updating & managing blogger blogs

06 April 2009 Copyright © David J Kingaby 2009, all rights reserved of 15

Updating Blogger blogs.docx

UPDATING BLOGGER BLOGS

STEP‐BY‐STEP INSTRUCTIONS

PREPARED BY:

David J Kingaby T/A KingServ

Address:

23 St Kilda’s Road Brentwood, Essex CM15 9EX

Tel: 01277 219915

Mob: 07712 877310

Email: [email protected]

Web: http://www.KingServ.org

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.kingserv.org/



CONTENTS

Contents ................................................................................................................................. 2

Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 3

Blogger Blogs ......................................................................................................................... 3

Assumptions .......................................................................................................................... 3

Blogger Tasks & Actions .......................................................................................................... 4

Receiving the Blogger email ................................................................................................... 4 For those without an Account 5 For those with an account 6

Logon and Main Options ........................................................................................................ 7

Creating a New Post ............................................................................................................... 8 Quick Start 9 More Complex Entries 10

Edit Posts ............................................................................................................................. 12 Group actions 13 Individual Actions 13

Email Options ....................................................................................................................... 14 Options available 15



INTRODUCTION

BLOGGER BLOGS

Blogger is a ‘blogging’ service provided by Google and is one of many freely available services that provide individuals and organisations an opportunity to maintain a journal or newsfeed online. Having been acquired by Google they are now fully integrated in terms of logon although otherwise remain distinct from other Google services.

I recommend Blogger over other freely available services for one reason only – over the past few years Google have managed to continue innovating (or acquiring innovation) and generating revenue streams that allow them to provide their wide range of services freely under a single logon. Although it remains entirely possible that this may change in the future it seems improbable at this time.

ASSUMPTIONS

The rest of this document assumes that:

The Blogger interface remains substantially unchanged from its current version (March 2009) ; A Blog has already been established (probably by KingServ) You have received an invitation email from the Blogger system; and that You have some familiarity with using the Internet through a browser and accessing and finding files on your computer.



BLOGGER TASKS & ACTIONS

The following sections will show you how to:

Respond to the Blogger email; Log on and understand main options available; Change main settings; Post a blog or news item

RECEIVING THE BLOGGER EMAIL

The email will be sent to the email address agreed with the administrator and the content will look something like:

The Blogger user XXXX has invited you to contribute to the blog: XXXXXXXXX

To contribute to this blog, visit:

http://www.blogger.com/i.g?inviteID=nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn&blogID=nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

You will need to sign in with a Google Account to confirm the invitation and start posting to this blog. If you do not have a Google Account yet, we will show you how to get one in minutes.

To learn more about Blogger and starting your own free blog visit http://www.blogger.com.

Either clicking on the link, or copying it and pasting into your preferred browser, will bring up the following screen:

Figure 1 ‐ Options when invited to contribute

… from which you will see you have two routes available to you:



FOR THOSE WITHOUT AN ACCOUNT

In this instance you are invited to click on ‘Create your account now’ which will take you to the following screen:

Figure 2 ‐ Creating an account

The form should be completed as follows:

Email address – this ought to be a address that you will readily recall and that is active; Password – this ought to be strong enough that it is not obvious to others, bear in mind that if others are able to log on

using your ID it is not only your reputation as an author at stake but possibly the credibility of the Blog. Ideally the password will be a mixture of alphabetic and numeric characters;

Display Name – this is the name that you want your Blogs to be associated with and will appear on all postings you make;

Word Verification – this captcha code needs to be accurately interpreted before you can proceed – do read carefully they are not always obvious; and finally

Acceptance of Terms.

Once all are completed then clicking Continue will take you to the next stage ‘for those with an account’ although you will also need to verify your email address. To verify your email address, simply check your email and you will find an email that looks something like:



Welcome to Google Accounts. To activate your account and verify your email address, please click the following link:

http://www.google.com/accounts/VE?service=blogger&c=ZXZXZXnnnZXZXZXXnnn=en_GB

Note: Please keep your verification link in case you need to recover access to your account (for example, if you forget your username or password).

If you've received this email in error, it's likely that another user entered your email address while trying to create an account for a different email address. If you don't click the verification link, the account won't be activated.

