Why blog?

What is it?

The term blog is short for “weblog”. A blog is a discussion, journal or informational site published on the world wide web and consisting of discrete entries (“posts”) typically displayed in reverse chronological order.

The rise of blogs began in the late 1990s. Before this knowledge of programming languages like HTML and FTP had been required to publish content on the web. But the advent of blog software in the late 1990s made publishing on the web possible for people without a technical background. Now, maintaining a blog is not much more difficult than using Microsoft Word.

At first, most blogs were subject-specific or news related, and were comprised of a mix of links to news items and commentary on those items (Rebecca Blood, weblogs: a history and perspective, available at http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html).

Today, many blogs are still devoted to a particular subject. Others are online journals, and still others serve as advertising. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic (Wikipedia, available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog).

Regardless of the subject of a blog, it is generally written in a conversational informal voice, like a journal.

A blog can be edited by one author or by multiple authors. 

How is a blog different from a newsletter?

Although many blogs and newsletters have some similar functions, in that both are often subject-specific informational resources intended to inform and/or sway readers.  However, blogs and newsletters differ from in several ways.  First, traditionally, newsletters are printed materials whereas blogs are on the world wide web.  Second, a newsletter is typically distributed directly to a particular set of recipients while a blog is accessible to a particular audience (or to the entire world) but is not directly sent out.  Third, each newsletter includes only current information so past newsletters are not as easy to access as blogs.  As blogs are updated, the previous information is pushed lower on the site (and then into an archive)

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How is a blog different from an email?

A blog is different from an email in that blog entries are published on the web, and (depending on the blog's privacy settings) are available for viewing by a wide audience, many of whom the author doesn't know.  An email is a targeted communication sent directly to a recipient or set of recipients.

An email is also one discreet communication, while a blog is a forum for continuing communications.

How is a blog different from a website?

Blogs and websites have some similarities.  Both are accessed in a browser, both use regular URLs, and there might or might not be advertising (How is a Blog Different from a Website? http://blog.tennantconsulting.com/blog/2004/12/how_is_a_blog_d.html).

However, there are some important differences.

The first relates to the dynamic nature of the information provided.  A typical website is a fixed online medium, a relatively static site that provides information.  A typical website is not updated frequently.  A blog is a type of website that is updated frequently via blog posts.

A typical website is also authored by a set of administrators and is not collaborative.  Blogs are often collaborative because readers comment on blog posts and share them with their social networks. (What Makes a Blog Different from a Website? http://digitalsherpa.com/content-strategy/what-makes-a-blog-different-from-a-website)

What can you do with a blog?

You can post entries on any subject you choose.  You can post photos, videos, artwork and links to other sites.  You can also include interactive/collaborative materials, like polls and sections for reader comments.  If you have a particularly frequently-viewed blog, you can solicit advertisements and make money from your blog.

Why start a blog?

Some bloggers share their thoughts and feelings about specific topics or about the world in general.  Others use blogs to document a particular experience, like a special vacation or study abroad session or a personal trial, like a battle with a disease.  Others use blogs to share a professional experience, like archeologists on a dig.  These types of blogs enable readers to vicariously experience something, and because the blogs are updated frequently, the information is more current than it would be if the blogger published a memoir or a book.

Others use blogs to market their skills.  For example, aspiring fashion journalists and make-up artists use blogs to attract the attention of potential employers.

Others create blogs with multiple administrators for the purpose of keeping in touch.  For example, an extended family might set up a blog to share photos and news.  (Please note that this type of blog can be made private, so that it is not accessible to those outside the family - for more information on privacy settings, please see the post on setting up a blog).

How to set up a blog using Google Blogger

How can you set up a Google Blogger account? 

Before you can set up a blog using Google Blogger, you must have a Google account.  Therefore, if you don't have a Google account, you'll have to set one up before you can begin.

If you have an account for any Google services, then you have a Google account.  All Google services can be linked to one account.  Therefore, if have a Gmail account you have a Google account and you can use your Gmail address and password to log into Google Blogger.  Similarly, if you have an account with another Google service, like Google Reader, you can use this username and password to log into Google Blogger.

Once you're logged into blogger.com, click on the New Blog icon.  You can see the New Blog icon in the left-hand corner of the screenshot below.

A new window will appear.  In the window, enter a name for your blog in the space provided.  In the next space, enter a URL.

Click Create Blog and you've started your blog.

How to change the settings for your blog

Once you have created your blog, you may want to alter the administrative settings to allow you to control the number of people involved in creating the blog, the number of people able to view the blog, and other aspects of the blog, such as time zone, language, and visibility to search engines.  These administrative settings will be discussed in this post; changing the creative settings for your blog will be discussed in a later post.

Add authors/administrators

To allow additional people to create content for your blog, you can add them as authors.  If you would like them to be able to change administrative settings for your blog, you should make them administrators.  Both actions require the same first step:

From your admin area, choose Settings on the bottom of the left sidebar.

