on StumbleUpon: Thorough, step-by-step, and (thank goodness) encouraging list of exactly how to write a fiction query letter to an agent. I will be coming back to this when it's time to write mine!

Leave any recommended posts in the comments (yes, even your own — I'd love to take a look). Thanks for the great articles, all of the above, & happy reading!
Lauren

Lauren's link love

I've been participating in the Sunday Surf tradition over at Hobo Mama, as practiced by Authentic Parenting and Baby Dust Diaries. But sometimes I come across a link that has nothing to do with parenting but that I still want to share.

Finally, it occurred to me: The blogging- and writing-related ones can go right here!

Sometimes I do whole posts on articles that have been particularly helpful as a tutorial, but other times I've just enjoyed reading and learning from a post when I don't have anything specific to blog about in response (or not yet, anyway). So here's my chance to give a plug to those excellent articles I come across!

• "Being a professional blogger and respecting others" from I Like It Frantic: On how to deal professionally both with other bloggers and with PR reps. I've seen some questionable behavior out there in blogland recently, and I hope we can all learn from people like Holly to be mature and think before we speak something mean about another person or company. What I'd really like to see more of is people talking to bloggers or PR reps in private when there's a problem with them (or their company) rather than automatically resorting to public name-calling.
• "Blog Ego Armour (Why You Need It and How to Get It)" at How to Make My Blog, which is a guest post by Zoey of Good Goog: I seriously had never thought of sending out a bunch of guest posts as a strategy, but it's a great idea. Regardless of whether it's guest posts or manuscript submissions or agent queries, the writer's life is fraught with rejection. Here's a good way to bolster your own self-confidence so you can stick through all the nos and concentrate on the yeses!
• Hey, look, I have my own contributor's page on InkyGirl! For some reason, this amuses me. You know what else amuses me? Comics like this one.
• "Thoughts for a beginning biblio-blogger" from Common Places: Advice on the nitty-gritty of book blogging, from organizing books for review to finding books for free to channeling the oomph necessary to write, along with many helpful site recommendations to make the process easier
• "Dealing with Unpredictable Cash Flow" from Strocel.com: Great tips for dealing with a freelance or self-employed life
• "The 5 Big Hurdles Facing Bloggers On The Path To Revenue" from David Risley dot com: Point #1 especially. Shiny...
• "Printable CSS 3 Cheat Sheet" from Blogging with Amy: CSS hates me, and the feeling is mutual. I really should give myself a crash course through these links so I don't get so frustrated with my template.
• "How I Monetize My Blog (so far)" from Blogging with Amy: I love honesty about numbers!
• "How to Make the Most of Follow Friday" from carrie actually: #ff overwhelms me (so many lovely Twitterers to choose from!) so I usually enjoy being #ff'ed but skip out on passing along the love. I like this commonsense approach.
• "Blogging Basics: How to Get More Comments for Your Contests" from 3 Boys And A Dog: If you host giveaways, here are some tips. I thought it was an especially good idea to make an email list of people accepting email submissions for listings.

Let me know if you have any favorite posts or blogs to share! (Yes, it can be your own.) I'm always looking for good writers who blog about blogging or writing, either to subscribe to a feed or to follow on Twitter.

Thanks for the great articles, everyone, & happy reading!
Lauren

Photo courtesy channah on stock.xchng

Install the DoFollow Plugin for Wordpress

Today I would like to welcome Tom (aka CodeNamePapa), who has written a guest post about how to give your fellow bloggers and Carnival participants a little link love on your site. Tom is an IT guru, and he is one half of the natural parenting duo responsible for one amazing son. You can normally find Tom's wife Dionna over at Code Name: Mama where she shares information, resources, and her thoughts on natural parenting and life with a toddler.

[Editor's note: If you are a Blogger user, stay tuned for a follow-up post on DoFollow for Blogger.]

Hello. I'm here to talk about something you may or may not spend a lot of time thinking about: the inner workings of your comments' links for self-hosted Wordpress sites.¹

I could make this the shortest guest post ever and simply say, "Do your commenters a favor and install the DoFollow plugin from Semiologic." But, since I enjoy being "a tech nerd" (or whatever Dionna calls me) I've written plenty more on the subject at hand — if you'd like to have some background information (or don't want to install plugins willy-nilly) please read on.

