Additions to blog formatting

A few days ago, I got an email from my friend Dan in Minnesota:

You would do your readers a favor if you would have one more list, beyond your Top 10:

List the things you would buy again (obviously linking each item to your original review).

Me, in the store: What was that thing Bob liked awhile back -- the veggie stuff in the frozen bag? Hmmm. Check the list on my phone. Polenta! That's it! I'll try that!

It seemed like a good idea. I thought that while I was at it, I would also compile a list of things that not only would I buy again, but that I do actually buy over and over again. 

So three lists, in ascending order of greatness: Would buy again, my staples, and top ten (which, of course, is never limited to ten items). 

It took me a bit of tinkering to figure out how to make Blogger do it in a way that would be useful, and then it took, well, basically all day today to go through hundreds of posts, and paste their links into the appropriate lists. But now it's done, and will henceforth be easy to update one item at a time, as called for. 

The posts containing those lists are the next three you see. After some time they'll scroll off the front page, as newer posts emerge. But--here's the important bit--it doesn't matter where they are, because I've added permanent links to them at the top-right corner of any page of the blog you might be looking at. See them up there?

There's one glitch that I can't easily solve, which is that those anchored links don't show up on the mobile version of the home page that Google (owner of Blogger/Blogspot) sends out when it senses that you're reading on a smart phone. The only work-around I know of is this: scroll down to the bottom of the page and find a link that says something like "View web version." Click on that, and it loads the full version of the site, with those links where they should be. (The same is true for getting to the search function at the upper left corner, which I frequently want to use when looking up an old review while I'm in the store.) 

I hope you find this a helpful additional feature.