This will bring you to the Basic page, where you can add authors or administrators.  Under Permissions, click the link Add authors, and enter the email address(es) of the author(s) you would like to add.

If people accept your invitation to be an author on your blog, they will appear along with you in the Blog Authors box.

Once a person has accepted your invitation to be an author, you can change their privileges to Admin if you like.

Permissions to view the blog

You can determine who has permission to read your blog.  On the Settings/Basic page, under Permissions, click Edit next to Blog Readers.

You can decide if your blog is open to the public, or just the authors, or you can enter the email addresses of readers you choose to invite to view your blog (invited readers will need to log in each time to read your blog).  It's up to you!

Other privacy issues 

Do you want your blog to be visible to search engines? Do you want it listed in Google Blogger?  The default answer to each of these questions is YES, so if you want to change that answer, you will need to go to Settings/Basic, and under Privacy, and click Edit, next to Listed on Blogger.  Visible to search engines.

Other Blogger administrative settings

The Language and formatting settings section of Settings allows you to change the language of your blog, as well as the time zone and the format in which your times and dates appear.

The Search Preferences section of Settings allows you to enter a searchable description of your blog, effectively tagging it for search engines.

Under the Meta tags section, simply click on Edit, choose that you would like the Metatags description enabled, click Save changes, and then compose your description in the provided box.  Click Save changes again, and you will be more easily findable by search engines.

The Other section of Settings allows you to customize the RSS feed features of your blog, by editing the Site feed section.

How to post on your blog

Creating a post

Click on the orange button New Post, which is on the left sidebar of the Blogger administrative area.

Then, simply start typing in the white area of the page, below the menu bar. You can choose from a visual mode called Compose, or an HTML view, if you would prefer to code the post yourself.

Formatting choices

The menu bar for posts also includes (starting on the left) typical word-processing features, such as undo/redo, font style, font size, headings*, bold/italics/underline, font color, and highlighting. Starting on the right side and working in, you can check spelling, undo formatting, make quotations, and created bullets or format paragraphs.

There are also buttons to format links to webpages (Link), insert images (little picture icon), insert videos (little film clap board), or insert a "jump break" (torn paper icon) into your post.  Inserting images and videos will be discussed in a subsequent post, but adding links and jump breaks are discussed below.

*(In this post, I wanted the main text to be Normal,  "Creating a post" to be a Heading, "Formatting choices" to be a Subheading, and "Inserting links" to be a Minor Subheading, and so on, but I could not get the feature to work reliably.  Accordingly, I ended up manually formatting the text sizes as Large, Normal, and Normal with no line break, and bolding all of them.  In other postings, we experienced inexplicable insertions of coding that altered the font style, color, and/or size.  When we viewed the HTML of the page, we could see the errant code, but we could not determine why it appeared there in some cases, but not in others.)

Inserting links:  If you would like readers to be able to click on a link and go directly to another webpage, you will want to insert a link into your post: simply type the text you would like to be clicked on, highlight the text, and click Link.  A box will appear; type in the link of the webpage you would like to go to, choose whether it should open a new window, and save.  You can also just click on Link, enter the text that should direct to the link there in the box, and then carry on with the rest of the process.

Inserting jump breaks: If you would like to have your blog show an abbreviated post, and then have readers choose whether to click through to a longer post, you may insert a jump break by clicking on the jump break icon (torn sheet of paper icon),

How to incorporate images on your blog

How can you upload photos onto your blog?

You can upload photos directly from your computer or from the web or from your mobile device.

Uploading photos from your computer:

You can upload photos from your computer to your blog by clicking the Image Icon in the Post Editor's toolbar.  The image icon is the one that looks like a picture in a frame, and is between the Link icon and the video icon.

When you click this icon, you'll get a window that allows you to select an image or multiple images from your computer. There will be several choices on the left-hand side of the screen, allowing you to upload images from: (i) this blog; (ii) Picassa Web Albums; (iii) your phone; (iv) your webcam; and (v) a URL.  

To upload an image directly from your computer, you don't need to pick any of those.  Instead, click the Choose Files button at the top of the screen.  

Then scroll through the files on your computer (much as you would when adding a new song from your computer to your iTunes library or when attaching a file to an email) to locate the images you want. You can upload images in JPG, GIF, PNG, TIF or BM format. 

Once you find the image you want, select it (much as you would when attaching a file to an email).  The image will upload onto the Blogger window.  Once it has finished uploading, click on the image and hit the Add Selected button.   

You can upload multiple images simultaneously and can arrange them on the screen much the way you would in a PowerPoint slide.

Please note that you can only add picture images through this function; you cannot make an image into a Microsoft Word document and upload it using this function.

The image will appear in the draft post that you're working on.  Once you're satisfied with the alignment and size of the photo, click on Update and the changes you have made to the post will be published.  

Then click on View Blog to make sure that in the published blog the image is set up the way you expected. 

I added this photograph of me and my dog from my desktop.  The alignment is justified.

