Surprise!!!

When you signed on today,
You immediately pulled up your favorite blog: this one!  But once it came up, you knew right away something was wrong.  You saw that some jerk in the middle of Nebraska had stolen MY name, MY precious 2 followers (who ever they might be) and MY blog.  After all, that wasn't MY blog you were reading!  But who?  And they write well!  You guiltily found yourself reading the most recent post, which happened to be...oh!  This one!

Here's the truth:  AF Bratlife has had a glamorous and chic makeover!  With a new background, new fonts, and cool new gadgets on the sides.  Even a new form and new color.  Basically, only the name is the same.  And the writer.  I'm here to explain all those new gadgets.  Pay close attention now!

Pretend you're on my home page

1. Look at column #1 on the left.  At the top you see a section called ALL MY LABELS.  Have you ever noticed at the bottom of of each post it says, Labels: and then it has a list of labels.  Anyway, the ALL MY LABELS section has all the major labels listed.  The bigger the size of those labels, the more of them there are.  There are 6 labels there for you to sort through.
2. Location:  Under the ALL MY LABELS section, on column #1.  Name:  Links for FUN!!!  Purpose:  This is a recent list of all my favorite websites, except of course this one because that's stupid.  A link to itself!
3. Location:  Under the Links for FUN!!! section, on column #1.  Name:  Poll Section (not very creative)  Purpose:  It's a poll section.  Each question will have 2 months to be answered, so no excuses about not seeing it.  I think I may reduce it as much as just a week.  It's a simple one section thing, so again no excuses.
4. Location:  Under the Poll Section, on column #1.  Name:  Favorites! (It also says Updated Weekly but that's a lot to write)  Purpose:  This is my list of favorites, which, as the name says, is updated weekly.  Just so you can know.
5. Location:  Under the Favorites!, on column #1.  Name:  Photo Section (Again, not very creative)  Purpose:  I have a favorite photo with a label and subtitle.  Right now, it's a snow leopard, which is my favorite animals.  Or one of them.
6. Location:  Top of column #2.  Name:  Blog Archive  Purpose:  This isn't new, but I'm doing a review of ALL the gadgets so...  This is where you can find all the post ever made sorted from top to bottom sorted by month made and by name and by year made.  :-)
7. Location:  The next one on column #2.  Name:  Most Popular AF Bratlife Posts  Purpose:  This shows the top 5 posts for the last 30 days, so you can stay on top of my non-existent comment conversations*.  To visit any of them, just click on the title, which will turn bright turquoise (it is my favorite color!)
8. The next one on column #2 is Follow AF Bratlife by email!  Just type in your email and you'll get all the posts by email....  Of course, that kinda ruins the point of having all those cool gadgets!
9. The next one is called the Contributors section, where you can click on my mom's and my own profile and find out what blogs we've followed, and also more about me that I've never told you on here.
10. Finally, the page views gadget.  This is where you can see how many page views I have total, complete with a cute little graph that shows my progress and the spikes (spikes=good) of page views.  Make it go up and suggest AF Bratlife to your friends, as well as take the AF Bratlife poll to improve it, by clicking HERE!!!  :-)

*A reader (thank you you-know-who-you-are) pointed out that many readers do not know how to comment, or if they do their comments disappear right after commenting!  Not good!  So here's how to comment on this post.  Go up and click on "Surprise!!!".  Then scroll down until you see something saying "Post a comment".  Click on it.  It will take you to another page now in our improved commenting system.  It will tell you to the left the name of the post, the former comments (so you can reply to one) and also a link so you can read the post again if you need to.  To the right, you can comment!  Please remember that if you are not signed in to Google Accounts, do so before hand or your comment will be lost.  How do you avoid this disaster?  Either sign in before hand like I do  (I have to to post) or just click the cute little box that says "Anonymous" Unfortunately, I actually can't see who commented if it's anonymous, so please sign with your first name, or a name I'll recognize.  Don't leave random non-signed comments all about because then nobody know who's who!  :-(  No comments = no conversations between readers, which is good.

That's all for now.  Now you can't complain about losing your comments because I gave you specific instructions.  :-)  Later, gators!