The Most Visited Posts on This Blog . . .

 No re-blog today, because I decided it’s been way too long since I took an accounting of my most popular posts…

So…

I’ll list the Ten Most Popular Posts of the last, nearly, 8 years…

Just before the list, I should explain that, in spite of my often warning folks to not believe what all the Internet-Gurus say, one thing seems to be very true—the About Page of a blog is extremely well-visited :-)

And, these posts were found, predominantly, with a search engine, not social media links…

1. About This Blog – 5,300 visits

2. Writing Challenge ~ Use The 1200 Most Common Words To Write A Story… – 2,191 visits

3. The Book ~ Notes from An Alien – 2,113 visits

4. Why Do Certain People Become Writers? – 1,496 visits

5. Free Software for Writers . . . – 977 visits

6. What’s The “Best” Way To Learn “Proper” Grammar? – 722 visits

7. Behind The Scenes . . . – 643 visits

8. Diagramming Sentences ~ A Lost Art? – 639 visits

9. Are Fiction Writers Capable of Freelancing? – 635 visits

10. What About All The Authors Whose Books Don’t Sell Very Many Copies? – 599 visits

Plus, I must mention, if you scroll down in the left sidebar you’ll find 2,294 other posts, in the Top Tags widget, organized by Key Words…

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#TopTags vs #Searching ~ A #Blogging Journey in #Reading, #Writing, and #Publishing

Counting the present post, this blog has 1,385 posts. 

Image Courtesy of pedro valdeolmillos ~ http://www.freeimages.com/photographer/pv-29785

You probably couldn’t have missed all the hashtags in the title up there—intended to help the folks on Twitter find this particular post.

Hashtags are one way to find what you’re looking for…

When someone finds a blog in the wild, they usually have the most recent post at the top and those preceding it streaming down the page…

If they come to a blog through WebSearch, they see the post in the link they clicked on and that’s it…

So, let’s assume they like what they read.

How do they further explore the blog they’ve found?

Well, since there are so many different ways bloggers set up their blogs, the first thing most folks do is look for a Search Bar to find topics of interest to them.

This blog has one of those in the upper right, under the Main Menu Tabs…

Of course, using the search bar may not find exactly what you’re looking for—most search algorithms, even Google’s, fail, at times,  in varying degrees…

So, some bloggers (like this one) use a Tag Cloud (Top Tags Widget) to give the traveller a way of finding collections of posts that have certain core ideas and topics.

These tags are selected for each post by the individual blogger, so they depend for their accuracy on the abilities of the blogger in question to select truly representative words or phrases for the Tags they apply…

So, back to the 1,385 posts on this blog and my Top Tags Widget, which is down a bit in the left side-bar.

I must add, since I’ve been very aware lately of folks who use their phone to get here, that the small screen user needs to find their general “Menu” button and look for something like “Request Desktop Site” so they can see the left side-bar…

If you scroll down there, you’ll see that certain words are larger. This means there are more posts with that tag (and, on this blog, letting your cursor hover over the words will show how many posts there are…).

I thought, beyond the possible over-abundance of hashtags in the title—intended to alert folks to the fact that this blog has lots of stuff about #Reading, #Writing, and #Publishing—I’d also put a few of the Top Tag links right here in this post—a mini-guide to what’s here—an author’s selection of “Most Important” topics…

Let’s start with a few for Readers:

Reading, Short Stories, Libraries, Literacy

Just those Tag Links will let you read 167 posts…

Now, a few for Writers:

Writing Resources, Writing Advice, Creative Writing, Book Promotion

Those links will take you to 194 posts…

Now, some for Publishers:

Self-Publishing, Traditional Publishing, Publishers, Indie Publishing

Those links have a total of 202 posts…

So, I hope this post has been successful in helping you to navigate the blogging I’ve done in the last 5 years, 1 month, and 26 days  :-)
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Read Some Strange Fantasies
Grab A Free Novel…
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A Blog for All Seasons

Click This Image for Some Fine Blogging…

This will be the 16th post I’ve done about Maria Popova—and, I should point out that if you take that link, you’ll see this post at the top of the other fifteen—I “Tag” my posts and they get gathered-up in the Top Tags area—down a bit in the left side-bar…

You may want to spend some time checking out the Top Tags since there are over 1,200 posts on this blog and, in all honesty, today is not my best day to write a post…

Just dealing with more than a bit of physical and psychological and emotional stress—I quit smoking about a month ago—I’ve been unkind (to say the least) to my Best Friend—I’m hoping her compassion will continue to protect her from the insanities of someone being devastated by withdrawal symptoms…

So, before I have to just lie down and swirl in the juices of my muddled mind, let me tell you why you should check out Maria’s blog, Brain Pickings.

