I’m not going to give you any hints. I’ll just say that you should be watching for the launch of something new. Something to help promote the blogs on our Family-Friendly Blogroll.

I hope I didn’t give the surprise away.

What is a trackback?
A Trackback is like a remote comment.

It simply allows you to comment about another blog on your own blog and then the software lets the other blog know you’ve referenced it.

Why should you use trackbacks?

A trackback is good for both blogs. You want to use them and you want other people to use them.

The trackback allows you to continue a discussion from another blog on your own blog.

read more…

Since she’s already done all the hard work, I’ll point you there, trackback to her, and let you read her post.

I will, however, take a few seconds to say that finding a year old post and linking to it would have been very difficult to do if not for Janice and Susan having a search bar on their site. I can not tell you how many times, in two years of blogging, I’ve thought about linking to a fellow blogger’s post only to not be able to find it. I’m a pretty patient person but after searching for a post for say half an hour or so, even I give up.

Please, please, please make sure that you have a search bar somewhere in your sidebar. If you don’t have one available to you through widgets, may I suggest the Family-Friendly Custom Search Engine? You may be missing out on links and not even know it.

I love this new option for displaying the Family-Friendly Blogroll. I haven’t added it to the JOIN page yet. I’ll do that as soon as I get a chance. I wanted to make it available now though to those who are interested. I’m guessing that a few of you will really like it.

This is what it will look like in your sidebar:

Join The Family-Friendly Network

Like it? Thought so.

This is the code you’ll need:

It should resize to fit any sidebar perfectly. Hopefully!

Every single one of the blogs in my feedreader is one I enjoy reading. This should be obvious otherwise I wouldn’t have subscribed to them, right? Yet, there is something that bothers me about a few. As enjoyable or informational as these blogs may be two or three of them only allow a summary of their post rather than the full text.

Now here’s my confession, many times I only read the few sentences and decide not to click over to their blog for the rest of the post. If those first few words don’t completely suck me in, I’m gone. To click the READ MORE link just seems like too much trouble. I am so partial to full text posts in feedreaders that I rarely continue to stay subscribed to a blog without them. I always wondered if others felt the same. Was I alone in my true disdain for summaries or did others feel the same?

I think I got my answer the other day when I read Darren’s post at Problogger, “The Secret to Increasing Your Traffic Overnight – Hint, it has Something to do with Going on Holidays.”

It’s a good read, as are many other posts you’ll read there. If you’re interested in growing your blog traffic, I suggest three things you simply must do: first subscribe to his blog, then don’t miss his excellent series called, 31 Days to Building a Better Blog.

The third? Seriously do you have to ask? Change your posts to full text, of course.