Introduction to Blogging

Prerequisites: Internet Basics and you must have a working email address.

To create a blog, you must first choose a blogging platform. A blogging platform is the service that provides you with space on the internet for your blog. Some popular blogging platforms include www.blog.com, www.blogger.com, www.wordpress.com, or www.tumblr.com.

Blogs must be updated regularly. If you want to gain exposure online, but you don’t the responsibility of posting new material regularly, then you should consider our Basics of Web Design class, where you will learn to build a static website. A blog is meant to share an ongoing experience or project of some kind online. If you go too long without posting new material, your readers will forget about you! However, if you do update regularly, you can gain a group of dedicated readers who visit your site often. This doesn’t happen often with a regular website.

Blogs can also double as a website. Some services will allow you to have a “static front page,” which means when people visit the web address they get a homepage that doesn’t change, just like a website. The blog would then be on a page of that website. But as far as the internet is concerned, the website is still a blog, and if the blog is not updated regularly, it will be more difficult for people to find your site through search engines.

Blogs have a lot of parts. Many more than websites. The actual post is just a small part of it. A blog has:

· Sidebars. Lots of information, interactive tools, links, and advertising can be placed in sidebars

· Widgets. A widget is a small tool that performs a certain function on your blog. There are widgets that will display your most popular posts, widgets that will show your social media profiles, widgets that will allow your readers to answer polls…the possibilities are almost endless. Your blogging platform will generally have a supply of widgets that you can choose from to display on your sidebar or footer.

· Comments. People can leave comments on your post. These are important to monitor. If you want your blog to be viewed by a lot of people, you need to interact by responding to people’s comments and getting conversation started. Blogs are much more social than regular websites.

· Tags. A tag is a label that you can associate with your post. When people search for blogs about “cats,” posts that are tagged with the word “cats” will be the first to pop up. Tags tell people what your post is about.

· Categories. These are similar to tags, but broader in scope. Instead of telling people specifically what your post is about, categories tell people what type of post it is. Your posts can be sorted into different categories such as, News, Polls, Stories, Self-help, etc.

· Pages. Just like a website, your blog can have other pages that are not changed regularly, like an “about” page or a “contact” page.

· Custom URL: Some blog services will allow you to have your own web address (www.yourdomain.com) instead of having to include the blog service’s name (www.yourdomain.blog.com). Usually you’ll have to upgrade to a paid package to get this benefit.

Some of these parts may only be available to paying customers. You can have as many or as few parts to your blog as you choose. The image below will show you what these parts might look like.

Blog Title

Pages

Blog posts, in order from newest to oldest.

Banner (You could put a logo or graphic here)

Widgets in a sidebar

Categories

Comments on that post

In-Class Exercise: Build a Blog on www.blog.com.

Open your internet browser and go to the website www.blog.com. This is a blogging platform. We’ve chosen it for this exercise because it only requires an email to get started, the most basic package is free, and its dashboard is similar to some other popular blogging services out there. Please feel free to use the internet to explore other blogging platform options.

First you’ll need to sign up for an account. Click this button to get started

Enter your email address, and create a password. You’ll then have to answer a question to verify you’re not a robot. Lastly, choose the option that says “Gimme a blog!” before hitting the next button.

Next it will ask you to type in a blog address and blog title. Some notes:

· The dropdown menu next to your blog address should say “.blog.com” right now. If you click on the arrow next to it, you can choose .com, .net, or .org instead, but be careful! You’ll have to pay for an address ending in these extensions. Using an address in the format www.youraddress.blog.com gives blog.com advertising, so it is free, whereas www.youraddress.com is not.

· Your blog address must be one that is not already in use by someone else, so if it comes up saying the address you entered is not available, you’ll have to change it somehow.

· Your blog address must be in all lowercase letters and numbers. No symbols or capitals.

When you have entered your blog address and blog title, click the button that says Create Blog

It may then ask you to choose a blogging package. For now, choose the free one. You may pay for more advanced services later on if you choose.

If you’ve been successful, you should get a screen that looks something like this:

Click the link that says “Log in” and log in with your email and the password you just created.

The Dashboard

When you log in, your dashboard will appear. It looks something like this:

This dashboard will take some getting used to. Like we said earlier, there are a lot of parts to a blog. Take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with the different menus.

Front and center, where it is easiest to see, you’ll notice your username with the word Administrator under it. Below that are links to view your profile or your blogs (you may have more than one). To the right of that is a quick summary that will show you how many posts you have already up, how many you have scheduled, and how many comments you’ve received. A “Scheduled Post” refers to a post that you’ve written, but you have set to become public sometime in the future, so your readers can’t see it yet. We’ll go over how to do this later.