If you decide to use this account or delete it, you'll first need to reset the account password by entering your email address at https://www.google.com/accounts/ForgotPasswd?fpOnly=1&continue=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.blogger.com%2Floginz%3Fd%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.blogger.com%252Fi.g%253FblogID%nnnZXZXZXZXZXZX%1234inviteID%123123XX12313%26a%3DADD_SERVICE_FLAG&followup=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.blogger.com%2Floginz%3Fd%3D%252Fhome%26a%3DSERVICE_ONLY&hl=en_GB&service=blogger&dEM=blogger_test%40kingserv.org.

If clicking on the link above does not work, copy and paste the URL in a new browser window instead..

Follow the instructions as stated above (basically either click on the link, or copy and paste it into your browser) and the account will be established.

FOR THOSE WITH AN ACCOUNT

You will be presented with the following screen (prefilled with your account name if you are already logged in or have just created your account:

Figure 3 ‐ Logging on for first time

You may sometimes also be asked to complete a further word verification (captcha) at this point but will then be navigated to the following screen:



Figure 4 ‐ Main Dashboard View

This screen will include all the Blogs that you have access to under your chosen logon ID. Many of the areas on here are not essential to maintenance of the blog and are optional to you as a user, guidelines are, therefore, out of scope of this document although adding a personal profile, photo etc… are intuitive if you care to do so.

LOGON AND MAIN OPTIONS

To log in you simply type http://www.blogger.com in your browser address bar and you will be presented with this screen:

Figure 5 ‐ Main login screen

http://www.blogger.com/



Login by typing your Username (email address previously set up) and password in the top right of the screen and then click ‘Sign In’. You will then be shown the main dashboard as seen in Figure 4 from which the following options are available:

Create a Blog – this is outside the scope of this document but once you have found how easy it is to update you may well feel compelled to set one up yourself;

View Blog – this will open up the latest updated view of the blog for you to look at; New post – this will take you straight to the Blog entry screen to compose a new item; Edit Posts – provides a list of all entries which you are able to edit or delete; and Settings – which provides a limited subset of options available to the main blog administrator:

Email – you can set up to allow entries to be posted directly by email to the blog and then provide this email address to other trusted parties. This ought to be used sparingly since poor formatting and editing disciple by email users can lead the blog into disrepute;

Permissions – you can remove your name from the list of approved blog contributors.

Only those highlighted in Bold above are discussed in more detail below as being relevant to managing blog entries.

CREATING A NEW POST

Taking the Create a New Post option fm the menus above you will be presented with the following screen:

Figure 6 ‐ Main blog entry screen

As a general rule most of the functions available in this screen ought not to be used since they are governed by a default template, but each are discussed below the ‘Quick‐Start’ guide:



QUICK START

A blog entry can be simple text, with or without major formatting or pictures. In such a case the most important consideration is to ensure that you do not import styling from an external application that may conflict with the format of the Bog – if you do paste from a programme like Word or Outlook then please follow option 2 below otherwise Option 1 will have you posting in seconds:

OPTION 1

Type a short but useful title in the Title block – make it something that catches the eye of your intended audience;

Type your article or report in the main box using simple formatting options only (do not change the font setting or colour without giving serious thought to how the entire blog will look); feel free to use the bold, italic, number list and bullet list options.

Click on Publish Post – that’s it.

OPTION 2

As in Option 1, first of all give the article a useful title.

Click on Edit HTML to switch from the standard Compose window (you do not need to understand HTML to do this) and then paste your text in above any other text that is already there (as part of the template) followed by a carriage return (or two). This has the effect of stripping out any pre‐existing formatting as you can see here where I have pasted in the above two paragraphs:

Figure 7 ‐ Formatted text pasted in HTML view removes formats

You can now switch to Compose View and apply local formatting, adding line spaces etc… using the same options in Option 1 above and then Publish Post.



