If you are thinking the blog looks a little different…

you are correct. It does!

Peggy Chinn and I, along with the other members of the INANE Internet Workgroup, are working on a major overhaul of the INANE website and the blog. The best news is that now the website and blog are going to be together in one place. No more needing to remember two URLs or switch back and forth to find essential information. It is all here at nursingeditors.com.

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The blog and the website will now live together in the same fishbowl!

As part of this transformation, I have switched the blog theme to more easily accommodate the needs of the website. Before it looked like a magazine or the front page of a newspaper with lots of different stories. Now it has a more traditional blog look, with posts scrolling down and the most recent (like this one) at the top. I liked the old style but this format will be more workable for a website in the long run.

Within the blog, Peggy and I have created a special category page where we have gathered the tributes to Suzanne Smith as well as her “Who’s Who” page from the INANE website. You can access the page by clicking here. Note that the posts about Suzanne are also still contained within the blog itself, in chronological order. The tribute post has 38 comments and over the past two months, I’ve gone back many times to re-read them. Comments are not closed. If you have been thinking about Suzanne, take a minute to share your thoughts in a comment. This post, the comments, and the category page will be preserved ad infinitum; we consider Suzanne’s memory an important part of our INANE legacy.

Also with our updating, I have created a page where it is possible to donate to the Suzanne Smith Development Fund, right here from the website. All of us hope this initiative will live on beyond the INANE 2014 conference and having a donation page here is part of our planning for that future. If you have not yet donated to the fund, please take a moment to do so and help keep Suzanne’s memory alive in our organization. Thank you in advance for your generosity.

If you are reading this blog post, you will likely start poking around the website. Realize that this is a work in progress and there will be updates and changes over the coming days and weeks. Still, the essential navigation remains the same; we hope it looks familiar to all of you. If you have questions or feedback about the look or what we should include, use the contact page to send feedback. You can also leave a comment below. I along with Peggy and the other members of the workgroup look froward to hearing from you!

Leslie

Setting up a journal blog

What a wonderful experience this is … getting started with blogging!  I want to share with “Editor’s Pen” readers my experience in getting started on a journal blog, which IAdvances in Nursing Science think will begin to really enhance the journal’s effectiveness in reaching readers.  Thanks, Leslie,for pushing this along and encouraging me to get started!

I have now set up a blog for ANS, and the folks at the publisher have linked the blog to the ANS Facebook page!  I am working on plans to make the blog serve the journal.  We have already started,and will continue to include commentaries and discussion from authors and readers related to content in the journal.  I will also be posting “mini” editorials regularly, and will link my comments to resources on the ANS web site.

Click around and explore, and if you want to connect with me to explore ways to get this going, or to improve how we all are using this resource, don’t hesitate to be in touch! And remember, this kind of thing will be discussed and featured at our August conference!  Hope you can come and join in!

The Elusive Subscribe Button

One hint to readers: if you enjoy this blog you can subscribe to it. By subscribing, you’ll receive an e-mail each time a new post is put up allowing you to read the post in your inbox or come visit the blog. In order to subscribe, you need to be logged into WordPress.

In order to subscribe, follow these steps. Scroll down the page to the end of the sidebar on the right hand side. In the “Meta” section you’ll see an option for Log in.

Click Log in which will bring you to the Log in screen which looks like this:

If you already have a WordPress account, log in with your user name and password. If you don’t choose register and follow the prompts.

When you get to the register screen, you have the option to create a user ID and WordPress blog. If you don’t want to start a blog, and just want to create a user name choose the option for user name only, down on the right hand side.

Once you are logged in, you’ll see the subscribe button at the top of the screen, like this:

Because this is a public blog, you don’t need to log in to view the blog. But you do need to log in if you want to subscribe and receive email notifications of new posts.

Questions? Please ask in the comments. Thanks!

Our First Feedback

Thank you to Andrew Harding who was the first person to use the Feedback page to send a comment to the blog. With his permission, I reproduce it here:

Hi,

I really like the INANE blog, though the INANE name bothers me. Blogs interest me because of their minimal control, broad but familiar scope and almost anyone can write what they want. I am learning to write and edit. I act as a section editor for the Journal of Emergency Nursing and have sought out editor mentors. This is another subsection of nursing that is tightly knit, but very generous with their spirit, time and guidance. My mentors like Jean Proehl (Advanced Emergency Nursing Journal) have impeccable CVs, nursing/writing talent, and a gift for teaching. It is fun to watch the INANE group develop over the emails and now online via this blog. Good luck!

Regards,

Drew
Andrew Harding, MS, RN, CEN, NEA-BC, FAHA

Thanks for the good wishes. I agree about with your comments about blogs: I too appreciate the opportunity for informal and ongoing discussion. Blogs can be very organic and grow in unexpected and natural ways. I am having fun with this one and am looking to more involvement from the larger community. I’ll offer the invitation again to anyone who would like to post: just send me a message and I can add you to the blog as a contributor, or can post for you.

As for the INANE name…I think we all do a double-take when first hearing it, but eventually it grows on you. Besides, I sometimes think that as nurses, we take ourselves way too seriously. It’s fun having a little tongue-in-cheek joke, don’t you think? 😉