Category: MetaBlogging

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MetaBlogging

Beginning with Blogger: Posts and Pages

This entry is part 2 of 3 in the series Beginning with Blogger
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While this post is intended for beginners, there may be something for all of us here. Did you know that Blogger now has “Pages”? This is a very cool, very important step for Blogger as a “full-featured” blogging platform. You don’t have to cobble together a menu bar or touch HTML or flood your feed as you create “About Me” and “Contact” pages. (Check out the fourth picture and description for more details.)

All right, so we’ve created a blog with Blogger and even made our first post. Now we’re ready to learn a little more about posting. When you log in to Blogger and go to your blog, click on the Posting tab. You’ll see you have four sub-options.

The first, rather obviously, creates a New Post. We already went over how to create a post, so today we’ll look at the Post Options below the post text box. Click on the triangle to open the Post Options:

Here, you can switch off comments on a case-by-case basis. (In a few weeks, we’ll find how to turn off all comments automatically.) Unless you want to code your posts in HTML, keep the Enter HTML Line Breaks set to Press “Enter for Line Breaks. And if you’re not entering any HTML (for example, the code for others to copy and paste to use a badge), don’t worry about the Compose Settings.

The Post Date and Time has two options: Automatic, meaning it sets the date and time of the post to whenever you hit Publish, or Scheduled, meaning you get to pick the date and time displayed on the post. You can pick a time in the past to post-date a post, or you can pick a date or time to schedule a post to go live in the future. (When you click the button by Scheduled, a box pops up for you to enter the date and time you want.)

Finally, note here the Labels. You can use these to assign your posts to categories, and organize them for you and your visitors. You can have many, many Labels on a post, using them as specific “tags” so you can keep track of all the topics you mention, or you can stick to 5-10 or so Labels total, and use them as broad categories to organize your blog into general topics.

The next option under the Posting Tab is the Edit Posts option. This lists all your posts and drafts—and this is where to go to finish working on a draft post.

You can select some or all of your posts to add labels (with the drop down menu at left). You can also filter the posts you see by when they are or will be published: drafts aren’t scheduled to be published, Scheduled posts have been assigned a date and time and “published,” but aren’t visible on the blog yet, and Imported posts came from another blog (we’ll look at how to do that another week).

Warning: If you are saving draft versions of posts in Blogger, you may be publishing those posts to your RSS feed. When you publish the post later, it may not show up in feed readers again. So if you have a time-sensitive post (or just want to make sure your readers see your post when it’s ready, and only then), try using a test blog to draft, then cut and paste to your main blog. (I can’t find any documentation on this issue from Blogger, but I’ve seen this happen with half a dozen different Blogger blogs.)

On the line with the post, you can see the Title and the date or time (if recent enough) it was either published or last edited. To the left of the title is a little triangle—you can click on the triangle to see the text of the post without leaving this page. If a post has been published, you have the option to View just left of that. And left of that, you click Edit to finish or fix a post.

At the top, you can search in your posts or create a new post. At the bottom, you can publish or delete any of the posts you’ve selected with the check boxes on their lines.

The next option under the Posting Tab is the Edit Pages option. Pages are not like posts. Posts are little bits of time. They have dates and times attached to them. They’re your weekly/daily/whateverly updates. Pages are for the information that’s almost always going to stay the same on your blog: who you are, how to contact you, etc. My pages are displayed in a line underneath my header. (Home, Blog Mentoring, About, Contact, etc.)

You can have the same layout easily with Blogger. (This used to be a lot of work!) Click on Edit Pages to view the page menu. Here, you have the option to create a new page. Below that, any existing pages are displayed. Click on New Page to create a new page.

The Create a New Page page looks just like the create a new post page. Enter your title and text here, and click Publish Page to make it live.

If this is your first Page, Blogger will ask you where you’d like the list of your pages to be displayed on your blog. I highly recommend the Blog tabs option.

When you visit your blog, you can see the Pages listed below the header:

The last option under the Posting tab is Comment Moderation. All this has is a link to the Settings page for Comment Moderation:

And we’ll talk about that with other settings!

There you go—now you can save drafts, create new posts and create pages for your Blogger blog.

Anything need to be clearer?

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MetaBlogging

Beginners’ Guide to WordPress: Sign up

This entry is part 1 of 2 in the series Beginning with WordPress

Like I said last week, we are going back to basics. I realize that most of you don’t need this help, but you might have a friend or relative who could use this. Last week, we covered how to sign up for Blogger, so this week we’ll look at how to sign up for WordPress.

Note that there are two versions of WordPress: wordpress.com and wordpress.org. WordPress.com is what you want to use if you just want a free blog. WordPress.org is if you want more control, but are ready to take care of the maintenance and technical stuff, as well as pay for hosting. Today we’re looking at wordpress.com

Go to WordPress.com. To sign up for a blog, click the big orange button on the right-hand side of the screen. You know, the one that says “Sign up now.” (You already knew that, huh?)

On the next page, you provide some very impersonal information: a username and password for your account, and an email address where WordPress can reach you.