NoFollow vs. DoFollow for Wordpress blog comments

I'm going to break this post up into three sections:

1. How do Google's bots search/scan my site, and what is PageRank?
2. What is NoFollow?
3. What is DoFollow?

1. Google bots & PageRank:

In a nutshell, part of how Google and other search engines work is as follows:

• Google has computers (aka "bots") set up to scan the internet for new pages and content.
• Eventually, a bot will scan your site.
• Once the bot has seen enough, it will use the links it finds and skip to the next page/article/site to scan.
• The bot uses links that may be pointing internally to your own site or they may point externally to someone else's site.

"PageRank" is Google's algorithm that determines how important/popular your site is.² A small part of the formula involves how many pages link to YOUR page. For example, if you have a brand-new site, you'll have low PageRank because no one else knows about your site yet. Older sites or sites that everyone knows about will have higher PageRank because they have more content, and more sites link to that content.

The description above is super-simplified and not a complete explanation of how it works (no one actually knows how it works — except maybe Morpheus), but for this post it will suffice in order to explain the next two points.

2. What is NoFollow?

NoFollow was created about 5 years ago to combat comment spam. Since it was implemented, the default Wordpress setup adds a "nofollow" attribute to any links in a comment. As a search bot reads through your site, it will see the links in comments — but once it sees rel="nofollow" it will ignore the link and move on.

The benefit of this is that should spam comments exist on your site, Google won't use those spammy links as evidence that the spam site has important content, and the spam site won't have its PageRank raised. Why does that matter? Because if a spam site has high PageRank, it could conceivably start appearing higher on a search results page when YOU use Google to find something. I think we can agree that it's a good thing for spam sites not to be boosted in search results.

NoFollow keeps the web a little safer by not rewarding spammers for getting their links displayed on your site and scanned by the search bots. This page — http://codex.wordpress.org/Nofollow — does a lot better job of explaining it in-depth.

You may be wondering, "What about real sites from real people? Shouldn't real sites from loyal readers experience the benefit that a link on my site would provide?" This is where the Do Follow plugin comes in.

3. What is DoFollow?

A link that is considered "dofollow" (i.e. a link that does not have a "nofollow" tag) would tell the Google bot "follow this link and have fun crawling that page, too." The link itself doesn't need to say rel="dofollow" — the bots will follow any link unless it's told not to (i.e. unless the link says rel="nofollow").

What plugin do we recommend to get rid of "nofollow" in comment links? We are using the Do Follow plugin from Semiologic. The plugin simply strips the "nofollow" tag from links in comments, thereby making that link "Do Follow" just like any links you'd place within your own content.

Further explanation can be found on Semiologic's site. You can install the plugin from your Wordpress Admin panel (Plugins, Add New, search for "Do Follow", and Install).

4. Don't Let Spammers Off So Easily

By using the DoFollow plugin, there is a slight risk that a spam link could be scanned by a search bot. Of course, there are additional steps available to keep this from ever happening.

One step is to configure Wordpress to hold all comments for moderation — this means you will sort out manually what comments are spam and which are real. You can also configure Wordpress to automatically approve a comment if that commenter has gotten a comment approved previously (these options are available in your Wordpress Admin screen under Settings, Discussion).

The best way to do the bulk of comment filtering is with the Akismet plugin. It's a tool that has saved us from countless hours sifting through comments to decide which are real and which are spam.

How do you install Akismet? Well, once Wordpress installs, Akismet is already installed, too! All you have to do at that point is activate Akismet from the plugins panel. If you are a Wordpress.com user (meaning they host your site for you) Akismet is running in the background 24/7 without your having to do anything.

Give a Little Link Love to Fellow Bloggers

By installing the DoFollow plugin (or similar), you are giving a little bit of link love to bloggers who take the time to leave comments on your site. Will it encourage people to comment? Probably not³ — but it's one small way you can thank those who provide feedback on your writing.

Have you installed DoFollow or a similar program? Have you noticed any differences?

