"Cheat sheet?" they said. "What the heck is that, and where can I get one?"
Fear not, dear friends. I am happy to pass along the wisdom that has helped me out immensely. (Click any of the photos to enlarge them for a closer look.)
When I joined my first Bloggiesta in 2011, I was very new to blogging. I did tons of the mini-challenges, hopped around, and soaked up some really valuable advice. One of the links I stumbled across was for a mini-challenge on creating a cheat sheet. At this point my memory fails as to whether this was the original post I found, but There's A Book has a great post on how to make a cheat sheet. She even has a mock-up you can use for reference!
There's no need for me to recap all of her terrific explanations, but essentially the cheat sheet is an easily accessible document you create to store links, codes, and other info you want to keep handy while blogging. I have mine stored in a Google Doc, and it has html codes I copied from how-to posts on other blogs, a list of my page links and social media links for quick copying, and sidebar/design codes that I know look nice on my blog. Since I always compose my posts in HTML view, having these codes handy is a big time saver.
The sheet keeps me from having to reinvent the wheel every time I want to do some editing. Although my primary default these days is to just copy from old posts and sidebars, I'm trying to train myself to get in the habit of using the cheat sheet so I'm not constantly mucking around in my blog. It's also nice to know I've got most of the codes I need in a separate place from my blog, in case something happens and it goes down.
So there you have it. I'm a cheater. Maybe now you can be one too.
Do you already use a cheat sheet? Do you find it helpful?
5 comments:
I hadn't a clue this existed and what a great idea it is. Thank you for sharing.
I keep track of mine in a word doc. That's a good thing to call it though.
I've got mine saved in different spots as blog tips in my email. I never thought to put them all in one place on google docs. That's a great idea.
So, yes that helped me!
Thanks,
Heather
Oh... I see. In retrospect this seems incredibly obvious compared to the huge time waste that I spend making up my posts. So thanks for this!
I just starting doing this although not quite as organized as you have it. I also started using templates in Live Write and that has saved me so much time.
Great idea!
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