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Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Announcing: The A To Z Challenge Simulcast Blog!

You might recall last year that I wrote a post on this blog that talked about using IFTTT to simulcast a Wordpress blog onto a Blogger blog. Several of you asked if it were possible to go in the opposite direction, i.e. post to Wordpress whenever you post to Blogger. Of course it is, and Janet over at Janet's Smiles is doing that now.

We had discussed the possibility of doing that with this blog, and at the time decided no, there was already too much confusion, and we were already throwing too much new stuff at you as it was. We rethought this when we started getting messages that Wordpress people were having trouble posting comments to this blog, most recently from Linda over at Life In Progress, who asked "is there any chance you could get a WordPress blog up and running simultaneously?"

Consider it done.

If you're having problems posting comments to the Blogger site (this one here), you can post your comments to the new Blogging from A to Z April Challenge simulcast blog at

Please keep a couple of things in mind:

  • http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com is and will remain the official blog for the A to Z Challenge. We have only established the Wordpress simulcast blog as a way for you to post comments if you can't post them to the official one. All that will be on the Wordpress blog will be duplicates of the posts on the official blog.
  • Blogger users can comment at the Wordpress site. You will need to enter your name and email address (which, as always, will not be displayed). If you enter the URL of your blog, readers can click on your name and go to your blog.
  • You won't have to do any fancy coding to leave the URL of your posts in the comments on the Wordpress site. Simply paste the URL into the comment, and Wordpress will make it clickable.

We hope this will make the process of leaving comments for the A to Z Team and others to read simpler and less aggravating.

In an upcoming post, I'll address the issue of leaving comments on both platforms.

If you have any questions, you can leave them for us on either blog.

13 comments:

Arlee Bird said...

Let's see if this new move helps. It's an experiment and some experiments are worth giving a shot. Thanks to John Holton for making this happen.


Arlee Bird
Tossing It Out

Debbie D. said...

Fantastic idea! But now you have to check two different sites for comments, or, are they also simulcast?

Arlee Bird said...

Debbie, that will be part of the problem in this experiment as the comments will be different on each site. However, I don't think that will make much difference as there will be plenty of links to find all around. Unless someone has an uncanny skill of making many comments in a day, I have a feeling that from either site there will be enough to keep participants busy. Hopefully this doesn't create too much of a segregation effect between platforms, but again I'm not sure this would be an issue if there are great numbers of bloggers participating in A to Z again this year.

My request to everyone is to keep an eye on things and report problems as you see them--if there are any real problems. This is a test, but feedback from participants will be the determining factor on how well this works.


Arlee Bird
Tossing It Out

Janet said...

It does work well for me. I was having a glitch with pictures but that seems to have straightened itself out now, and pictures are not usually in comments anyway so I don't see that as an issue for commenters. We are almost there, aren't we?!

Me in March

nashvillecats2 said...

I still don't understand this new system but as I love the A to Z I will I think just post it on my site. Unless someone can explain in simpler terms.
Yvonne.

Wendy of the Rock said...

Me neither...
I just blog for fun and this is starting to sound like time-consuming work

Arlee Bird said...

A to Z has always been time consuming to some extent--as much as you care to put into it--but all blogging is time consuming. You take from it based on how much you put into it. That's they way everything is.

Just blog for fun and do things like you normally do them, maybe put in a tad extra effort if it's not too difficult, and I think things will all into place pretty quickly if you're just relaxed about it and not trying to make it all a bigger deal than it needs to be.

I was (still am to a great extent) a technological dunce when I first started blogging and just learned things as I went along. I'm still learning. But if we're not having some fun along the way that we have to question why we do this. So have fun!


Arlee Bird
Tossing It Out

John Holton said...

So the picture thing is fixed? Did they tell you what it was?

Dihiwi said...

Do you have a count of how many people are planning to participate in April? Just curious. We don't have the "list" so I was wondering if most people have alerted you to their intentions. Thanks!

Anonymous said...

I appreciate this effort! Some days my comments work and others not so this gives me a fair option. Thanks a million!

Arlee Bird said...

I haven't counted and I don't know if anyone else has counted. Considering how the participants are spread across various social media platforms, counting would take more effort than I'd be willing to put forth.

Even with the list, though we had an idea of how many blogs had been signed up, we never had any precise idea of how many were actually participating or how many finished. In previous years we eliminated at least 1000 blogs that had signed up because they were bogus in some way--this was part of the problem with the list.

That's the best answer I can give you. Maybe someone else has a better count and can answer with more accuracy. My own personal incomplete list that I am still in the process of compiling at my blog site is currently numbering at 156, but it's far short of the blogs that have actually "committed" to doing A to Z in 2017.


Arlee Bird
Tossing It Out

Karnika Kapoor said...

Hey all! I am Karnika Kapoor I shall be blogging from my http://karnikakapoor.blogspot.in
PS I am unsure if this is how I am suppose to share it? If it isn't please let me know. :) All the best to the fellow bloggers! Cheers!

Run 2 online said...

Haha, I love this idea :) A strange little list and it'll be fun to find posts to cross them off! Thank you for this.