Teach Me Tuesday: Adding a Link-up Device

In my very first edition of Teach Me Tuesday, I am learning how to set up a linking device so that others may join up their own posts about lessons they are learning!
It is so important to me to always keep my mind active and learning new things, whether it is a class I choose to take or a new word I look up to understand more appropriate ways to use it! And sometimes it may also be a lesson from God, showing me something I need to work on and grow in.
So lets get started...first you need to decide which kind of link you want, I have seen a few different ones, and I will be learning how to use the Linky Tools, or MckLinky, which is a free tool.
Then you must sign-up. As I already said it is a free tool, but on their website using your email and full name you create an account. You also will need the URL for your blog and to know which time zone you are in. Now your account is set up!
On your dashboard there are a number of different link options. I will be using a basic one, that will allow you to link up your blog post to my list that will display at the bottom of my post on my blog. Some other types of link-ups are 'Blog Hops' in which each person that adds to the list has the option of adding the code to their own post as well, and everyone would have the exact same list of links, so you can 'hop' around from blog to blog. There is also a link for contests or giveaways, others can enter as per your own instructions and you may choose a winner or rank them, 1st, 2nd, etc. Another one is the picture caption link, which you can have readers suggest captions for a particular picture and choose your favorite. The list of link options goes on.
To use the basic link, you first select it, then put in info like the title- which won't show on your post but is rather for organizing your links on the dashboard of the Linky website. You put in the number of characters you want the maximum to have available for bloggers to enter when they link up. They suggest keeping it somewhat short, about 30-60, so you will have a 'clean' list of links. And you enter the start and end times for when others are allowed to add a link. This is why it is important to put your time zone in. Now you are almost done!
Now you can get the code, and copy and paste it into your blog! That wasn't very hard right? I will admit, I thought it would be more complicated but as I keep learning more and more about blogging, I find its super easy and user friendly!

What have you learned this week?