MORE COMPLEX ENTRIES

To create a more complex entry will start in much the same way as Option 1 or 2 above for the Quick Start but can make use of many more options; these are all described here by reference to the relevant icon or option in the Compose View:

ICON OR OPTION DESCRIPTION

The following Icons work by selecting a section of text with your cursor first and then clicking the icon to produce a range of effects:

This will give you the option to change the font from the default for the Blog to another font (without accessing HTML only Arial, Courier, Georgia, Lucida Grande, Times, Trebuchet, Verdana and Webdings are standard). As a general rule, however, this should not be changed other than in order to highlight a heading or other such purpose. It is worth noting that neither the compose or preview views display the blog in the default font so you may want to publish a draft version and then edit it to fine tine on font settings.

This allows you to make the font smaller or larger than the default and guidelines are the same as for the font itself – change it only rarely! Again without accessing HTML code directly, the standard options are all relative to the default (normal) size and are Smallest, Small, Normal, Large & Largest.

These are useful aids to making a small section of text stand out in either bold, italic, or both. Normally these ought not be used for large tracts of text since it would make the posting appear inconsistent with others and risk the Blog appearing inconsistent.

This allows the colour of the highlighted text to be changed from the default to one of the standard ones shown on the right.

As with other styling changes, care must be taken not to undermine the overall design of the blog and any colours should be as consistent as possible – for example, select a colour similar to the main blog Titles for any sub‐headings you may want to use.

This allows you to add a hyperlink to the text linking to another web address – this might be to another Blog entry or an entirely different website altogether.

These will ony work on whole paragrpahs and allow you to change the alignment from left to centre, right or justified. Once again, each Blog template will already have a defaul so in using this option you are moving away from the normal look and feel.

Selecting a number of paragraphs and clicking these will produce a numbered or bulleted list.

This is another function that works only on whole paragraphs which it turns into a ‘Blockquote’ – basically an indented paragraph.

This initiates a specific spell check although most modern browsers will already have some form of spell‐checking running whilst you type.

This wil remove any formatting you have mistakenly added (or imported) to the text (although please note that as of late March 2009 date this function does not work with some browsers so it should not be relied upon).




These next options do not require pre‐selection of text and work rather differently.

This Icon is used to add pictures to your blog entry – something that is to be encouraged since a suitable picture always makes the blog more appealing to viewers. By default these pictures will always appear at the top of your entry and this can only be changed by either adding the pictures first and then creating the text around them or by subsequently editing the entry in HTML view (not advised for the faint hehere.

From here you can upload the picture file and choose

arted). Clicking the icon will bring up a screen as shown to the right

its relative a

xwing your local

its filename, if you want to add more than one image then click ‘Add

to

cify whether you want them to go top

e

terms of service if prompted to do so (this is not always asked) and click

This works in a similar way to the Picture Icon above

will be able to track this progress on the

size nd location as follows:

Click ‘Choose File’ and a file e plorer window will open shofile system; navigate through this to find the image you want and click another image’ and another ‘Choose File’ button will appear. As an alternative you can add images from the internet if you know their internet address (URL) although take care that the image you want to use is free or you have good reason to believe there would be no objectionyou using it.

Having selected the images you want to use you can speright, top left or top centre using the layout options and whether you want a small, medium or large image – as a guideline medium is normally appropriate and large can sometimes exceed thwidth of a blog entry.

Next tick to accept the‘Upload Image’ – a confirmation screen will then appear stating that your image has been addedand displaying a thumbnail, click ‘Done’ and you will be returned to the editing window where you will now see the image in situ.

to add a Video although the dialogue box is slightly different as you can see. Once again you are prompted to ‘Choose file’ which will open a file explorer window on your computer from which you can add your file. Please note the file type and size constraints and ensure that your video has a title that will tell potential viewers what they will be seeing if they click to play. This will normally take quite a while longer (several minutes) to load and process than a simple picture (normally seconds) although depending on your browser capabilities youstatus bar at the bottom of your browser (or better still – go make a cup of tea or coffee, you will have time!) Once the video is in place in the compose window (even if not finished processing) you can position it using the alignment buttons and add text above or below in the normal manner.




little misleading since although it does show a preview of your blog entry it is not

rendered using the same fonts as your blog style would normally show. It is, however, useful for

want to allow readers to post comments about your entry and what date/time you want the entry to

used by search engines in their indexing. If you are a regular blog contributor on the subject of,

routinely autosave in its latest version but if you have just made a substantial edit you ought to consider clicking this button ‘just in case’. This will save the blog entry to your ‘list

e launched your blog to the world wide web.

