Three Autostraddle-Related Tech Tips For Gaying Up Your Internet

Hello all, Ali here—we happen to have a magic tech unicorn on staff named Cee. And collectively, you all and we all ask Cee a lot of questions. Here are the answers to a few questions that get asked over and over again that we thought you might appreciate. The more you know!

Tip #1: You want to get an email each time there’s a new post on Autostraddle

Several readers and some staff have asked me how they can get an email when there’s a new post on Autostraddle. I recommend using IFTTT for this, and I published a recipe for you all to use.

IFTTT is a great free service to link different web things together. Ali wrote a great article explaining it if you are unfamiliar.

Go ahead and add this recipe:

Tip #2: You want an Autostraddle App

And so many more people have asked for an Autostraddle app! Most of you want to be able to read our articles without having to open your browsers and type in the address, etc. I get it! Unfortunately writing an app would take me hundreds of hours, and the process to get it into the apple store is quite difficult and a pain. And that doesn’t even include Android.

Instead, I can show you how to put an icon on your home screen which can save you some time.

Android:

Open up your browser and go to autostraddle.com

Tap the little menu at the top and select “Add to homescreen”

Name it whatever you want

You’re done!

iOS:

Open up your browser and go to autostraddle.com. At the bottom menu, tap the middle “share” icon.

Tap the “Add to Home Screen” icon

Name it whatever you want

You’re done!

Tip #3: You want to make sure we’re getting the referral fee on Amazon when you buy stuff, but keep forgetting to click through the site first

Autostraddle can get a small referral fee on purchases if you click through to Amazon from our site through their affiliate program. This is one of the ways we pay for our server hosting fees and the like.

I found a few extensions which automatically append the tag to the Amazon URL, without having to go through our site first. So if you install these extensions in your browser, and buy things on Amazon, you’re helping us without even really doing anything!

Chrome:

1. Right click on this custom Autostraddle extension and “Save Link As”. Don’t regular click on it because Chrome will give you a security warning. I promise I’m not going to haxx0r your computar.
2. Go to Chrome > Preferences > Extensions (or type the shortcut chrome://extensions/ in your URL bar).
3. Drag the file you downloaded onto that extensions page and install it!
4. Note for Windows users: you may get a security message that this extension was disabled because it’s not from the Chrome store. Unfortunately if that happens we can’t do anything, and you can either use Firefox or try to remember to click through the site first.

Firefox:

Install Affiliatefox, then in Tools > Add-ons > Extensions > AffiliateFox > Preferences, add in the affiliate code autowin-20 to all the boxes.

Safari:

Install Affiliatizer, then go to Safari > Preferences > Extensions and type in autowin-20 in all the boxes except amazon.ca which is autostraddle-20, and amazon.co.uk which is autostraddle-21.

This has been the one-hundred-thirteenth installment of  Queer Your Tech with Fun, Autostraddle’s nerdy tech column. Not everything we cover is queer per se, but we talk about customizing this awesome technology you’ve got. Having it our way, expressing our appy selves just like we do with our identities. Here we can talk about anything from app recommendations to choosing a wireless printer to web sites you have to favorite to any other fun shit we can do with technology. Header by Rory Midhani. You bet I got that feature image off of YouTube.