Oh and I forgot...

And I also seem to have missed the point at which page views - not "hits" please - went past 400,000. Of course I know many of these are automated and don't represent anyone looking at the blog, but I'm still rather pleased.

Pictures

Thanks to Stryker over at the Hinton Hunt Vintage Wargames blog I have been able to fix the problem of pictures not enlarging when you click on them. Hopefully no problems now - if you have any trouble, please let me know.

Finding your way around Vintage Wargaming

With currently 391 posts, 191 followers and around 156,000 page views (at time of writing), Vintage Wargaming has become something substantially bigger that I ever expected when I started it.

More posts = more information and I know VW has more of a reference function than many blogs, where the latest post is usually the most important.

The advantage of a blog about old things is that nothing is that urgent. The flip side of this is that it is more important to have a number of ways to navigate round the content of the blog to find if the information you want is here, and if so how to find it.

Vintage Wargaming has various ways of tracking down information. These have evolved over its lifetime, through experience, comments and suggestions by readers, and as new gadgets have been introduced by blogger.

Some of these may not be apparent when looking at the blog on screen so I thought it might be worth running through them briefly. I may also add this post as a permanent page along with the contact and search pages on the menu at the top of this page.

Labels - the basic way of searching the blog, through categories which have been applied to posts as they are written. Most posts have more than one label, though as far as I know you can only search on blogger using one label at a time. You will find the list of labels by scrolling down the right hand column, past followers, recent comments, popular posts, and Contacting Vintage Wargaming.

Search Vintage Wargaming - the google search box at the top of the right hand column is probably the best option for a quick search - you don't have to scroll around to find it, it is quick, and searches both this blog and any links posted on it

Popular Posts - found by scrolling down the right hand column, shows the top six or so most viewed posts of all time

Latest Comments - comments on this blog are moderated, and provide a way for you to influence future content and add information to posts. I was always bothered that if people commented on old posts, I would know that comments had been made because of the notification I receive to approve comments, but other readers might miss these. Fortunately blogger has introduced the recent comments feature, which means you can see the most recent comments and click through to the relevant posts

Blog archive - added at the suggestion of a regular reader - if you know something has been mentioned in a post and you can remember roughly when or where it appeared in relation to others, this is another search facility you can use. Unfortunately, because of the length of the home page, it is not obvious it is there, as you need to scroll all the way down the right column to find it. Quite a common feature on other blogs, I did not feel it was the search method which would be most helpful to most readers, which is why it is not made it higher up the column among other features.

There is also a brief "sticky" page on the menu under the blog banner, Searching Vintage Wargaming, which outlines labels, the search feature, and the blog archive.

I hope it has been useful to run through the various features of the blog, some of which may have escaped your attention.

Normal service will resume with the next post.

Searching Vintage Wargaming

In my recent quest to make it easier to find what you are looking for here, whether you know it is there but can't find it again, or if you haven't seen it here before but wonder if something might be here, I have added a search facility (at the top of the right hand column of the blog).

Don't forget you can also use the labels systems or the blog archive at the bottom of the page.

Blog Archive

At Foy's suggestion, I have added a blog archive to allow people to track past posts through time, as an alternative to searching using labels. The only space I have been able to find for it is at the bottom of the blog. Maybe not the most helpful place for it, but at least if you know about it and you want to use it, it's there.

"Recent Comments" feature added

Vintage Wargaming is perhaps not a typical blog, as the currency of posts does not depend on how recently they were made (mainly being about old stuff). For a while I have realised that some of the comments left on this blog may be missed by some visitors, as they may be to posts made some time ago, as new people discover the blog and delve into its earlier content. This seems a shame, both for people who have made comments which may not be generally seen, and for people who may miss comments which would be interesting or informative for them.

I have added a blogger gadget to the blog design, under the followers box in the right hand margin. This will display summaries of the ten most recent comments - clicking on them will take you to the comment, in the context of the original post.

I'll run this as a trial feature and if people like it will stick with it.

10,000 hits since April.

I have just noticed that sometime overnight (thanks America) the blog has gone past the 10,000 hits mark,since starting on 8th April this year. Thanks to everyone for your support; I hope there is still plenty of interest yet to come.