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1 If you are a Wordpress.com user (you host your site through Wordpress.com rather than just using their blogging software on your own privately-owned site), it does not look like you can install plugins of this type.^↩
2 To see what your PageRank is, just visit the PageRank Checker.^↩
3Although you can find various badges and lists to advertise yourself as a DoFollow blog if you think it would inspire your readers.^↩

How to use FeedBurner to maximize your blog — Part 2: Advanced goodies

Paige of the Baby Dust Diaries is a NASA research librarian by day — and mother to Aellyn and inspiring blogger — well, I was going to say "by night," but let's say be accurate and say all the time. She has volunteered to write a few guest posts on topics that come naturally to her in her line of work. Visit Paige over at The Baby Dust Diaries for more on natural parenting, breastfeeding, gentle discipline, infertility, and life with a miracle baby.

How To Use FeedBurner To Maximize Your Blog — Part 2: Advanced Goodies

By Paige of The Baby Dust Diaries

In Part 1 we looked at the basics of why and how to start using FeedBurner. In this article we'll look at some cool things you can do now that you have a FeedBurner account.

1. FeedFlare

FeedFlare allows readers to share your post directly from their feed reader by putting social media sites directly in your feed. This service is not activated by default, but it is easy to use.

Click on the Optimize tab in FeedBurner and select FeedFlare.



In the list, select which services you want to include in your feed (there is also a site option which I won't look at in this article). Scroll down to the bottom to see what it will look like in your feed.



You can click and drag to rearrange your FeedFlares. I think going with the most used services is smart. You can add hundreds more that have been created by users. The one I recommend adding is Twitter which you can add by copying this URL: http://www.feedburner.com/fb/static/flareunits/twitthis.xml into the Add More FeedFlare box



Once you like the FeedFlares you've chosen and their order click on Activate.

2. BuzzBoost

Now we can get really fancy. My favorite service in FeedBurner is BuzzBoost. It seems like such a simple thing but it can be really powerful if you know how to use it. What BuzzBoost does is give you HTML code that will embed your blog's feed in any website in which you can put HTML. With one piece of code the feed will update automatically.

So, how does this help? Have you ever wanted to have a static page or widget on your blog with your posts on a particular topic? For example, I have pages on my blog on some of my main topics. For example, I blog a lot about Infertility and I have a static page with some introductory text and then I wanted to show my most recent posts related to Infertility. If you click on the page you can see I have a list of my Infertility blog posts. One way to do this is to manually type in the post title with link and a description each time you make a new topical post. Who wants to do that? BuzzBoost will do it for you automatically!

All you need to know is that you blogging platform has RSS feeds for each of your tags, labels, or categories and how to form them.

How To Find A Specific RSS Feed

In Blogger: Each of your labels has its own feed of the form http://xxx.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/labelname

For example, when I was on blogger I had the following feed for my label "infertility": http://babydustdiaries.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/infertility

In Wordpress: Each of your categories has its own feed of the form http://xxx.wordpress.com/category/categoryname/feed/

For example, in Wordpress I have the following feed for my category "infertility" http://www.babydustdiaries.com/category/infertility/feed/

Each of your tags also has its own feed of the form
http://xxx.wordpress.com/tag/tagname/feed/

For example, I have the following feed for my tag "cosleeping"
http://www.babydustdiaries.com/tag/cosleeping/feed/

I have less experience with Typepad, but this page has some instructions on how to get a category specific feed.

Now BuzzBoost the Feed

Ok you have your specific feed — now we want to BuzzBoost it! Log in to FeedBurner and click on the Publicize tab and choose BuzzBoost.

There are a number of settings you can choose for your feed once you Activate the service.



You can preview what your feed will look like:



Once you are happy with how it looks you can copy the code provided:



This code can then be pasted right into the page or Text/HTML widget on your blog. Note: If you normally blog in a visual mode you will need to convert to HTML or Code view to paste the script. (Here's how to get to Edit HTML view in WordPress and in Blogger.)

Voila! Now each time you post something new with that cateogry, label, or tag it will automatically add it to your list!

