Tips for Finding Great Stuff on AuPairMom
Welcome!
AuPairMom is just stuffed with resources— so many, in fact, that they can be hard to find. This is especially true if you’re new to reading blogs and don’t know the conventional places we’d put things.
Getting Around the Blog
Basic Introductory Information can be accessed by the “Navigation Bar” at the top.
There’s information about:
- The blog and our history
— basic, standard, info about How to Use the Blog (including commenting policy, our statement of purpose, etc) - How to get Advice on a specific issue.
People tend to dump questions here, or even worse in the comments on some open post, and that drives me nuts since it makes it hard to find your advice later. Send me an email instead. See this post on What Happens After The Words “Dear AuPairMom”? for a little background on what goes on here. - Where to start if you are an AuPair and not a Host Parent
- Where to check out all the hundreds of Earlier Posts (make sure to “expand all”, then read down the titles)
To Search for Types of Information, Use the List of Categories
Look down the right sidebar, below “recent comments” and you’ll see a long list of Categories. These Categories cover the chunks of topics we’ve discussed on the blog… so if you want to know about “Vacations”, click on that category name. The posts and a short synopsis will be listed in reverse chronological order.
To Search for Posts about specific topics, use the Search box
On the top right of the blog is a box titled “Search for Good Stuff Here”. In the box, just type a few words about what you are looking for, like “car accident” or “boyfriend stays over” and you’ll get a whole bunch of posts about topics that touch on what you are looking for. Sometimes your terms won’t match how I’ve tagged the posts, so try a few different wordings, like “overnight guest” or “au pair social life“, to scare up some more posts.
Sometimes, simple things like whether or not you’re using an apostrophe, or using the plural when I’ve tagged the singular, will make matches harder.
Keep looking, there are many many treasures.
To Search for really specific information, use the “googlized” search box
To search for even more specific phrases like “au pair has a nose ring”, there’s an additional way to search.
Check out the box labeled “Search for Specific Topics” under the Follow Me on Twitter space, midway down the right sidebar. This search is ‘Powered by Google’ and returns all mentions of that comment on AuPairMom.
This search returns lots of information, poorly sorted, so be patient as you click through the results.
To Search for Comments by your favorite contributor
Do you want to read everything ever written by TakingAComputerLunch (aka TACL)? We’ve got an app for that! Type the screen name of your favorite commenter, with quotation marks, into the “googlized” search box. Voila– wisdom.
“Pages” of Basic Reference Information
Want an example of an Au Pair Family Handbook? Look even further down the right sidebar, and you’ll see Pages where I’ve archived or summarized some of the information people look for. We have pages of sample handbooks, info on being a guest post, info on using the care, comments policy, and more.
That’s all I’ve got for now.
Please email me at mom at aupairmom dot com if you have additional questions about the blog or have ideas on what resources to add.
~ thanks! aupairmom aka cv harquail
