Anybody can complicate matters. It takes Genius to simplify.

Techies, feel free to laugh.  Non-techies, I hope I am your savior angel.

Blog world has 3 planets: WordPress , Blogger(Google)   and the super-special stand-alone independents.

My quandary-How to make these parallel paths merge?

1. Foremost, there are blogs who follow me (Yayyy!) and those I follow (which may, unfortunately not be mutually inclusive) Circa Now, the latter outnumbers the former. Some fine day, I intend to reverse the numbers!. For now, I will call these Followers and Wishes respectively.

2. The Followers and Wishes can be inhabitants of the above mentioned 3 planets. (Techies, I forewarned you!)

I mean, my Followers can be http://xyz.wordpress.com; or http://xyz.blogspot.in  or http://www.xyz.com (WordPress, Blogger and Independents respectively). The same goes for my Wishes.

OK, take a deep breath… Fine…

By now, my simple, easy blog world is split into 6 lists. (How come whenever I intend to simplify; I end up blogging…I mean, boggling myself…I mean, get bogged down…)  

3. Sharing – That was the whole purpose, wasn’t it? How do you connect?

For WordPressers, the ’Reader’ is the golden gate, of course! It is the fav arena to preen your blog, to collect Followers, to sniff out new blogs and faithfully trot after Wishes.

But! It is a snobbish, uppity, eclectic party. It frowns upon non-Wordpressers.  I can neither see their blog update nor show-off my blog update to them. So…

If your Followers/Wishes are non-WordPress bloggers….then simply copy-paste their blog url . Now come to WordPress Reader…Blogs I Follow…click ‘Edit’…add the url in the textbox that pops up…and click ‘Add’.

Voila! Now you have all your WP and non-WP blogs under one roof. Neatly classified by either Alphabetical or Date-wise series.

Remember to remember: Crucial information.

a] Understand that your name, blog url and blog title are separate entities. 

For example, my name:drsweetyshinde

                  url: https://sweetyshinde.wordpress.com

                  blog name: Impractical Dreamer.

To my vexation, I may have  a Follower/Wish  whose

               name :Arvind shah

                   url : http://torture myself often.com

                   blog name: White Elephant.

How on Earth am I to remember the connection between these 3 names?

My solution: I painstakingly made a Word document where I enter all relevant data about each WordPress, non WordPress and Independent blog. Followers and Wishes. It is the only sane way (atleast to my limited knowledge) to keep it all together.

This document has name, blog title, blog url, and blog-specialty(book review/creative photography/spirituality)

Why do I need to do this? I get a witty comment from , say  GreenEyes. I would love to visit his/her blog and demonstrate my wit in return. Next step, I hover over their Gravatar image. 

b] Gravatar: It is a visual hook. Also, pausing over the Gravatar image gets you a quick peek into Gravatar profile. For example, “Shaun Mason. Author of abc book. Virile footballer. Violinist. Wine connoisseur.” (P.S-Shaun is imaginary)

c] If I hover over your name, I should automatically  get linked to the blog url. (Provided you have edited Gravatar profile).

Thus, your Gravatar image shows your face and your Gravatar introduction(make that Wow! first impression), your name tells your real name and hovering over the name links to your blog url. Mission accomplished!

Coming back to our neat Reader list of non-Wordpress and WordPress Followers/Wishes.

…. Grudges:  {a]Reader will not update you on non-WP blogger’s new posts. So you need to click on the blog url under ‘Blogs I Follow’ to see their latest posts.

{b}Reader will save your favorite blogs by ‘Blog Title’ and not blog-url or blog-writer name. So, that painfully crafted word document is much needed as reference point.

Whew!

How do you keep track of your ‘I follow’ and ‘who follow me’ ?

Do you know a much simpler method? Enlighten me, please.(Don’t say email is the best option.)