Navigating our Blog
by Catherine Haug
About our Blog
Our blog is the life of our website, where ESP members post articles or event notices in keeping with our Mission, and Rules for Posting. If you are not familiar with how blogs work, it can be confusing at first, so here’s a little help:
Access to our blog is through the pull-down and links in the right hand column, as described below
Options to access our blog and isolate a particular post:
=> 
Displays a snippet of every post with the most recent listed first. You can scroll through all posts until you find the one you want, then click on the title to see the entire post.
=> 
For example (right), from the Events menu, you can select ‘ESP Gathering Notices’.
Current EssentiaList Menus include:
- About ESP
- Events
- Emergency Preparedness
- Files
=> 
Blogs are like diaries, and are date & time driven. They are stored in monthly Archives; you can view an archive by selecting it from the pull-down in the right-hand column, under Archives.
Within an archive, posts (diary entries) are arranged in reverse-chronological order, with the most recent displayed first. Select one of the posts by clicking on its title, to isolate the post. See below for more on isolated posts.
=> Use the Search field
This is found at the top of the right-hand 
=> Choose a Blog Post Categories from the Pulldown
Current EssentiaList Categories (in the Categories pulldown):
- Files categories are simply pages with lists of links to ESP files and to external websites; also includes summaries of our Gatherings (events), written after each event.
- Free Stuff category is just that: stuff offered for free.
- Notices (Events) categories are event announcements of interest to our ESP community. These include: ESP Gathering notices, Olduvai Forum notices, and Other notices.
- Post Topics categories are for topical posts (articles) on specific subject matter. Many topics are listed.
- Projects categories are posts relevant to special ESP projects, such as the Community Garden.
Only links to the five most recent posts/comments are displayed.More Tag
When scanning an archive or a category, you will notice that long posts include the “More” tag, a link to read the remainder of the article. Clicking on the More tag will isolate the post. (or you can click on the title of the post). The More tag is also used in our email newsletter. Here’s an example:
Isolated Posts
The post consists of four sections:
- Title
- Body
- Information
- Comments
Title Section
Just above the title of an isolated post will be two links that allow you to navigate through all the posts, one by one (see sample below):
- link with a pointer to the left (link to previous post, by title), and
- link with pointer to the right (link to next post, by title).
Body Section
This is the text of the post, typically divided into sections by section headings.
Information Section
Below the body of the post you’ll find information about the post (see sample, below), including:
- Date posted;
- All categories in which you’ll find the post;
- Category link(s) for this post; click on a link to see other posts in that category;
- Set up an RSS feed;
- If you have a website, you can leave a response or trackback from your site.
- If you are a registered author, you can edit the post.
Comment Section
Below the information panel, you’ll find the comment panel, where you can leave a comment. You do not have to be a registered author or user to leave a comment. A short synopsis follows; see Adding a Post Comment for more detail.
- Provide your name (nickname, or first name and last initial are sufficient)
- Provide your email address (it will not be displayed in the comment).
- If you have a website, you can provide the url, but this is not required.
- Type your comment;
- Click “Submit Comment” when you are finished.
If you are logged-on as a registered user/author, the name and email address information is already known; all you have to do is type your comment.