Blog Basics (and "How To"s)

Hello everyone and welcome back after the holiday! I hope everyone had a wonderful time with family and/or friends celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday. I apologize for my lack of posting. I was spending time with family and doing some future blog planning so I took a little break from the regular posting.

One of the great things about being home for the holidays was all of the women I was able to talk to and hear feedback from about the blog and how they are using it. It was brought to my attention that I need to start thinking more like the audience I am trying to reach. Specifically I need to remember that not all of you grew up in the digital age and therefore some of you have very little knowledge about blogs and how they work. For that I have to apologize again! I get so excited to share things with you that I do tend to forget that you may not be consuming the information in the way I intended.

As a solution I am going to go over in full detail the inner workings of Simply Sophisticated and all the bells and whistles that are attached to it in this post. In the future I will try my best to explain things more thoroughly and give better reminders of how to work my blog in each post.

Posting Format:
To begin I want to go over the format of my posts and explain how each post works. It is my intention that in each post I share with you an outfit or idea that is shown in the pictures of my mom. Below those photos I have a "This Look" section where I break down the look (or looks) my mom is wearing in the above photos and tell you where each piece she is wearing is from. If you notice, some of the text shows up in color. This is because the words in color are links. You will notice if you run your mouse over the colored text, it shows an underline while your mouse is hovered over the text. You can click on this link to bring you to the online shopping website where you can look at or purchase this exact item. If I have specified that the exact item is (old), this only means that it was purchased a while back and is no longer available online. Next to the (old) you will see "similar", sometimes multiples times. "Similar" is a link to a different online shopping website where you can look at or purchase a similar item to what my mom is wearing in her photos.
After I list the pieces in my mom's look(s), you will see the meat of the blog post. This is where I explain the outfit or ideas to you in my own words and hopefully you enjoy reading what I have to say and maybe feel inspired to create new looks of your own.
Just below my explanation you can see that I have usually chosen one item to feature and have done all of the online browsing for you and picked out a few items that I really like. Underneath each picture of each of these clothing pieces, there is a caption with a store and a description. These are links too! Click on any of these links to once again bring you to the online shopping website where you can purchase the exact item shown.
I would like to note that this is online shopping at it's finest. I have done all the work for you, you just click on the links! Don't worry, there is no obligation to buy anything at all. Feel free to simply browse the items I have looked up or save them for a later purchase if you choose.

The Comment Section:
Underneath each post you will see a line that says "Posted by Amanda...." it lists the time, date and if there are any comments on this particular post. Then there are a whole bunch of icons for you to share my post. Don't worry about all those icons if you don't know what they are, you do not need to use them. If you click on the "Comments" link (which probably reads "No Comments" right now) after a post you can write your own comments on what you think about the post. This is a great place for you to tell me if you don't understand something I have written or if you just love it and want to tell me. Here is where I would love to receive as much feedback as possible. You can comment under your name, just your first name or anonymously by singing in with your gmail account (some other accounts work too).

Homepage Banner and Sitemap:
When you first access my site, you will see the purple Simply Sophisticated logo at the top. If you look just below the logo, there is something called a site map. It reads: "Home" "About" "Post Archive" "Services" "Contact Me" and now "How to Use This Blog". Each of these links will bring you to a page on my blog. Clicking on "Home" will bring you right back to the start, or the homepage. Click on "About" and you can read about me and how and why I decided to start this blog. After you are finished reading, you can click back on your web browser, or click on my "Home" link again to get back to the blog. "Post Archive" is exactly what it sounds like. Click there and you will simply see a list of all my posts, click on any of the links and that single post will come up. "Services" is a page that lists all the services I am offering and how to contact me about hiring me. "Contact Me" is a page that lists my contact information. And if you click on "How to Use this Blog" it will bring you right back to this very post and you can re read it if you need to.
Down the right hand side of the screen, you will see my photo and a short introduction to Simply Sophisticated. There is a search box where you can type in keywords to search the site. Then there is an icon that says "Join this site". You can click that icon and join under your name, just your first name, or anonymously by signing in with your gmail account. This helps me to know how many people are keeping up with my posts and coming back to visit, but there is no obligation to you when you join, you can "un-join" at any time. If you type your email address into the "Follow by Email" box and click on the Submit button, you will receive emails every time I post new content.

Bottom of the Screen:
If you scroll all the way down through about 5 posts on the homepage, you will come to the bottom of the screen. There will be a grey dotted line across the bottom of the screen with a "home" link in the middle, and an "Older Posts" link on the right hand side. Click the "Older Posts" link to keep going backwards through my posts and see things you may have missed.


Thanks for going through the basics with me! Remember you can always click on the "How to use this blog" link at the top of the page to come back to this post and re read it if necessary, or to help explain my site to someone new!