How Do I Use This Blog?

The Official Ballard Farmers Market Blog is designed to be user friendly for all visitors. But the universe of the blog is still foreign to many. Here are a few tips to help you better enjoy your market blog experience.

You will find the following topics discussed below, appearing in the order listed:

• What’s Where In What? Category Names & What’s In Them
• Pages: How Do They Differ From Posts?
• Searching This Blog: How Do I Find Stuff?
  
• Categories: Think Table of Contents
  
• How Do I Get Back To The Front Page?
  
• How Do I Make Comments, Suggestions, or Recipe and Idea Submissions?
  
• How Do I Find Links/How Do I Find My Way Back Here?
  
• Tags: What Are They? How Do They Work?

What’s Where In What? Category Names & What’s In Them
Each category listed in the right hand margin is configured to help you find different information. Posts are assigned to one or more categories based on their relevance to each category. If you move your cursor over each category’s name and leave it there for a second or two, a description of what kind of information is assigned to that category will appear. For instance, if you linger over Vendors – Award Winning, you will learn that category contains information about “vendors who have won national and/or international awards for their products.” Linger over Entertainment and you learn that category contains “info about many of the entertainers (a.k.a., buskers) who perform at Ballard Farmers Market.” Then, if you click on that category link, all posts in this blog assigned to that category will pop to the front. 

Pages: How Do They Differ From Posts?
We use pages for information that is static, like a cooking demonstration calendar or this page. Blogs are fluid spaces on the internet, changing weekly, daily and even hourly as new posts get added. Because blog posts are organized chronologically, as a new post gets added, the previous posts get pushed further down into its archives. Older posts are then found by using the search box, categories or tags to identify those posts relevant to your area of interest. Pages, on the other hand, rarely change. They are listed separately at the top of the right hand column, and they provide basic background information about Ballard Farmers Market and its blog in a way that is quickly and easily accessible to visitors at any time.

Searching This Blog: How Do I Find Stuff?
Finding information on this blog is easy. From within the blog, either use the search box in the upper right hand corner, or use the categories in the right hand margin. In the search box, simply type in a word or words you are looking for, such as “garlic” or “music.” Every post that contains those words will be brought to the front of the blog. See the next section for how to use categories. You may also be able to search within WordPress or using a global search engine like Google to find information about Ballard Farmers Market, as the content of this blog is indexed into these search engines. However, these search mechanisms are “catch-alls,” and you will have to pick through many search results to find what you are looking for here. Since you are already here, searching within the blog will better serve you. Leave those search engines for people who haven’t found their way here yet.

Categories: Think Table of Contents
Categories are simply a tool bloggers use to organize our posts so that our visitors can more quickly find the information for which they are looking. Use the category list in the right hand margin of each page like you would a table of contents. The number next to each category name refers to the number of posts assigned to that category. When you click on the category name, all of the posts assigned to that category will pop up on your screen. Posts can be assigned to multiple categories, so don’t be surprised if a post shows up in more than one. Please note that while categories listed in the right hand margin work only within this blog, categories listed at the bottom of any given post will search all of WordPress for related topics using the same category name. If you click on these, you will be whisked away from this blog into the WordPress universe.

How Do I Get Back To The Front Page?
Whenever you want to return to the front page of this blog, simply click on the blog banner at the top of the page.

How Do I Make Comments, Suggestions, or Recipe and Idea Submissions?
Any post or page that has a comment form on the bottom welcomes your comments, suggestions, recipe contributions, ideas, questions and thoughts. However, we have this blog configured so that what you submit is not automatically posted onto the blog. Instead, all submissions must be approved by the blog moderator before being posted. This means you can feel comfortable asking a question of us that you do not mean for public consumption, and we can get an answer back to you. It also means the comments attached to this blog will not be full of spam, useless drivel and offensive commentary, and it hopefully means the recipes readers contribute will work. And please, if you ever have a suggestion about how to improve this blog, a request for a type of information you think is missing, or a simple market query, by all means, use the comment forms to reach us. (Please note: not all posts and pages allow comments.)

How Do I Find Links/How Do I Find My Way Back Here?
Links to useful or related information on other websites or blogs can be found throughout this blog. They may be links to the blogs or websites of our sister markets, to the websites of our vendors and buskers, or links to additional information found in places like Wikipedia or WiseGeek. You can easily identify links as they usually appear as blue or red text. Blue means your browser has not visited that link recently, and red means it has. When you click on a link within this blog, if you are going to an address outside of the blog, it will open into a new window. That means you can easily find your way back to this blog simply by either closing the new window you just opened or by returning to this window within your browser. Another cool feature of this blog is that, when you scroll over a link, besides the linked text suddenly becoming underlined to better identify it, a snap shot window will appear, giving you a chance to take a sneak peek at the linked site before you choose to go to it. The snap shot window can be enlarged or disabled by using the wheel and magnifying glass icons in its upper right hand corner, and your can use the wheel icon to disable the snap shot feature throughout the blog during your visit, if you desire.

Note that links listed in the right hand margin are links to our sister markets, partners and other sites we think you will find generally useful and related to what we do.

Tags: What Are They? How Do They Work?
Tags are both a useful and squirrelly tool. Tags are used like an index in the back of a book. They allow WordPress to find all instances of a particular topic of discussion quickly, either within this blog, or throughout WordPress. Visitors to the greater WordPress community therefore can find their way into this blog by searching tags randomly. However, once you are inside this blog, you will see tags listed in two places: the right hand margin and at the bottom of each post. When you click on a tag in the right hand margin, WordPress searches for every post within this blog that has that tag assigned to it. However, when you click on a tag listed below a post, WordPress searches all of WordPress, which includes literally millions of posts, for every post that has that tag assigned to it. So the “salmon” tag in the right hand margin may bring up a handful of tagged posts within this blog, while the “salmon” tag at the bottom of one of those posts might bring up hundreds, or even thousands, of posts tagged “salmon” from throughout WordPress. We cannot turn off this list of tags at the bottom of each post, so user beware: clicking these bottom tags will take you off into a WordPress universe from which you may never return.