You might find yourself using this in a number of different ways. Many bloggers have a list of essential posts or favorite posts. You could do this dynamically just by creating a "favorite" tag when you post. You can also embed it directly in a post if you want to load related posts. For example, in my How Did You Find Me post I used Buzz Boost to summarize my posts based on my Google Analytics keywords.

3. Socialize

You can also use Feedburner to send your feed items to your Twitter account. This means that each time you publish a post it will be tweeted automatically. There are many other services to do this (like Twitterfeed.com and this plugin for wordpress) but what I like about using FeedBurner is the options it provides.

Go to Publicize > Socialize

Add your twitter account and choose your options. I really like that it includes a "leave room for retweets" since you want people to easily be able to pass the word about your posts this makes sure that the tweet is short enough to allow a "RT @yourname" to fit before it for retweeting purposes. You can also add hashtags and any additional text.



Next you can choose how to order the items and how many new items to post. Note, this only looks for *new* items so you don't have to worry about spamming your twitter followers with multiple, repeat posts. For most bloggers there would only be one new post at a time. You can also use the keyword filter to only tweet items on a specific topic category or label from your blog.



You can see a preview of what your tweets will look like. Don't forget to activate the service.



That's it. Now all of your new posts will go to Twitter automatically!

I hope this helps you save time while maximizing the power of your blog. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to help! Contact me by commenting here or email me at babydustdiaries (at) gmail (dot) com.

How to use FeedBurner to maximize your blog — Part 1: The basics

Paige of the Baby Dust Diaries is a NASA research librarian by day — and mother to Aellyn and inspiring blogger — well, I was going to say "by night," but let's say be accurate and say all the time. She has volunteered to write a few guest posts on topics that come naturally to her in her line of work. Visit Paige over at The Baby Dust Diaries for more on natural parenting, breastfeeding, gentle discipline, infertility, and life with a miracle baby.

How To Use FeedBurner To Maximize Your Blog — Part 1: The Basics

By Paige of The Baby Dust Diaries

In my day job I create, manage, and teach others how to maximize social media at NASA. Every time I write something like this article about utilizing Twitter, in my mind I'm writing a version for all my blog friends. Since Lauren and Dionna have put such great tutorials here to help specifically for the Carnival of Natural Parenting, I thought it might be nice to share some of the tools I use for blogging as well.

One of the tools I think every blogger should use is FeedBurner. FeedBurner is now owned by Google, but I've been using it since its inception and it just gets better and better. The main goal of FeedBurner is to maximze your blog's RSS feed — allowing people multiple ways to easily subscribe to your content. It actually does much more than that!

Manage Your Feed

If you do nothing else from this article you should definitely do this. Sign your blog's feed up for FeedBurner and change your subscription links to reflect this. First I'll explain why and then exactly how to do this.

Why?

First, it makes it easier for readers to subscribe to your blog. Instead of seeing raw xml like this (click on pictures to see them larger):



Your readers will see a friendly page with multiple options for subscribing to your feed including email:



Second, it makes your blog's feed free from the specific blog platform you are using. For example if you are on Blogger your feed address is something like http://www.babydustdiaries.com/atom.xml and if you are on Wordpress it looks like http://www.babydustdiaries.com/?feed=rss2. Now, first some RSS readers don't accept all formats, so a feed that ends in atom.xml might not be compatible. More importantly if you ever need to move your blog (like I recently had to from Blogger to Wordpress) all of your readers would need to be notified and go out of their way to resubscribe to your feed.

With FeedBurner you are given a custom feed address similar to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheBabyDustDaires that will never change. This means when I went from Blogger to Wordpress it was transparent to my readers who were already subscribed. They didn't have to do anything!

How?

It couldn't be easier to sign up for FeedBurner (and it's free!). FeedBurner will even "discover" your feed if you don't know the URL.

1. You can sign in to FeedBurner with your Google account (the same if you have Gmail, or a Google Reader Account) or you can create an account.
2. Once you are in, just put the URL of your blog (e.g. http://myblog.blogspot.com) in the FeedBurner box and hit enter. You will then be prompted to give your feed a name and custom address
   You want to write down this URL since we'll be using it in a moment. (And you can always find it again at the top of your feed's page under Edit Feed Details.) Click Next.
3. Next FeedBurner asks if you want to track usage of your feed. You can choose what is important to you here and you can always change your mind later. Click Next.
4. Now we want to direct your blog's feed to the new address.
   