Be sure here that you check the box to indicate that you’ve read the terms of service (which you should always read, of course), as well as tick the circle by Gimme a blog! (Like username.wordpress.com). You’ll get to select the exact address at wordpress.com in the next step. This option is selected by default. The other choice is if you just want a username for commenting on other WordPress.com blogs, etc.

As promised, we now get to set the blog address. You select an address for your blog as well as its title (what will appear in big letters at the top of every page). Note that there are no @ signs in the address of your blog—@ signs are only used in email addresses! Your blog address will be whatever you choose (if it’s available), followed by .wordpress.com (Unlike with Blogger, the address can’t be changed—choose wisely!).

Also here, you indicate what language you’ll be writing in and whether or not you want Google and other websites, including WordPress’s public listings, to be able to access your blog. If you’d like to keep your blog more private (and also make it harder to find), uncheck this box before you click Signup.

WordPress gives you a message that your confirmation email has been sent. In the mean time, if you’ve opted to be included in the public listings of WordPress, you can fill out your profile with your name and a little about yourself.

Here’s our confirmation email:

As it says, click on the link or cut-and-paste it into your browser’s address bar.

And your account is active! The confirmation message gives you a link to visit your blog, where they’ve already put up a useful Hello World! post for you. If you’re signed in, there’s a dark gray bar across the top of the screen—your dashboard. Click on New Post to start writing your own blog posts. (You can click on the picture below to enlarge it to see the New Post button.)

On the New Post page, you can write the individual posts for your blog. Enter a title in the title box—the title of the post appears at the top of the post in big letters. (This post” title, for example, is “Beginners’ Guide to WordPress: Sign Up.”) (Again, you can click on this image to enlarge it for a better view.)

In the larger box below, type the words you’d like to see in the content or body of your post. (I’m pretty sure we’ll also be talking about what all those buttons do soon, too.)

To save the draft to finish later, or to make sure you don’t lose your work should your computer or browser crash, click the Save Draft button in the Publish box on the right side of the screen. To publish it to your public blog, click the blue Publish button. Once you publish, you’ll see this at the top of the screen:

You can click on the View post link to see your public post:

Congratulations! You just started a blog on WordPress!

What blogging topics would you like covered for WordPress?

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MetaBlogging

Beginners’ Guide to Blogger: Sign Up

This entry is part 1 of 3 in the series Beginning with Blogger
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We’re going back to the basics for this next blogging series: I’m going to alternate weeks on Blogger and WordPress.com, and go back all the way to the beginning. I imagine you probably already have a blog, and you’ve probably been through all these steps, but you may know someone who’s interested in getting started, but afraid to try. Fear not! It’s easy! And if you want someone to show you what to do, look no further, because here’s the Beginniners’ Guide to Blogger, part one: how to sign up and set up your blog the first time.

Go to http://www.blogger.com. Here’s what the screen looks like:

If you already have a Google account—such as for Gmail, Google Groups or Orkut—you can use that to sign in at the top. Otherwise, click the big orange button to create an account.

Account creation is easy. You do have to supply some personal details—but nothing more intimate than your email address. You also set a display name here, the name that appears at the bottom of your blog posts. If you don’t want to use your real name, be sure to set that to your pseudonym of choice.

If you already have a Google account, when you sign in, you’ll see this. Click the blue button to create your blog:

Whether you just created a new account or are using an existing account, the next step is the same (You can click to enlarge the picture below). You select a name for your blog (what will appear in big letters at the top of every page) as well as its address. Note that there are no @ signs in the name of your blog—@ signs are only used in email addresses! Your blog address will be whatever you choose (if it’s available), followed by .blogspot.com —in the example here, it’s http://thisisafakeoblogo.blogspot.com. Use the “check availability” link to make sure that address isn’t already taken.

Type in the spam-catcher letters and click the orange Continue button.

Next, you get to choose the template or layout and colors of your blog. There are several choices here, so scroll down to see them all and pick the one you like best. (Note: in an upcoming post, we’ll talk about how to get custom designs for your Blogger blog.)

Voila! Your blog has been created! You can hit the orange Continue button here to start posting, or look at the Advanced Setup Options.

The advanced options allow you to get your own domain for your Blogger blog—i.e., ThisIsAFakeoBlogo.com instead of thisisafakeoblogo.blogspot.com. (Purchasing a domain will cost money. Here’s some of my advice on buying your own domain.) The other advanced option is to import a blog you already have into your new one.

If you went with the orange Continue button, you’ll go right to the Write New Post page. Enter a title in the title box—the title of the post appears at the top of the post in big letters. (This post’s title, for example, is “Beginners’ Guide to Blogger: Sign Up.”)

In the larger box below, type the words you’d like to see in the content or body of your post. (I’m pretty sure we’ll also be talking about what all those buttons do soon, too.)

To save the draft to finish later, or to make sure you don’t lose your work should your computer or browser crash, click the Save Draft button. To publish it to your public blog, click the Publish Post button. Once you publish, you’ll see this:

Follow the View Blog link to see your blog and your first post live in the world:

Congratulations! You just started a blog on Blogger!

