Instructions for Posting on Blogspot
Before we start with the step by step posting process, I’ll share with you one little tip. I’ve found it much easier to prepare a draft posting in a word processing program like Microsoft Word. It allows me to spell and grammar check and set up the paragraph structure. Sometimes when you are posting a news article, the paragraph breaks or indentions for the article are web formatted and once you paste it directly into the post window in Blogspot, it looses the structure.
OK .. Ready for the details? Here we go.
Open the Blogger Dashboard and sign-in, if you save your sign-in, you won’t have to do that again unless you sign-out. And before we move into the process, I want to point out for you the link on the right top to the HELP database. If you get stumped you can generally find some help there.
1. When you sign in it will take you to the Dashboard. If you remained signed in, when you open the Blogger link it should take you directly to the Dashboard.
2. Now you’ll see a button that says
NEW POST, click on it. The window should open in the
Edit Html mode. My advice is to not use the
Compose feature until you have mastered the simple form of using this window. More on that later.
3. In the window you’ll see an area for Title, Link and the area for your narrative to be posted. Type in your Title and put the html code
before the title and
behind your title, like this:
This will insert the line break for your posting on the blog and separate it from the next posting on the blog.
4. You can link your title to the source on the internet by inserting the address in to the
Link box. There is an easy way to do this without having to type the link address into the Link box. While you have the source of your posting open, highlight the link address in your browser and copy the link address into your browser by a right click on your mouse. The drop down box will open and you then you left click on copy. Then come back to this posting page, click your mouse in the Link box to set the location. Depending on you browsers capability, you have two options; 1) right click your mouse and the drop down menu opens and left click paste, or, 2) hold down the control key on your keyboard and press the letter “V” key to paste the link into the window. It’s a lot easier than trying to type in the entire address and you can use this same shortcut technique for your title also.
5. Sometimes you might want to also include the name of the author of an article that you are posting from a source. So to do this type in the name of the source at the top of the posting window. You will then need to insert a blank line after the author's name and the body of your narrative. You can do this by using your ENTER key on your keyboard or you can type in the html code
on the line under the author's name to insert a blank line. This will separate the name from the body our your narrative.
6. Next, let's move to the posting window for your narrative. Before you begin your narrative you will follow the same process to insert a blank line, either the ENTER key on your keyboard or the html code for the line break. This will format your posting to separate the narrative from the Title. Now you type in your posting or go to the word processing program where you prepared your draft post and highlight your post, right click on your mouse to copy it, come back to this posting page, right click your mouse and paste it into the window. Or you can use the paste command by holding down the control key on your keyboard and pressing the letter “V”. You'll follow this same process to paste a news article into the window.
Now for the fancy stuff!
B = bold print
i = italics
The icon with the glasses/globe = inserting a link
“ = block quoting
All of these features are used by
highlighting your selected text and pressing the button. Blogger will automatically insert the codes.
When using the
link button, a box will open for inserting the link. The easiest way to do this is by going back and copying your link address by highlighting it, right click your mouse and copy, come back to the posting in the blogger window, highlight the text you want to link, click on the glasses icon. When the window opens, hold down the control key and press the letter “V” to paste into the box, then click OK. I strongly suggest you use this method because the link window automatically inserts a http for the address and when you open the link window it is automatically highlighted. So by using the control key and letter "V" on your keyboard you will automatically overwrite that http and create a good link. Otherwise there is often the problem of having two http://http:// in the link window and the link won't work.
The next icon is the
block quote. It is the custom at RR that when you are posting a news article from a news source to place the entire posting in block quotes. This way everyone reading will understand it is not your personal narrative that is posted but comes from a quoted source. To do this, once you have the narrative posted into the posting box, highlight the article and press the
“ button. Blogger will insert the codes to put the selected article in block quotes.
Another tip: Sometimes articles we find on the internet are extremely long and posting the entire article can push other active threads off the main blog page, so sometimes it’s a suggestion that you excerpt the article and post that portion to the blog, leave the remainder to be found by typing the phrase
READ THE REST at the bottom of your posting, then link that phrase to the internet address. It allows the reader to follow your link to the rest of the article.
ABC with a check mark is for spell check. You won’t need to highlight your posting to perform spell check for the entire article.
The next button with the
landscape picture is for inserting pictures if you are using the Blogspot provided photo storage program. Once you click on that button it will take you to a self explanatory system to unload a picture from your computer or an image from a web URL. If you find that the right sidebar to the main page has been pushed down below the postings on the front page it will generally be due to the fact that a picture that was inserted into your narrative was too large. If that's the case you'll need to come back and edit the size of your picture.
A cosmetic tip: If you are going to insert more than one photo into the text of your posting, start by aligning the 1st one to the left, then the next one to the right and so forth, rotating the photos. It will add balance to your posting and make it easier to read.
The last button is for
uploading videos. When you click on that button a box will open that is self-explanatory. You will have to have the video on your computer hard drive to upload it.
But there is another way to insert videos for online video sources such as YouTube by copying the embed codes from the online site and pasting the code into the posting window.
Once you have your posting prepared, you can use the
Preview button to see how it is going to look when it’s posted. Use the
Hide Preview button to come back to your draft posting.
Once you’re satisfied with your posting, click on the
Publish Post button to send it to the blog. If you’re not ready to do that, click on the
Save Now button and put your posting in draft form. You can come back later, go through the Blogger Dashboard and find your posting by using the
Edit button. Make changes and then use the
Publish Post button to send it to the blog's front page. Postings that are saved as drafts will not show up on the blog until that are published.
Once you have published your posting you can use the
View Blog button at the top to see how your posting now looks on the blog. If you're not satisfied with the way the posting looks or find that you have a need to make changes or corrections, use the
Edit Post button to come back to the window where you will find the link to reopen your posting for changes. Once done, click the
Publish Post button and it will go back to the front page with changes.
After you feel like you have mastered the
Edit Html process, you should explore using the
Compose feature. But I suggest you do save your posting on a word processing program so you have it to revert back too. Compose offers more font choices, allows you to enlarge and reduce text size, add text color, number and bullet items, shift alignment of text in addition to the features in
Edit Html. The eraser is used by highlighting your text and clicking the eraser. It will remove the formatting.
One more little tip about the
Compose feature. I’ve found that when I try to use the centering for formatting text, it centers my entire posting, so when I want to center something, text or a photo, I use the
Edit Html feature and manually type in the commands on either side of my selected text to center it like this:
Well, that’s the short version of how to post in Blogspot. I hope you find it helpful and again, if you have any problems or need any assistance, email me.
before the title and 
behind your title, like this: 