To the right of that there is a link to Google Analytics. You can connect with this to get statistics on how many visitors your blog gets, which posts are viewed most often, etc. To get detailed statistics may cost money.

Underneath these is a section for recent comments, so any comments you might not have seen yet will be there. Blog statistics will show graphs or data tables of your visitor statistics if you have connected your blog to google analytics.

To the right of these is a section called Quick Post. You can type up a new post for your blog right here and post it right away without having to delve too deeply into the dashboard. However, it does not give you all the options you’ll get if you click the “Posts” button on the left menu instead.

Let’s move to the top left of the screen. That green circle icon will take you back to www.blog.com if you click it.

“My Blogs” will allow you to switch from the dashboard of one blog to another if you have more than one blog. You’ll also click here to create a new blog.

“Add New” will allow you to quickly add a new post or a new page.

“Comments” will take you to your administrative comments page. Here you can choose whether to approve or unapprove comments (unapproved comments will not be visible on your blog), edit comments left by others, or respond to comments.

“Options” has a lot of choices under it. You can upgrade from here, change your theme (the design of your blog), choose widgets to be displayed on your sidebar, edit your navigation menu, and adjust settings.

Beneath this menu, the white button with the green circle will take you to your blog, as other people online see it. The pencil will allow you to create a new post, the push pin will allow you to see posts already created, and the speech bubbles will take you to your comments page. Notice that there is more than one way to get most places.

Creating or Editing a Post

Click on “Posts” in the left vertical menu. The most important thing you need to learn is how to add a post to your blog, so we’ll do that first. You’ll get a page that looks something like this:

In the left navigation menu, you can now click “Add New” to create a new post, “Categories” to create a new category, and “Post Tags” to add a new tag. You don’t have to do this here though. When you actually write a new post, you’ll have the option to categorize and tag it before you publish it, even the tags or categories are not created yet.

First we’re going to edit the post that is already there, titled Hello world! This is an automatic post that blog.com created for you so you could see an example.

When you hover your mouse over the post title, a few links will appear underneath it. Click on Edit.

Immediately you’ll see that you can edit your blog title and blog text in the windows provided. Basic text editing tools, like color, font and size, are provided. Replace Hello world with My First Post in the title field.

If you change your blog title, you should also change the permalink beneath it. A permalink is a web address that will take a user directly to that post. It will often be formatted as www.youraddress.blog.com/year/month/day/blogtitle. But the “blog title” section will not update just because you changed the title field. Next to Permalink, click the Edit Button, and replace “hello-world” with “my-first-post.” Using dashes between words in a permalink is a common practice to make the address easier to read, but it is not absolutely necessary.

Notice below the permalink, you have buttons to add a photo, video, or sound file to your post. Click “Image” to add an image to your post. It’ll bring up this window:

Click the “From URL” tab if you want to use a picture you found on another website, but keep in mind, if that website ever takes the picture down, it will no longer work on your blog. “Media Library” contains all pictures you have previously uploaded to your blog, so if you want to use a picture you have used before, click Media Library.

For right now, click “Select Files” in the “From Computer” tab. Browse to the picture you want and select it. Once the picture has been uploaded, you can add tags or a description to help you find the image in the media library later. Click “Insert into Post.”

To the right are a few different boxes, called “Publish,” “Format,” “Categories,” “Post tags,” and “Sharing.” Since we are editing a post that has already been published, the Publish box should show Status as Published and Visibility as Public. You can edit either of these by clicking the edit link next to them. You have the option to make a post no longer visible to the public at any time.

Where it says “Published on:” and lists the date, click the “Edit” link next to that to put in a new date and time. If you put in a future date and time, the post will be scheduled for publication at that time. This way, you could write a week’s or month’s worth of posts over a day or two, and just schedule them to be posted when you’d like.

In the “Categories” box, right now the only category visible should be “Uncategorized” with a check box next to it. At the bottom of the box, click the link that says “Add New Category.” A text box will pop up for you to write the name of your new category. In it, write News. The drop down list below it allows you to choose a parent category. We don’t want to right now, but in the future you may want to break categories up into sub-categories. I might create a few categories, called “Blog news, Personal news, Career news” and put the parent category for each of them as “News.” After typing “News,” click the button that says “Add new category.”

The Categories box should now show two categories, News and Uncategorized, both with check marks next to them. Uncheck “Uncategorized.” Now your post is only categorized as News.

In the Post Tags box, type “new blog, computer class, creating a blog” in the text box and hit enter. Tags are separated by commas, so we actually just added three tags to this post at once. After hitting enter, the three tags should appear below the text box. These tags tell your reader what your post is about.

Now click the “Update” button in the “Publish” section. A yellow bar should appear along the top that says “Post updated. View Post.” Click “View post” to see what your changes look like. To go back to your dashboard, hover your mouse over “My Blogs,” then the title of your blog, then click “Dashboard.”

