Before I had a blog, I had a web site. I think I started the web site back in the mid- to late-1990s. That’s when web sites/pages were more static, i.e., when you went to an address you saw the same thing each time.

Unless someone changed the content or images, of course. Making such modifications usually required at least some degree of technical knowledge, which not many people had. It was also time-consuming.

In the late 1990s, web-publishing tools (blog hosts and/or software) were developed to make it easier for non-technical folks to establish a presence on the Internet. Not only was it easy, in many cases it was free.

The term “blog” is short for web log. Think of it as a diary of sorts where each entry (referred to as a post) is separate and typically appears in reverse chronological order. Simple, right?

Believe it or not, blogs still confuse an awful lot of people, specifically navigating around the blog (how to find stuff). So what I will call the idea of a “web presence” evolved. That’s where users think they are using a web site, but they are really using a combined site/blog platform. You’ll have static pages (info doesn’t change frequently, you can’t post comments, etc.), and pages that contain blog posts.

Mere mortals still refer to blogs or the hybrid web presence as web sites. And that’s okay. I honestly don’t care what you call my space. I just want everyone to know how to get around.

Why am I telling you all of this?

Because I have recently made some enhancements AND I want you to be able to…

Understand the Blog Concept

… which will help you find stuff when you are visiting ToadMama.com.

Right now, you are looking at my blog. My blog is published on my home page. (Enter my home page address — toadmama.com — and you’ll end up on my home page.)

Technically speaking, you a reading a blog post on my blog. This is the most-recent thing I have had to share.

If you scroll down, you’ll see my previous post. Keep scrolling and you’ll see the post before that one. Only a limited number of posts will show up. So if you find yourself still scrolling, and nothing is changing, look for the NEXT ENTRIES link to see more posts.

Now, if you click on the title of one of my blog posts, you’ll end up with a page that only contains the post and its images. Scroll down on the post page to see comments links to the next post and the previous post followed by comments related to the post.

More Than One Page

Now remember, you are either reading this POST on the home page or on a post page. Wanna know how to find other interesting stuff here?

Look at my pages. In addition to the post pages, there also informational pages, including the home page. This is how I have categorized things by interest. For example, the Two Wheeling It page contains stuff that’s motorcycle-related.

There are tabs at the top of each page — this is called the navigation bar — to let you navigate to the various pages.

At the time of this writing, the top of each page looks like the image above. There are six page names across the top: Home, About, Two Wheeling It, Warrenton, Creative Stuff, and WV Place. Two of those pages have sub-pages. For example, the motorcycle page — Two Wheeling It — has information grouped by state, and I have given each state its own page.

Hold your mouse pointer over Two Wheeling It in the navigation bar and you’ll see four state pages pop up (Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland).

About Me and the WV Place

Now that you know how to find things, I can tell you about the recent enhancements here at ToadMama.com.

I’ve always had an “About” page. But I recently added a few family pics. Check them out by clicking on the About tab in the nav bar.

I post so many dog pics here, I figured I should give my human family an honorary spot.

That was an easy enhancement. The most time-consuming modification, which I recently finished, incorporates the complete collection of WV Place web pages — they document the entire build process — into the overall ToadMama.com web presence.

So now, if you want to see the time and effort that went into building that modest little vacation house of ours, and all you can remember to do go to ToadMama.com, you just have to click on the WV Place tab.

Easy peasy.