What blogging topics would you like covered for Blogger or WordPress?

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MetaBlogging

Blogger brings you Amazon Associates

A few months ago, we looked a how to sign up for and use Amazon Associates, an affiliate marketing program that gives you a small percentage of any sales you generate for Amazon. Now Blogger is making it even easier to use Amazon’s program—without ever leaving your post window.

You may have noticed the Monetize tab Blogger added back in April. Up until yesterday, only Google ads (AdSense) for your site and feed appeared here. Now you can also find your Amazon Associates information there, too.

To start, go to Monetize > Amazon Associates. Here you can either enter your Associates ID if you already have one, or start the sign up process (and again, we have a step-by-step walk-through on signing up for Amazon)
blogazon1

Once you’re finished with that step, you have the option to add the Amazon Product Finder to your Edit/Compose New Post page. I say go for it, and I’ll show you why.

blogazon2

The Product Finder is a widget that lives on the Compose New/Edit Post page. When you’re working on a post and you want to include a product link to Amazon, just type in part of the name or highlight the title in your post (you can also search by category with the pull-down menu where it says “Amazon.com”).
blogazon3

Once you find the product you want, you can choose the link type to insert into your post—text, image or both. In my example, I went for both:

blogazon4

There are lots of other ways to use Amazon on your blog—so get started!

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MetaBlogging

Get images to display right in feed readers

Today’s quick blogging tip is mostly for WordPress users, WordPress.com and self-hosted. Have you ever worked so hard on perfecting your latest post, putting in the most awesome images to go along with it, carefully centering them and aligning them left and right until it looks perfect? I know I have. And then the post comes up in my feed reader and it looks like this:

image align

What happened to all that careful work?

Well, to get technical, website incompatibilities. The latest version of WordPress adds a special code to align images using the design coded into WP sites with cascading style sheets (CSS). However, when that post with that special code goes out to other sites, like Bloglines and Google Reader, those sites don’t have the same CSS, so they can’t understand the code.

What to do?

Well, the answer is a little bit technical—but admit it, you’ve always wanted to learn a little HTML and CSS and feel cool, right?

The fix

As normal, upload your image and select your alignment.
image align2

When you return to your post window, find the HTML tab at the top of the post box and click on it. This changes your view of the post to see the code behind it.
image align3

Find the code for your image. It will look something like this:

<img title="image align" src="Your File Path on your site/2009/12/image-align.png" alt="image align" width="500" height="249" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1695" />

The green part is the WordPress CSS code that puts the image where you want it (center/right/left).

To fix it, you will add a little snippet of code to this section, before the /> :

align="left" (or right or center)

Save your draft and it should show up right in feed readers now! (You can also switch back to the Visual tab now.)

Technical note 1: the align element is “deprecated,” meaning that it’s outdated and at some future date, it may not work anymore. However, this is just a quick fix; it doesn’t have to work forever because you have the other WordPress code in place. If you want the “real” code to make it work, the “permanent” solution (the currently acceptable HTML/CSS code for this) is style="float:left;" . If you can remember that, great. If not, don’t sweat it.

Technical note 2: this method also works to align your images if your template doesn’t have the special WordPress code in the CSS, but you can also add this to your style.css file (found under Appearance>Editor):

.aligncenter {display: block;margin-left: auto;margin-right: auto;}
.alignleft {float: left;}
.alignright {float: right;}

However, feed readers will still need the help until they get with the program, I guess.

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MetaBlogging

Where do you get stuck blogging?

Blogging isn’t always as easy as it looks. Now in my fourth year of blogging, things are a little different (as I’m sure many of you “old timers” can attest).

I still get a lot of ideas for posts. Sometimes, they’re thoughts that come out of the blue, and sometimes they’re good enough that I can just hang onto them until I’m ready to write them (I did that with yesterday’s post on hard work for about a week and a half). Some are inspired by others’ posts, others by my every day life or pictures I’ve taken of the kids.

Once I get a good idea, especially if it’s inspired by another post, I write up a little draft of it. Sometimes it’ll be nothing more than a phrase or a link.

And usually, that’s about where they stay, sometimes even after I write the post on that topic. So right now, I have over 100 unfinished blog post drafts.

On the one hand, hooray! I have so much stuff to write about! On the other hand, boo! I don’t want to go through 100 posts looking for something I feel like writing about today (especially not if I have to read something first!).

So today I realized, that’s where I get stuck blogging—taking it from idea/draft to post. (And it’s not like my every post is a masterpiece that I spend days crafting.)

Confession: I wrote this post a couple days ago and thought I posted it. I was all sad because I didn’t get any comments. Then I was checking something on the site and discovered . . . I never hit Publish. What a great illustration of this, LOL!

So today I’m turning it over to you for a little help. How can I take more drafts to posts? Where do you get stuck blogging? What blogging questions do you have?

Photo by Shovelling Son