Posting a blog entry

Ten easy steps for posting on your blog:

  1. Write your post in Word and keep all your posts in a folder on your computer. This is very important. It’s easy to lose a post as you're trying to put it on the website, and if the website crashes, you'll want to have a back-up for all your work.  As you’re writing the post in Word, don’t put in any formatting (italics, paragraph indents, etc.) or links.  Most of this will be filtered out when you paste the test into the website.
  2. Find an image and drag it to your desktop. The easiest place to find images is Google images, but there are many other image sources.  The image should be in jpeg format (you should see the .jpg suffix).  Don’t use images that are small (less than 300 x 300 px), because they’ll get blurry when they’re enlarged. And if it’s your own photo, make sure it’s not too big (the website rejects extra large photos). 
  3. Go to “create content” on the website and start your post.  Give it a good title and a subtitle—you don't need to repeat key words from the assignment topic—that will show up as a tag near the title of your post.
  4. In the “Class” box, scroll to your course, and in the "topic" box for that course, scroll to the appropriate assignment and select it.
  5. Browse for the image on your desk top and upload it.  If necessary, use the crop tool to select the part of the image you want. Try not to crop too close to anything important; in various formats, the edges may be cropped out, so try to avoid putting someone’s head near an edge—it might get decapitated.  The website will reject images that are too big (more than 800x800) or too small (less than 300x300).
  6. Paste your text in "body" box.  Then put it the formatting: an extra space between paragraphs (don't indent), and italics for book titles (not article titles—they go in quotation marks).  Most of the other formatting tools are turned off, so don't bother with changing the font, etc.  (These changes may show up as your making the post, but they'll disappear when you save.)
  7. Create text links to other articles, websites, etc. To create a link, select the phrase you want to link from, click on the chain icon, paste in the URL of the page you want to link to, and click on insert.   
  8. Additional images: The main image is required, and the website won’t accept your post without it.  But you can also insert additional images within the body of the post (these are called “inline images”).  To add an image this way, first put the cursor where you want the image to go—but don’t put it at the beginning or near the beginning of the text of your post—that will mess up the teasers.  Wait at least three or four sentences before inserting an image.  Then click on the image icon in the top row of the text editor, and either use the URL for an image on the web or upload an image from your desktop.  Use 3 pixels for the margins.  You can set the width—about 200 or 300—and the website will automatically determine the height to maintain the proportions of the original. 
  9. If you want to add a you-tube video, just paste in the URL at the end of your post (other video sites are also supported).
  10. You can go back and edit the post after it’s submitted, so don’t worry if you see the post and need to make some changes.  Just click on the edit tab at the top of the post page.