   

   In Blogger:

   From your Dashboard go to Settings > Site Feed and then enter your FeedBurner address (inlcuding the http://) in to the Post Feed Redirect URL box.
   
   

   In TypePad:

   From your Dashboard go to Configure > Feeds section.
   
   Click on Connect this Feed to FeedBurner.
   
   
   
   Enter your FeedBurner username and password and click Sign In.
   
   
   
   Select the FeedBurner feed you just created and click Continue.
   
   
   
   Click Save Changes.
   
   
   
   

   In Wordpress:

   You can use the following method for self-hosted or Wordpress.com hosted blogs. Self-hosted blogs can also use this plugin. Feedburner has what they call a "Chicklet" or image tag that directs users to your feed.
   
   In FeedBurner click on the Publicize tab.
   
   
   
   Locate and click the Chicklet Chooser service.
   
   The form shown below loads into the right side of the screen:
   
   
   
   This form contains several options for buttons that promote (and link to) your FeedBurner feed.
   
   Click the radio button next to the button you want to display on your site.
   
   Copy the HTML shown in the bottom section of the Chicklet Chooser. You will paste this HTML into your WordPress site template.
   
   
   
   From the WordPress Dashboard, click the Appearance and then the Widgets option. Drag the text widget from the Available Widgets area to your Sidebar. Click the right side of the widget to expand it.
   
   Paste the code you copied from FeedBurner in an earlier step into the content field.
   
   
   
   Click Save Changes.
   
   This Chicklet method also works on many other platforms. You can use a custom image instead of one of the ones they offer by hosting your own image and changing the code for the <img src="http://this is the URL for your image">.

That's the basics of using FeedBurner for your blog! Stay tuned for Part 2 for some advanced FeedBurner goodies!

If you have any questions I'd be happy to help! Contact me by commenting here or email me at babydustdiaries (at) gmail (dot) com.

How to schedule a post and get its permalink in WordPress

Dionna of Code Name: Mama and I are writing a few blogging tutorials of particular use for our Carnival of Natural Parenting participants. Today I would like to welcome Tom & Dionna, who have written a guest post about scheduling a post in Wordpress and figuring out what its URL will be, to help in posting to the carnival and emailing us the link. Tom is an IT guru, Dionna is a lawyer turned work-at-home mama, and together they form the natural parenting duo responsible for one amazing son. You can normally find Dionna over at Code Name: Mama where she shares information, resources, and her thoughts on natural parenting and life with a toddler.

Here is a tutorial on how to schedule a post in Wordpress and figure out what its permalink (URL) will be (this post complements Lauren's earlier post for Blogger users on figuring out a post URL in advance and scheduling a post in Blogger).

*This tutorial assumes your permalinks are in date and/or title format.

These tips will come in handy if you want to:

• have your carnival entry post at a certain time while you're not otherwise available
• email us the post URL in advance (such as when using the carnival's monthly Google form)

How do I schedule a post?

Before you can determine what your permalink will be, you must schedule your post. If you try to get the permalink before scheduling the post, your permalink will be incorrect. Here are the steps to schedule your post:

1. Add a new post:



2. Edit scheduling.

This is the important step — to get your permalink with the correct date and title, you have to schedule this post for the date you want it to publish. Click "Edit" (next to "Publish immediately") to start this process.



3. Confirm the date.

Put the correct date/time in place for your post to publish, then click OK to confirm. For example, if you are scheduling a post for the Carnival of Natural Parenting, the Carnival is always live on the second Tuesday of each month.

How do I determine what my post's permalink will be?

4. Title the post.

Go ahead and title your post now. Your post title can be edited later if need be, but know that doing so will also change your permalink.



5. My permalink is wrong!

As you type, your permalink will auto-fill underneath the title window - but wait! That permalink has the wrong date! We'll fix this in Step 6...



