Blogging 101

Just in case we have some brand new bloggers among us :)

Creating a Post

At the very top of the blog is a long thin strip with words in it, on the right, one of them is NewPost, click on this.

Add your title...

In the main box type or copy/paste your text. You have options in the top bar to justify your text, I recommend that- it’s the Alignment tab, the bottom choice, all neat and square.

You can alter text size etc with the 4^th button in, generally we stay on normal, but you can play...

To add a pic, make sure the flashing cursor is on a new line then click the 12^th button (framed pic), this will open a box, click on choose files, search your pc for your pic. As Anne has said, it is better to resize your pics before you upload. 600 wide pixels is fine. When it has uploaded click the select button.

You will go back to your text box and the image will appear. If you click on it a blue bar appears with more options like changing size, adding a caption, centering etc. It’s fine to play and move things around, it is  all mobile until you press publish. Preview will show you what it looks like, in a new window, so don’t forget to go back to the right window to alter and publish.

Labels

When you publish your post, at the bottom of the peachy box is a box marked "labels". Click show all and a whole list of previously added words will show tyo help you choose. To add new words, just type in the box and comma... you can add @20 words so have a peek at the labels already used and be as varied as you can...it all helps!! Also, if you type a letter in the box a list appears with words beginning with that letter, just another way to make it easy...

 Photo Size
There is an 8 MB size limit on photos on this site. Be aware that the bigger the photo, the longer it will take to upload now and to display later for viewers. The fine resolution you get on modern digital cameras and scanner is great for large prints but total overkill for things like a blog. With larger sizes, you will soon run out of allotted storage space.

I take all my photos that I put into blogs with VGA resolution on my digital camera. If you have this option, it really saves having to resizing (or scaling) photos in a photo editor! If you have to resize, pick the 72 pixels/inch resolution, click the "preserve aspect ratio" (so things/people don't get fatter or thinner than the original photo), and set your width to something under 600.
Don't forget to do a "Save As" a new image so your original photo is not overwritten! A handy, quick editor for resizing on a Windows machine is Irfanview . GIMP is an open source image editor with many of the capabilities of Photo Shop (but not the cost!) and has versions for Windows, Mac, and Linux; it is, however, more complicated to use than Irfanview.

Photo Uploading
 The tool bar in the posting editor has a picture icon. Hitting that brings up a smaller window for uploading your photos. You can upload to Blogger from your computer or from the web (but you need to know the URL of your photo as it resides on a photo site or another blogging site). If your photo is over 8 MB, it won't upload (see photo size note above).

Blogger will do some display resizing for you: small (as in a thumbnail), medium, or large.
You can post the image with no positioning: text will be below it or above it. Or you can position it on the left or right of the page and text can flow around it. If post the center of the page, text will go below it.

"Fixing" Images that Blogger Misplaces
The editor in Blogger (being used here) has a "what-you-see-is-what-you-get" aspect (the Compose tab) and an HTML (the actual language used by browser to display pages) aspect (the Edit HTML tab).

I find that in my Firefox browser, when I add any photos beyond the first one, they get put in at the top of the page. After you calm down from your initial dismay, hit the Edit HTML tab. At the top of the page you will see a paragraph that begins with a less-than sign and the words "a onblur" and ends with forward slash, greater-than sign, less-than sign, forward slash, "a", greater-than sign combination. (Sorry for the long way of express this, but if I try to type these into the editor they disappear as they are read by the browser as part of the formatting language!)

Select this entire paragraph with the mouse (it should all be highlighted) and hit Ctrl-X (hold down the Ctrl key and hit the "X" key). You will see it disappear from the page. Go down to the bottom of the page where you really want the photo and hit Ctrl-V (hold down the Ctrl key and hit the "V" key). The block of text will appear there.

Hit the Compose tab and you will see the photo at the bottom of the page.

Adding an Icon to your Blog

If you have your own blog going, and it is a blogspot one, here's how to add your own tiny browser icon to it. They're great, they really make your title stand out from the list of orange/white "B"s in your bookmarks and the browser bar.

First you will need a little art package, junior-icon-editor .There are many, but this is free and works fine.

Once downloaded and installed, open the program, follow link/instructions to get a free license and off you go.

Click the "ok" button to open a new screen, choose the 32 x 32 option a nd click. Now the editing box appears.... play with the design until you are happy...colour/erase/pen are on the left...colour picker on the right. Best thing is to just play...who needs an excuse for that....

When you are happy save the file in a place you will remember- desktop/documents....

On your blog dashboard open the design page. At the top of  box, above the header box, is a small tab called Favicon...click "edit". A small box appears that allows you to find the icon you have saved in a safe place....save it and wait.... you are all done!!!

I have noticed that these do take some time to update around the web, so be patient. It should show in the browser bar after 24 hours, but I'm still waiting for the tab and bookmark icon to show. It depends on how often search engines etc refresh their data...