Probably the main thing you will do at your Blog is add Posts. These are the chronological messages that appear at the center of your Weblog and get shifted down the page as new posts are made. Eventually they all get archived so don’t worry about them disappearing.

Basic Instructions

1) Log-in to your weblog.

2) Once in the Administrative “Dashboard,” look up at the top menu / “navbar” and select “Write.”

3) Choose “Post.”

4) Once in the Post Editor, add a title in the top line and your post in the writing area beneath it.

5) Click “Publish” to put your post on the Web.

It’s that easy!

Slightly beyond the Basics

To make your blog work even better for you, there are a few little extras you could learn about.

Categories

Because a Weblog is meant to “log” chronologically what you post, months or years from now, you might want to review everything written on a certain subject. The posts will still be there, but without categories you’re left to search through the “Archives” for each month. A smarter way is to make use of Categories. By ticking (or adding) one or more categories, a post effectively gets “filed” in that slot. So with the example to the right, a year from now, you’ll be able to view all the posts related to “Astronomy” or “Ecology” (or “Siberian Love Songs” if you chose that category!). So remember, categories are your friends. If you can’t see a list like the one shown, look for the heading and a little + that you can click on.

Comments

Blogs are one of the mainstays of what many call “Web 2.0″ or the “Read-Write Web.”  This speaks to the aspect that two-way communication is very easy on a Blog.  For every post you make, others can respond with a comment.  Comments can range from a friendly bit of support or advice to a in-depth discussion of what you’ve written.  When thinking about classroom / school-based blogs, many comments come from students.  The trick to good comments is that students care about what they write and speak in a personal voice.  Suggestions for generating quality comments are available.  The point here is that you have the choice whether to include a “comments” link and form at the end of your post or not.  “Pings” are like comments but they refer to links to your post on another person’s blog.

Uploading files

One really great thing to do is include files that visitors to your blog can download.  For example, you might have a Word document to share or a pdf form.  Also think about Powerpoint and other presentations.  All of these can be included as files to download (other tutorials show how to embed videos – download the tutorial – or include images to show right in a post).  Here’s how you do it:

1) Look below the writing area for the post for the file upload interface:

 2)  Click on the “Browse” button and navigate to the file you want to upload.  Select and Open the file.

3) This returns you to the Blog interface.  Now add a title (any title will do).  A Description is not necessary.

4) Click Upload.

5) When the file travels from your hard drive (or USB drive) to the Weblog, it will appear as a file.   Righ-mouse click the file so that you can “Copy Link Location” or “Copy Link Shortcut” or a variation on that theme.  If you can’t “right-mouse click,” you can click on the file to open it and thereby get the location /Web address.

 6) Now click in the text editing field where your post is and type the words that you want to be the hot link when the post is published.

7) Drag across the test so that it is highlighted and then click on the chain-link icon in the text editor menu.

Now this text will download the linked file when clicked from the published page (not from within the editor).
Click “Publish” to put your post on the Web.  If you have already viewed your page before making these changes, look for the “Refresh / Reload” buttons or use the View menu on the browser to do the same.