Monday, February 4, 2008

How you can participate

As some readers have already written in, questioning the blog "sign in" protocol, following is a a gentle aid to "new" bloggers. This blog has been designed to be "open access", so there is no need to "join" (unless, of course you want to!) If you have a Blogger/Google, AOL/Aim, TypeKey, or WordPad i.d., then you've done this before, so just log in! If not, then "open access" means that ANYONE can blog.

So click on "comments" at the foot of the post you'd like to get in on. First type your comments in the provided space, and when you are done, go to "Sign In" below the comments box, and find "Choose an Identity". Choose "Open i.d." from the pull down menu.

Next, type your name (if you're proud of it), or your desired screen-name, or even choose "anonymous". Under "Nickname", a box will appear labeled "url:", here, you can add the web address of your homepage, if you have a web-site, or even the address of an affiliation.

After that, you can just hit "publish your comment", and you're "in"! It might take a little time for your comments to hit the page, (when they do, they'll appear in the footing under each post we enter- as "O COMMENTS" (like right now), or "57 COMMENTS" (wishful thinking), so when you see that smaller text, giving the number of comments for each separate post, you can click on that and a new window with the comments in order received will appear for you to read.

You know, you all can write back and forth among each other, too. "Subscribing" to a blog, so that you receive email notification of new posts or comments is as easy as following the directions found here:

http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=79117&topic=12456

This does call for a Google/Blogger acct, though that is as free and anonymous as a gmail account is!

And, of course, if you have any problems or questions, or want to email us anything concerning Varina: culture, history, community events you'd like posted, photographs... a link to an article you read and would like brought up for discussion, we welcome it all! This is also an open call to nominate any Varina residents or groups who have been witnessed in the action of 'Preserving Varina'. Encouraging community participation is the whole idea.

Happy Blogging, and thanks again for joining in!

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