I.T. Services
Now, go ahead and click that Blogs link to get started. There, feel better? Alright then let’s get a sense of what we’re looking at. In Figure 2 is the empty blog screen, this is where you’re going to create you’re first blog and each blog after that. You can create up to 5 blogs at CNC.
The name goes here section is about a short name that you can remember and tell others to look for. The title section can be anything you want, usually some kind of description. For our first blog together I’ll name it “pigs” and give it a title of “Pigs can fly!”
Have a look at Figure 3 now; this is what it looks like after we clicked the Create Blog button.
The nice thing about this Blog software is that you can check on how your creation is doing as you build it. Clicking either the link in the URL column or the View button will open another browser widow with your new blog. Let’s take a look at our blog shall we? See Figure 4 for what the default blog appearance is without any editing to the new blog.
Wow! That was simple eh! OK, let’s change the banner. The banner is the graphic to the left of the “Pigs can fly!” title. We can put any graphic we want in there. In keeping with our theme we’ve located a pig with wings. To insert it into the blog we have to go back to our “Current Blogs/Create Blog” screen. So for now you can just close the new browser window and then go back to where we created the blog. Once you’re there, click the Settings button.
Have a look around at all of the options. Some of these are self explanatory some are not. For now we’ll just go through changing the banner.
To do that we need a graphic to upload, for this I’ve saved the graphic as FlyingPig.jpg and now we’ll upload it. Go to the bottom of the page and click the browse button, and then select the graphic you wish to upload to your blog. Once selected just click the upload button and the blog software will upload your graphic to your blog.
Now in the text box for the Banner option type in the name of your graphic, for us it’s FlyingPig.jpg. Now go to the bottom of the page again and click the Save Settings button. Figure 5 shows what the pigs blog looks like now. You can click the View button to see what yours looks like now to.
Obviously you might wish to choose or create a picture that would serve well as a “banner” but as demonstrated you can use anything you want. A great place to locate pictures is on Google, just click the images link and then type in what you’re looking for.
Well, so far we’ve created a blog, named it and provided a title as well as uploaded a graphic to serve as the banner. Let’s edit the introduction to give some sense of what this blog will be about. The introduction will be located in the same section as the graphic we just uploaded and under the Pigs can fly! Title after we’ve added it.
Close the new browser window (if you’re viewing your blog as you read through this). Click the Edit Intro button; it is near the top of the page. On this new page you’ll notice that the same buttons along the top of the Create Blogs page are here. All of the rest of the page has changed. Now all of the changeable text is there for us to change in any way we want. Just remember to click the Save Changes button when you’re done or you’ll loose all of your changes to the introduction.
Right then, here is what it looks like now that we’ve altered and saved the changed intro. See Figure 6.
You’re doing great! OK, now let’s work on the profile section.
Getting back to the settings page, locate the Edit Profile button. It’s located near the top at the third row of buttons; See Figure 7.
Now click the Edit Profile button. Now you have a text box that you can edit and add your own text into. Go ahead, do something with your’s and we’ll get this one updated. Then have another look at how your blog is turning out.
If you’ve used any extra spaces or created new lines you’ve probably discovered by now that the blog does not reflect them. Figure 8 shows how I formatted my profile and the end result.
The key to fixing this is to use HTML in your profile. So to separate your paragraphs just put <p> at the beginning of each paragraph and </p> at the end of each one. Then the end result will be what you expect.
By now you should have noticed that the Name is Owner, the Picture is not you, and that the Visitors count goes up with each check you make.
The visitors count will keep track of how many visitors you’ve had at your blog. However, it is only updated when you post to your blog (or make some change to it). The Name can be changed by editing the Name field in the main settings page of your blog.
On the settings page look down the list of items you can edit and you’ll see one called “Your Name” with “Owner” in the text field beside it. Just replace that with what you want to be known as. Then make sure you go to the bottom of the page and click the save settings button.
Beside the Edit Profile button is the New Profile Image button. We’ll use this to change the sample picture of the little girl to something that we want. This picture is different from the banner we used earlier; this one is automatically scaled to the right size.
Blogs are a great way to have your own little website that viewers can interact with you at. By leaving the comments enabled (its default state), viewers can leave comments on you’re latest post or any other post they see on your site.
Unfortunately though there are annoying things called spam bots. These spam bots patrol websites looking for ways to add their own spam to the site.
Comments are perfect for spam bots, so to prevent them from adding comments filled with spam to your site just click the Verify Comments check mark box. This sets up a graphic image that bares some human readable content that must be entered into another field. Spam bots cannot use these at all and therefore their spam is prevented from getting onto your blog.
Comments can be inline or a link to a separate page. For a low traffic page I’d recommend leaving them inline.
Comments can only be made to a posting, meaning that if enabled each posting can have one or more comments made to it. No post to your blog, then no way for anyone to comment on it.
There are two ways to post to your blog. Both work but they do things a little differently. One way is to go into your WebMail/Blogs… link and then click the post button. Give it a subject if you wish and then add your text and click post. There, your first post to your first blog. How does that feel?
The second way to post to your blog is to send an email to it. Yes, you can email your blog, but only from within the college email system. The gateway is not setup to detect email addresses destined for a blog so they would be rejected.
On your blog settings page look for the row where the email address is displayed with an explanation that you can email your blog with it. Copy that address to a new message in WebMail and then try sending a post to your blog. Try sending the exact same text as you just posted previously to see how the email is matched to a manual post.
Try posting a picture manually and then by emailing it. You’ll see the greatest difference between manual posting and sending emails this way. In fact if you want to post pictures then emailing your blog is the preferred way because the blog software automatically adjusts the picture to fit the blog whereas manual posting assumes you want that picture posted that way so it does nothing to reformat it for you.
In WebMail click the Blogs… link, there beside the blog you’ve created you’ll see the List/Edit Posts button, click it.
Now for each post and comment you have three options. One to edit the post or comment, one to delete and one to view, go ahead check it out.
The list of posts is valid for manual and emailed posts and all comments made from your viewers.
Provided that you have not customized any portion of the blog via advanced settings and manipulating HTML code directly. You can change the template your blog uses without any dire consequences. Before going any further, try out the different templates to see which suites you best.
On the settings page for your blog you can hide it by adding a checkmark to the unlisted setting. Some people like to do this while they are developing their blog and then once done they remove the checkmark.
If you’d like to make your log semi-private you can add a password to it. That results in viewers being asked to enter a userID and password when they browse to your blog. Anything will do for the userID but the password entered must be the same as the password you typed into the password box on the settings page.
After testing things out you might want to start over or perhaps you created a blog for a short duration and want to remove it now. That is not a problem, on the settings page way down at the bottom is the Delete entire blog button. If you click that button the entire blog and all comments will be deleted.
There is a lot of ground to cover for this blog system. I’ve obviously left out a lot so if there is something else you want more of an explanation on then just add a comment asking for it in my example blog: pigs or send me an email.
Either way I’ll update this document if I get anything asked more than once.
Contacting I.T.S.