Creating or Editing a Page

Click on “Pages” in the left hand menu. Click “Edit” under “Sample Page.” Editing a page is much like editing a post. The Page Title is what will appear on your navigation menu. When a viewer clicks the menu item, they’ll be redirected to a page that shows whatever content you create.

Shows up on Navigation Menu

This is the actual content of your page.

The right side of the screen has a new box (“Page Attributes”), but otherwise editing or creating a page is exactly like editing or creating a post. In the Page Attributes box, you can choose a template for your page. If you’d like to see what they look like, choose a template and then hit “Preview” in the Publish box. Depending on the content, there may not be any difference.

Then there is a text box labeled “Order.” This refers to what order you’d like your pages to appear in your navigation menu. For example, if I want a navigation menu that, from left to right, reads “Blog, About, Contests, Contact Me” and I’m creating my Contests page, I should put 3 in the order box, so it will be the 3rd item on my navigation menu. Click “Update” if you’re editing a page, or “Publish” if you’re creating one, to put your page on your blog. Remember, you can schedule a time for the page to be published in the future as well.

Next on the left hand menu is “Media.” Click this to see a list of media files you have used on your blog. This will include pictures, videos, and sound files. Using the “Add new” button, you may add more items to your media library, even if they have not been used in a post. That way, later, when you do want to use the item in a post, it will be available in your media library. You will not necessarily have to be on your own computer to use it.

Choosing a Theme and Managing the Appearance of your Blog

Click “Appearance” on the left hand menu. This should open a page that says Manage Themes. The current theme will show at the top, and a list of available themes will be listed below. Not all themes are available to you if you are using the free package. If the button next to the theme says “Activate,” then you can use it. If it says “Purchase,” then you will have to pay for the theme. There are plenty of free themes available.

Each theme has its own options, such as changing the background, text color, layout, etc. Once you have a theme selected, click “Theme Options” under the Appearance menu on your left. There you can make whatever changes are allowed to your theme.

The appearance menu on the left also has some other options. Let’s look at them now. Click “Widgets.” The main screen will show a list of Available Widgets. Under each widget is a brief description of what it does. To the right hand side you’ll see a box that says “Sidebar” and “Footer.” (This may change slightly depending on your theme.) If you would like to add a widget to your blog, simply click and drag the one you would like into the sidebar or footer area. To get rid of a widget, simple click and drag it out of the side area back to the list. Be careful, when you add a widget, sometimes a text box will open up asking for a title or any information the widget might need to function. Make sure you fill these in. (For example, if I click and drag the Image widget to my sidebar, I will either need to input a link to my image or upload my image before the widget can work).

Next click “Menus” under the Appearance menu. Here you can create a custom menu. Your theme will automatically list your pages in the navigation menu, but if you want to add links to your navigation menu that will not lead to a page of your blog (Say you want to put a link to your website or a store or a wishlist on your navigation menu), you should come here to create your menu, then set it as your navigation menu.

First, give your menu a title. (Menu, or navigation menu, is fine. Many themes only allow for one anyway). Then, on the left hand side, there are some boxes that allow you to add different types of items to your menu. Under “Theme Locations” you should choose the title of your menu.

If you’d like to add a link to your menu that leads to an outside website, use the box labeled “Custom Links.” Type in the URL of the page, give it a name, and click “Add to Menu.”

Under Pages, select the pages you want to be visible on your navigation menu (probably all of them) and click “Add to Menu.”

Under Categories, you may create a page that lists all posts under a specific category. Just check the category you’d like, and click “Add to Menu.”

Comments

On the left hand menu, click “Comments.” Here you’ll see a list of comments much like the Pages and Posts pages. Hover your mouse over a comment to see links below it. These links include “Unapprove” or “Approve,” “Reply,” “Edit,” “Spam,” and “Trash.” Disapproving a comment will remove it from your blog while approving a comment will make it visible. You may edit a comment. Common reasons people do this would be to edit out a curse word or fix spelling or grammar. It’s not typically considered okay to edit what’s being said in a comment though. If you don’t want the ideas in a comment being visible on your blog, just disapprove it. If the comment was obviously left by a bot or someone trying to advertise, click spam so they cannot continue to comment on your blog.

Self-Evaluation

Evaluate your understanding of the following concepts and tasks. Please ask the instructor if anything is unclear

Topic

very clear

clear

a little confused

very confused

What is a blogging platform

Create a blog through blog.com or a similar service.

Add posts to your blog. Categorize and Tag them as needed.

Add pages to your blog.

Add widgets to your sidebar

Create a menu for your blog

Manage and respond to comments on your blog

Add a theme or design to your blog.

9