Welcome to “Using This Blog 101,” a guide to help visitors to Gil’s Thrilling (And Filling) Blog maximize their experience and ease of use. This guide was created because of feedback from my dear readers indicating there are some features and functions on the blog that aren’t very intuitive.

Marquee for Gil’s Thrilling (And Filling) Blog

As with all internet sites, Gil’s blog has a banner. Call it the site’s marquee if you will. Clicking on the site’s name from any page you may be viewing will return you to the home page. Directly below the site’s name, you can keep track of how many reviews are available within the site. Oh, and if you’re wondering just what a “sesquipedalian sybarite” is, it’s basically someone with a large vocabulary who enjoys the finer things (especially food).

The banner also includes a menu which allows you to navigate to information-filled pages on the site. The most important pages are the “Indexes,” alphabetical listings of restaurant reviews by category or city. The site includes restaurant indexes for Albuquerque, New Mexico, Santa Fe and the United States. Within the Albuquerque and Santa Fe indexes, all restaurants are categorized by the type of cuisine served (Basque, Russian and Swiss, for example). Within the “New Mexico” and “United States” indexes, restaurants are listed alphabetically by state and city.

Each index will tell you how many restaurants have been reviewed in a particular city or town or restaurant category. For example, the New Mexico Index pictured above lists six restaurants in Bernalillo. By clicking on any of the restaurants listed, a review will launch for that restaurant.

The next part of the site’s banner is a slideshow of mostly topographical images from throughout New Mexico. Each image displays for five seconds before moving on to the next image. These images were taken by my friend Paul Lilly of Lilly Digital.

Use the Search engine to locate the most recent instances of key words.

On the right-hand side of each page on the site, you’ll see a Search Web part. Please note that this is a keyword search and not specifically a restaurant review search function. The search engine will display a portion of the review in which the most recent instance of a term can be found. For example, if you perform a search for “Laos,” a page will launch displaying a short “blurb” of all reviews in which the word “Laos” can be found.

To optimize the effectiveness of your search, you might want to try using Boolean operators. These will allow you to better target the results you want to see.

By design, the home page includes the three most recent reviews. This is in consideration of visitors who may not have high speed internet access. By clicking on the restaurant’s name, only the review of that restaurant will display on the page.

Provided there are at least three reviews within a specific restaurant category or city, there are also three reviews per page within every category in the “Restaurants by Category” menu. The most recent reviews display first.

At the very bottom of each page, you’ll see a link called “Older Posts.” Click on that link and you will see three additional posts.

Click on “Older Posts” to read more posts in a particular category or location.

On the right-hand side of each page, you’ll find a menu listing my fifteen most recent visits. Click on any of the restaurant names and my review for that restaurant will display.

You can also use the Calendar to navigate to restaurant reviews for the month displayed on the calendar. By hovering your cursor over each date highlighted in red, the name of the restaurant visited on that date will display. Click on the date and the review for that restaurant will launch. You can also navigate to the previous month on the Calendar at the bottom of the calendar.

Below each review, you’ll find the date and time in which the review was posted. You’ll also see a link to the number of comments which have been submitted by readers for that particular review. Click on the link and you’ll read some very insightful comments about my review or the restaurant being reviewed. Below the last comment for the review, you’ll see a small “Leave a Comment” form which you can complete if you wish to share your own dining experience about the restaurant reviewed.

If a review doesn’t have any comments, you’ll see a “No Comments” link. If you’d like to be the first intrepid visitor to comment on a review, please click on that link and a form will display which you can complete to submit feedback.

Frequent visitors to my blog might want to subscribe via email. Entering your email address on the simple “Subscribe” form will ensure you receive an email version of each blog post as soon as it is published. The email version includes all the images that accompany my reviews.