Blogging 101:

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Blogging 101

• Creating and sharing content using Blogger.com

Justin W. McGregor, Web Developer Distance
Education Southwest Tennessee Community College
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A first look at Blogger.com
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Creating your Blog

• Click Create your blog now

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Who are You?
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Name your blog
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Make it pretty
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Get used to that triangle!
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You almost have a blog
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Blogging 101

• Posting Content

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(No Transcript)
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The Tool Bar
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Your First Post

• Say a little something
• Then click

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Remember this?
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Successful Post

• Hopefully youll see this

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Successful Post - Details

• If you click details youll see this
• This gives you permalink and feed details.

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Viewing your Blog

• At this point, you can view your Blog by simply
  clicking View Blog

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Viewing your neighbors blog

• Close your browser
• Using the URL from your slip of paper
• Create both a Live Bookmark in Firefox and a new
  Feed in FeedReader
• The feed address is
• http//theirURL.blogspot.com/atom.xml

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Linking to another blog

• Go back to Blogger.com
• The login box is in the upper right portion of
  the screen
• Your login is not necessarily the same as your
  name or your URL

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Dashboard

• An user can have more than one blog (and a blog
  can have many authors)

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Create a post containing a link

• Create a new post telling people about the Google
  Blog
• Now highlight the Google Blog and click the
  Link button

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Create a post containing a link

• Enter the address for the Google Blog
• Click OK

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Create a post containing a link

• It should look something like this
• Publish your post and go take a look
• Try clicking on your new link

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I messed up! (Editing a post)

• To begin editing
• If you are in the posting menu, click Edit
  Posts.
• From Dashboard, just click the name of your blog.
• Now click on Edit beside the name of the post
  you want to edit.

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Editing a post

• From here it works just like posting
• To change a picture, delete and repost it
• To change a link, re-select the text and press
  the link button.

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Draft Posts

• You have the option of saving a post as a draft
  so that you can work on it later.
• Create a new post, as normal
• Click Save as Draft instead of Publish Post

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Draft Post

• To continue working on a post, go to Edit Posts
• Click Edit and continue working
• You can save the post again or publish it from
  this point.

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Now in color!

• Blogger allows you to add pictures to your blog.
• Pictures are not stored in a web document they
  must be hosted
• Blogger allows you to manage one picture at a
  time up to 300MB of total space.

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Adding a picture

• Create a new post and type a description of your
  picture (or you vacation, party, etc.)
• Click on the Add Image button

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Adding a picture
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Lets look at those feeds

• Once everyone has finished, lets look back at the
  feeds we bookmarked a few minutes ago.
• Look for the picture in FeedReader
• Where does the link in Firefox take us?

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Comments from your readers

• Blogs arent just for their authors.
• You are posting to a live website that people
  will actually browse.
• I got a comment on my sample blog from this class
  from a complete stranger in the first day! (he
  liked my moose)

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Comments can be controlled

• You have some say in who comments on your blog
• You can restrict it to members of Blogger or just
  members of your blog.
• (its coming I promise)
• You can hide comments
• You can preview comments before they are published

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Controlling comments

• From Dashboard Click Change Settings
• Click on Comments

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What else is in Settings?

• Click on basic and create a description of your
  blog
• Click on publish and set Notify Weblogs.com to
  yes
• If you find youre updating a lot, it might be
  important to set archiving to weekly

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E-mail settings

• The BlogSend address could be important if you
  are managing a multi-author blog (more on that
  later).
• The Mail-to-Blogger Address allows you to E-mail
  entries to your blog
• You cant e-mail pictures

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E-mailing an entry to your blog

• You will choose a key to allow you to e-mail your
  blog
• Selecting publish will allow Blogger to
  automatically publish the e-mail to your blog as
  soon as it is recieved
• Try sending an e-mail to this address and then
  re-load your blog.

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Multi-Author Blogs

• Just like an account can have many blogs, a blog
  can have many authors.
• For Blogger, each author must have their own
  Blogger account.
• The Blog will follow the attribution rules that
  the user has set up in his or her profile, not
  the rules for the blog.

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Contribute to a multi-author blog

• Ive sent invitations to all of you to join my
  blog
• Instructions are included in the e-mail
• Follow those instructions and let me know when
  you are done.

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Multi-author blogging

• You should now see something like this

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Multi-author blogging

• Click the New Post icon beside the class blog
  and add an entry to that blog.

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Possible additional topics

• Blog Template editing
• Content re-use
• Making RSS work for you
• Demonstrate other blog packages
• Advanced photo management
• Linking to photo-sets
• Blogging from Mobile devices
• Really publicizing your blog