One reason is who Maria is:

“I’m a reader, writer, interestingness hunter-gatherer, and curious mind at large. I’ve previously written for Wired UK, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab, among others, and am an MIT Futures of Entertainment Fellow.”

Another reason is why she writes her blog:

“Brain Pickings is my one-woman labor of love — a subjective lens on what matters in the world and why. Mostly, it’s a record of my own becoming as a person — intellectually, creatively, spiritually — and an inquiry into how to live and what it means to lead a good life.”

More on her mission and what creativity means:

“The core ethos behind Brain Pickings is that creativity is a combinatorial force: it’s our ability to tap into our mental pool of resources — knowledge, insight, information, inspiration, and all the fragments populating our minds — that we’ve accumulated over the years just by being present and alive and awake to the world, and to combine them in extraordinary new ways. In order for us to truly create and contribute to the world, we have to be able to connect countless dots, to cross-pollinate ideas from a wealth of disciplines, to combine and recombine these pieces and build new ideas.”

So, take a listen to Maria (while I go lie down…) and she just might convince you she has much to say that you need to hear…

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Read Some Strange Fantasies
Grab A Free Novel…
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Navigating My Blog . . .

The main themes of my blog are Reading, Writing, and Publishing. 

Image courtesy of ilker ~ http://www.sxc.hu/profile/ilco

It’s a little over 3 years old and has just over 850 posts.

There are also 9 pages of Special Information.

Folks new to the blog might miss something important to them because they aren’t aware of some of the ways they can find things.

Those 9 Special Pages are pretty self-explanatory; check out those black tabs with white writing at the top of the blog…

Also near the top, on the right, is a search box—enter single words, multiple words with commas between them, or phrases.

If you scroll down a bit, the left side-panel has a Top Posts & Pages area and, right under it, a Top Tags Cloud—the larger the words in that cloud, the more posts with that topic (and, hovering over the clickable words tells you how many posts…

Plus, if you explore that left side-bar from top to bottom, you’ll find a wealth of other resources…

And, if all else fails, at the top of the side-bar, in pink type, is a Contact Me link so you can send me an email and ask me anything at all…

One other thing you could do that would help me a lot is take my survey of what You want to see on this blog :-)
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FUN With Words ~ 9 Free Ways To Make Word-Clouds

Folks who read blogs regularly are usually familiar with Tag-Clouds.

If you scroll down a bit in the left side-panel you’ll see an example of a Tag-Cloud called “Top Tags”.

That particular Cloud is very handy for finding a group of posts that share certain key concepts.

In fact, if you put your cursor over the words there, you’ll see how many posts have that Tag.

Clicking the words takes you to a new page with all those particular posts ready to read :-)

It’s automatically re-created every time I add Tags to each post I publish—look at the very bottom of this post and you’ll see the Tags I gave it.

Most Word-Clouds have different colors or sizes for the words to show their importance.

But, this post is about how you can create Word-Clouds from any WebPage or Blog or Text you can copy and paste.

The nine free ways to create word-clouds are on the site Smashing Apps.

Here’s a Cloud I made by feeding in the WebAddress of this blog:

And, next is a Cloud I made from 826 words I copied and pasted from a Wikipedia article on Extroversion and Introversion.

I was able to limit the Cloud to words that appeared at least 2 times—the Cloud-generator was able to include 80 words:

 

Then, I took the 42,564 words of my novel, Notes from An Alien, but specified the words in the Cloud had to occur at least 19 times—to find what the peaks of the book’s landscape might look like:

If you look over all nine of the free apps at Smashing Apps you’ll find some very useful and very exotic ways to visualize words.

Here’s one more example from one of those nine apps—one of my poems—just for fun :-)

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