6. Save the draft.

Saving the draft will update the permalink with the correct "date" and title embedded.



7. My permalink is now correct!

Check it out, the permalink updated with the "correct" date — the one you specified in your Scheduling window.



8. Overview screenshot.

At this point, here's a shot of my test post — notice the permalink is right, the "Schedule For" area shows the correct time, etc. Click this image for a full-size view.



We hope that was helpful! If you have any questions or need clarification, please leave a comment or contact Dionna and Tom directly at Code Name: Mama.

How to edit HTML in Wordpress

Dionna of Code Name: Mama and I are writing a few blogging tutorials of particular use for our Carnival of Natural Parenting participants. Today I would like to welcome Tom & Dionna, who have written a guest post about editing HTML in Wordpress, to help in pasting the carnival code blurbs. Tom is an IT guru, Dionna is a lawyer turned work-at-home mama, and together they form the natural parenting duo responsible for one amazing son. You can normally find Dionna over at Code Name: Mama where she shares information, resources, and her thoughts on natural parenting and life with a toddler.

When you are writing posts in Wordpress (for example, when you are preparing your entry for the Carnival of Natural Parenting), it is often helpful to know how to edit in HTML. This tutorial (like Lauren's earlier tutorial on editing HTML in Blogger) will show you how to:

• add HTML code to a post and
• copy your post's HTML for use elsewhere.

How do I add HTML code?

Most people probably use the Visual tab for writing blog posts in Wordpress (if you use the HTML tab exclusively, this mini-tutorial is stuff you already know). Let's look at the basic steps for adding HTML code to a post.

1. Identify "Visual" or "HTML":



You know you're in the Visual tab if you have all of these extra formatting options that work like Microsoft Word. The HTML tab has very few options available.



2. Write your post in the "Visual" tab. Once you've got your post written and saved, it's time to insert the HTML code.

3. Switch to the "HTML" tab:



4. Paste your HTML code.

This is the screen where you can add in HTML code. Simply navigate to the area of the post where you want to insert the code and paste it in.

Let's say, for example, that you have received the intro blurb for this month's Carnival of Natural Parenting from Dionna (at Code Name: Mama) and Lauren (at Hobo Mama). The intro blurb should go at the very top of your post, so copy the code from the Carnival email, position your cursor at the beginning of the post, and paste. Voila!

If you have the ending blurb (the list of all of the Carnival participants), you'd copy and paste that at the very end of your post. Easy peasy.

A helpful hint: if you are copying HTML code from a Word document, then you are also copying all of Word's weird styling and formatting code automatically. Instead of copying and pasting straight from Word, copy it, paste it first into Notepad, TextEdit, or a similar simple text editor, then copy and paste from Notepad into Wordpress. Notepad does not retain any styling/formatting code, and Wordpress will be happier.



5. Save the draft.

Before you switch back to the Visual tab to see how pretty everything looks, you should save your draft.

A word of warning: Wordpress doesn't always "work right" when you switch between Visual and HTML and go back-and-forth and switch it more and more. We don't know why. Our advice would be to switch between them, make your changes, and then "Save Draft" prior to switching back to the other tab. Without doing this (who knows why) Wordpress will "lose" the code you just typed/pasted in HTML, or it won't display your text the way it was formatted in Visual.



6. Preview before you Publish.

Once it's saved, feel free to check out the Visual tab, or "Preview" your post to see how it will look on your site.

How do I copy my post's HTML code for use elsewhere?

There are at least two instances that we can think of that it would be helpful to copy/paste a blog post.

First: if you have written a long post and want to split it into several smaller pieces, you are more likely to retain all of your formatting by copying and pasting from the HTML tab rather than from the Visual tab.
Second: if you are submitting a guest post to another site, it is customary to send your post in HTML format.

And it's really quite easy. Just write and save your post, switch to the HTML tab (see Step 3 above), hit "Control + A" ("Control" = "Command" in Mac) to select all of your text, "Control + C" to copy it, and then paste it (either into an email or a Notepad document).

We hope that was helpful! If you have any questions or need clarification, please leave a comment or contact Dionna and Tom directly at Code Name: Mama.