How to Search Our Blog

by Nina

Recently I ran into a yoga acquaintance who, after saying how she much enjoyed the blog, asked me if there is any way to find a previous post on the blog. Of course, as a blogger and a reader of other blogs, I know exactly how to go about finding a particular post on a blog. But it occurred to me that there may be more than one person out there with the same question, so I decided to write a post about it (and add it permanently to the main page under a “How to Search” tab).

First, you should all know that there are three ways to find a previous post: using the Index, using the Search function, and using the Blog Archive.

I think the index is the most useful, so I’ll begin by describing that. Every single post that we publish is “labeled” with key words (and also with the author’s name). You can see the labels for a given post at the very end of the post. This is basically a form of indexing, and I’ve been doing my best to create a useful index with “labels” that I think readers will want to look up. However, I’ve been indexing the posts as I go along, so the index is a little inconsistent (in a previous life, I indexed whole books on a regular basis, and the best way to do it is after the book is done, in one go).

The Search function allows you to search for posts that include a particular word or phrase. It then provides a list of those posts, from which you can choose the most likely candidate. To be honest, I’m not sure which words it includes in the search because I can’t always find what I’m looking for with this function. But it often does work well.

The Blog Archive lists all the posts by date and title. This is only useful if you have some vague idea of when the post you are interested was published. But this would allow you to, for example, read the very first post or a post from last week whose title you think you may remember.

Now that I’ve got all the background out of the way, here are the basic steps:

1. Start on the main page of the blog. If you are receiving posts by email or as a Google follower, you will need to visit the blog itself to search. Go to: http://yogaforhealthyaging.blogspot.com/.

2. Now look at the right side of the page. If you can’t see the alphabetical index of labels on the right side of the screen, scroll down until you do. It looks like this:

If you have some idea of what you’re looking for (such as “arthritis” or “healthy eating” or “Legs Up the Wall pose” or “Baxter Bell”), scroll through the alphabet to find it and click on that label. You will then see all the posts with that label in the body of the blog. At this point, scroll down through the articles to find the one you’re looking for.

If you don’t have any idea of how the post would have been indexed, scroll down through the alphabet to see if you can find anything that looks likely.

3. If you can’t find the post you want to read again using the index, try using the Search function. On the right side of the window, just above the Blog Archive, you’ll see a Search box.

Click on the empty box, type your search word or phrase into the box, and then press Enter or click the Search button. You’ll then see a list of relevant posts on the left - maybe multiple pages worth. You can then pick the appropriate one by title.

4. If you want to search for the post by year and month, find the Blog Archive between the Search function and the index.

To use the Blog Archive, find the year you want and click the side arrow to open it. Then find the month you want within that year and click the side arrow to open the month. At this point, you'll see the titles of all posts from that month and you can simply click on the title for the post you want to read.

Easy peasy! Happy reading, everyone.