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.