Showing posts with label Setting up a Blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Setting up a Blog. Show all posts

Jan 20, 2010

Blog Posting Tips

I have posted many blogs for this class using blogger. Along the way I found out a few things that make using this site a little easier. There have been a few comments on how to view the blogs you have posted and your comments as well as how to arrange an image on a post.

The easiest way to keep track of our posts is by going to the dashboard where you can manage your blogs. At the top of the screen there is a link for the dashboard. Here it will allow you to view and edit your profile. Also, there is a link for new post, edit post, and settings. When you click on edit posts it will show you all of the posts for the class by author and allow you to view them and the comments.



For the posts that you have created there will be an edit option to the left. If you forgot to add labels or an image you can just click on edit and make changes, then publish the post again. You can also view drafts that you saved and delete a posts that you don't want.



Another thing to make blogging easier is how to arrange an image on a post. Every time I upload an image it will always place it at the top of the post. It doesn't seem to let me move the image by dragging or by hitting enter. It is very simple to solve this problem. At the top there is a tab for Edit Html. When you click that you can see your post in html format. All you need to do is highlight, cut, and then move the html for your image to the area in your post you want it to be. Then click on the Compose tab to continue writing and view the image placement.

These are just a few things I found that make using this site easier. I hope this will be helpful.

Sep 24, 2009

Setting up a Blog

There have been blogs about “Benefits of blogging”, “blogging” and “business blogging” but, for me, as an IT professional, a more practical aspect of blogging would be “How to setup a Blog?” I’ve not really thought about what options could be made available or how to customize a Blog or, if that is even an option? This comes up as a co-worker’s request for “a website where customers can share files (wiki or something similar)? I’m thinking about something that customers would get to log in to and then could view others code (.js) and objects (.wrl, .cmp).”


Of course, my response was maybe we should look at setting up a company Blog. It seemed to meet her requirements and with a company Blog I may get to like Blogging. Anyway, her comment after I suggested a Blog was, “I’m fairly confident I do not want a blog. Every blog I have visited is hard to read and I can’t find anything I’m looking for.” I have to agree that things seem to be scattered on most Blogs I have looked at however, I would guess that it has more to do with how a site is moderated / managed.


Of all the Blogs I looked at, this site, LotusUserGroup.org is by far the best organized. The site revolves around Lotus Notes and the Blog is based on BlogSphere which is an OpenSource Lotus Notes template. I am going to use this as a reference when I discuss setting up a company Blog.

This is a sample of the Left and Right side bars



Now I have a great example of an uncluttered Blog and it appears that I should be able to customize a User Group Blog for our company. There are a lot of free Blog templates available and they are customizable so I should be able to model a Blog after the Lotus Notes Blog. There is so much information on what you need to setup a blog as well as what kinds of questions you should ask, that, with a little reading (or a lot) and a little experimentation I should be able to come up with a plan.

I can’t think of any other options for setting up a User Group area that would allow our users to share information and files as easy as using a blog?