This is a

judging how the text (and any pictures or vidoes) are laid out relative to one another.

Clicking this will open up an extension menu allowing you to specify whether or not you

appear to have been made in the past orwhen you want the post to be published in the future.

Adding keywords here will help visitors find blog entries that are relevant to them and will also be

let’s say, ‘Origami club meetings’ then you might consider adding Origami as a label to every post you make.

Blogger does

of posts’ (see ‘Edit Posts’ below) where it will be marked as draft until such time as you either puyblish or delete it.

Press this and you hav

EDIT POSTS

When selecting this option from the main ‘Posting’ menu you will be presented with a screen like this:

Figure 8 ‐ Edit Posts screenshot

You will see all posts to the blog listed in this view granted ‘admin’ privileges you will be unable to edit others’ entries in any way – indeed, you will even be unable to view others’ draft entries. This view can be used for a number of purposes as follows:

although unless you have been



GROUP ACTIONS

A number of posts can be selected simultaneously by either clicking:

A number of ‘Select All’, o

‘check boxes’ on the left; r

One of the labels on the left.

This will then allow you to perform the same action to all the selected posts simultaneously.

number of visible posts before doing this you can first of all narrow the view by changing the view from

ne).

them:

Label them (click on ‘Label Actions’ to get a drop‐down list of existing labels already used in the Blog or the option to

If you want to limit the ‘All’ posts to one of the following:

Drafts (i.e. those you have yet to commit to be published), Scheduled (i.e. those to be published at a future date/time), Imported (not normally used) or Published (those already onli

Having selected a number of posts you can now do the following with

Publish them; Delete them; or

create a ‘New Label’)

INDIVIDUAL ACTIONS

All of the group actions above can be applied to a single post if only the one check‐box is ticked. You may also:

Edit (see notes above for this);

View comments (with an option to delete them); or

Open the post up to View the post;

Delete the post.

… by clicking the relevant links:



EMAIL OPTIONS

Unless you have been given Admin privileges clicking on ‘Settings’ from the main Dashboard window of the Blog will only give you one option and that is to establish an email address that can be used to make posts to the blog without going through the Editing process above.

Figure 9 ‐ Creating secret email address

There is a security issue to consider in setting this option up since although having the email address will not allow anybody access to the dashboard it will allow them to post material onto the Blog in your name. Before proceeding, therefore, care should be taken in establishing a ‘secretWords’ element for the email address that is secure and known only to you or those you trust to post in your name.

Having typed a secret word combination (using no spaces and preferably a mixture of alphanumeric characters) clicking ‘Save Settings’ will immediately enable the email address. You can now simply use your standard email client to compose a Blog post and send it to the email address you have set up ( which is [email protected] in the above example).

BUT…

… if this seems too easy to be true then you are at least partly correct. In using this facility great care must be taken to:

Ensure that the Subject line of the email is suitable to be used as the blog post subject and is not, for example, something like “Fwd: Results of yesterdays meeting”;

Keep formatting relatively simple – for example the following standard formats appear to translate okay:

Font colours; Different fonts (your default font will turn into the default for the blog, different fonts will be represented as

accurately as the viewers’ browsers permit but do remember not to use different fonts without good reason); Indented text; Bullet or number lists; Tables; and Hyperlinks

Delete all standard signature blocks; Turn off any Anti‐Virus stamps on outgoing mail;

mailto:[email protected]



Avoid adding images in‐line since although a placeholder will show where the picture was it will not display the picture – pictures can be added as attachments instead and will appear at the top of the post.

Of course, once you have sent the email you can always log onto Blogger and edit the post online.

OPTIONS AVAILABLE

There are 3 available options for this service:

Publish email immediately – you should only have it set to this if you can absolutely trust that all the above conditions for good quality postings are going to be satisfied;

Save emails as draft posts – this setting should be used if:

you are unable to turn off security signature blocks, you have issued the email address to others I order for them to create draft entries that you will then ‘polish off’

online; or there is any other reason you can think of – bear in mind that this is the safe approach to using this facility;

Disabled – you would certainly use this if somebody has hacked your email address and is posting spam or other unwanted items onto your blog.

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