Uploading images from the web:

 

You can also upload an image directly from the web without saving it onto your computer.  To upload directly from the web, click on the image icon in the Post Editor's toolbar.  This time, instead of bypassing the options on the sidebar listed below Upload, select From a URL.  

This will bring up a screen that asks you to paste the link. Simply paste the link and hit Add Selected at the bottom of the screen.   

I added this photo directly from the web.  It is from The Terminator and all copyrights are retained by the holder.

How can you change the size of the photo you've uploaded?

You can change the size of the photo.  After you upload it, right-click on the photo.  It will bring up a menu of options.  Many of the options relate to the size of the image, and range from small to extra-large.  The image below is the extra-large size.

As you can see, the photo extends beyond the boundaries of the posts column.  However, in the draft form, it appears to be within the boundaries of the column and in line with the text boundaries.  Therefore, once you publish a photo, it is important to click on the View Blog icon to see how the blog itself looks.

How can you add a caption to a photo?

You can add a caption to a photo after you upload it.  Right-click on the photo to bring up the list of options.  Click on the Add a Caption Option.  Below the photo, the words "add caption" will appear.  Simply type your caption and they will appear in place of those words.  If you wish to change the font, font color, or font style, simply highlight the caption (just as you would with a Microsoft Word document) and use the toolbar to make the changes.

You can also change the background color of the caption by highlighting the caption and clicking on the Text Background Color icon, which looks like the tip of the marker (it is similar to the icon in Microsoft Word and is between the Text Color icon and the Link icon).

Me and Roger on the Cape

How can you edit a photo?

You cannot edit a photo directly in Google Blogger.  To edit a photo (e.g., to crop the image), you have to use a photo editing program to make all changes to the image before uploading it.  You can use Google Picasa to edit the image, and save it in that program, and then upload the image from Picasa.

How can you upload a video?

Click on the Film Strip icon in the post editor toolbar (it is next to the Insert Image icon).  

A window will appear with choices about the location of the video.  You can upload a video directly from your computer, your phone or your webcam.  You can also upload a video from YouTube by clicking on the YouTube icon and then copying the URL, pasting it into the search box, and clicking on Select. 

Blogger accepts AVI, MPEG, QuickTime, Real and Windows Media files.

Your video must be less than 100MB in size. 

This video of the MI-5/Spooks Season 9 intro was uploaded from YouTube.  The copyright belongs to Spooks/MI-5 of the BBC.

How to customize the look and feel of your blog

In an earlier post, we discussed how to change the administrative settings for your blog.  Here we will show you how to change the creative settings for your blog.

Google Blogger provides a selection of templates to change the look and feel of your blog.  Here are a few examples:

Simple look

Watermark

Travel

Choosing one of Blogger's preexisting templates is an easy way to add character to your blog's appearance.  Here's how you do it:

In the left sidebar of your admin area, choose Template.  This will bring you to a screen with a range of categories of templates, and it will show you what your blog currently looks like at the top of the screen.  You can choose from a variety of templates in the following categories:  Simple, Picture Window, Awesome Inc. (our favorite!), Watermark, Ethereal, and Travel.  You can browse the templates by clicking on one and then using right and left arrows to move forward and backward through the choices, but you get the fullest sense of what it will look like if you actually click the orange Apply to Blog button.  Don't worry, you can easily change it back again!

Customizing the template

If you find a template that's almost right for you, but you want to tweak certain aspects of it, Google Blogger allows you to customize the template.  You can change the colors and fonts of various areas in the template (blog title, footer, post background, etc.).

On the Template page, click the orange Customize button underneath the Live on Blog image.

This will bring you to a screen with the Blogger Template Designer.  The menu on the left defaults to template choices; Background allows you to change the color theme for the template.  If you would like to adjust the widths of the columns on your blog, or move around specific components on your blog, choose Adjust widths or Layout, respectively.  On this blog, we did not make any of the above changes, but we did find the last Template Designed menu choice to be helpful; the Advanced section allows you to change the color (and, where applicable, font) of specific elements on the page.  As you select a particular element, Blogger will highlight the element, so you can see what would be changed.  A palette to the right provides pre-selected color choices, as well as a box to give the hex value of a particular color, if you happen to know what you already want.

We kept our sidebar a transparent gray, but we changed our Footer to a pale yellow.  We ended up putting "Gadgets" into each area (a slideshow in the Sidebar, and a poll in the Footer).  We had the Gadget Title set to white, which looked great in the gray sidebar, but disappeared almost entirely in the pale yellow footer.  There's no way in the existing template to change only one gadget text, so we needed to identify a color that would be visible in both the footer and the sidebar; we settled on a reddish hue.

There is also a place at the bottom of the Advanced section to do some of your own coding.  Clicking Add CSS will bring up an editing box for you to enter your own CSS.  If you know any CSS, you may find yourself wanting to use it in Google Blogger.  The templates have only so many pre-programmed choices for you to make.