Still not showing up in searches

I believe I'm going to have to call in expert help; my main website is still not showing up in Google searches. This Blogger blog does (this is my personal blog, as opposed to my professional blog at MSN; which, of course, does not show up)! I wonder if it has something to do with the way the two different sites label posts. Here on blogger, every post includes a line that says "posted by Doug Graves" or "posted by Nightwriter". The other site does not "sign" every post. Maybe that's the difference. No matter. I'll have to call my techie friend and see if she can help me fix it.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch . . .

I've always found summer to be better for writing and not as good for submitting since so many publications take summer break. However, I've found a few open anthologies and non-fee contests this summer, so I am working on stories for submission to those.

The Official Website of Doug Graves (has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?)

Voila!

The pictures are working! Now my profile picture is on the Blogger servers, which should resolve the "remote linking" problem some visitors have run into. They may regret it once they see how "non-photogenic" I am (grin).

Still playing with pictures

And it's still not working. I went to Blogger's help files and discovered that other people are having the same problem. Unfortunately, the solutions that have been suggested aren't working-- I've tried resaving the file and changing the name, and I'm still getting the "File type not supported: image must be GIF or JPEG" in spite of the fact that the images ARE GIF and JPEG. This web stuff is hard enough without having things malfunctioning.

Experimenting with photos

I've received a few reports that the photo in my profile isn't showing. I don't quite understand the explanation, but people keep mentioning "remote linking"-- I know it has something to do with my photo being on the server of a free web host. There is a work-around, I guess, involving imbedding a photo in a blogger post. I'm going to try that and see if it resolves the problem.

As you can tell, it's not working. I uploaded both a ".GIF" and a ".JPG", and the profile page gives me an error: "Unsupported file type; must be gif or jpeg". Hmmm.

Still Experimenting with sites

I have decided not to continue with the Yahoo 360 blog and MySpace. The Yahoo 360 just doesn't seem customizable enough. And I can't seem to make heads or tails out of MySpace. One of my friends warned me that she had the same problem, but I had to try it for myself anyway.

For now, you'll be able to find me here at Blogger and at MSN Spaces.

I'm still experimenting a bit with MSN Spaces. Originally I signed up for a space under my "internet handle". But it doesn't show up under searches for my name. So I've also signed up for one under my name, in the hopes that during the next database update (what do the techies call it? Web Crawl? Spider Crawl? Something like that) one of the two will start showing up in searches.

To make it easier to find me, I had my computer-saavy friend point my domain to my main MSN Space. Now when you type in "DougGraves.com", you'll end up at my MSN Space. I had hoped to someday have a real website, but I'm afraid this whole "HTML" thing just isn't coming to me very easy. I know how to make a link and how to tag a picture, but that's about it.

I've also created a circle of the confused: since I know so little about web publishing and what site designs work for web-readers, etc., I've enlisted the help of my brother and my techie friend in experimenting with these blogs. Corbin has created a blog here at Blogger . . . I believe he has created one at MSN Spaces, too. My friend Wind has her own blog (part of her ISP or web hoster, or something like that), but she is also testing out MSN Spaces for me. But since it seems that a blog site is the only website I will ever have, I want to make sure I use the best one possible (that's also the easiest for an old dog like me to learn to use).

Pleasant Screams,
The Nightwriter

Experimenting

I've had this blog for quite some time; I've had a free web site for almost as long . . . and I've done very little with either of them. Lately I've been experimenting with several different blogs/websites to see if perhaps another format might strike my fancy and spur me to blog more.

So far I have tried:
Blogger.com (naturally)
MSN Spaces
MySpace
Yahoo 360

Perhaps I'm just an old fogey, but I can't make heads or tails of MySpace. I don't feel too bad because a friend of mine had the same problem-- but then again, she's an old fogey, too. I definitely won't be very active on MySpace.

Yahoo 360 is not very customizable. I doubt I'll be active on it.

Blogger.com and MSN Spaces are the best sites so far. There are a few more sites I will be investigating, and I'll report back on those once I've finished checking them out.

In the meantime, here is the link to my other space at MSN:
Nightwriter at MSN Spaces.

One of the problems I've found both at Blogger and MSN is that I'm not appearing in searches. That can be a real problem once I'm famous-- how on earth are my fans going to find me if I'm not in the search? Of course I'm being flip, but I do like to think positive and plan ahead.

Poor little neglected blog

If there is a record somewhere for the person who has the most blogs and does the least updating, I'm sure my name is entered there as the record-holder.

But now I have something to post: one of my stories has been accepted for publication! Yes, part of the reason my blogs are so neglected is that I've been busy actually WRITING!

I'll provide more details as the publication date grows nigh.

And I promise to update the blogs more (Hmmm. Where have you heard THAT before?)