TheBlog

Since many of you are new to blogging I thought I would create a quick and easy tutorial on how to format your text and add pictures to your blog. This is meant for the Authors of this blog and is to be read while viewing the “Write Post” page where all the nuts and bolts of a blog post are put together. However, before you read this I suggest fooling around with it for a while. If you are used to writing e-mails or using Microsoft Word then you will find that the process is fairly intuitive and you may not need this at all. I am providing this just to make sure that if you can’t figure out something then you have a resource to go at any time. So play with it first, explore it a bit, and then come back to this to help with the parts you couldn’t figure out.

First of all, if your not exactly sure what a blog is click here for blogger.com’s simple but good answer. This Wise Energy for Virginia Blog is for discussing everything and anything between politics, energy, and the environment in Virginia and occasionally in the broader world when appropriate.

Also, if your not sure of the rules click here for a decent code of blogging ethics. To summarize I think the base line ethics are: don’t lie, never plagiarize, site sources for pictures, quotes or text, and just in general be honest and fair.

All of the formatting of text can be done easily with the toolbar at the top of the page. You might notice that this toolbar has some buttons you recognize from word processing software that you are already used to. You will find that the button you recgonize, like B I, ABC, and the buttons with three dots and three numbers on them do what you’d expect. Bold, italicyze, mark out, bullet or number your selected text.  However, you might notice that you are missing some important buttons such as underline, text color and text size.  your toolbar is not all there, half of it his hidden. You can display the other half of your toolbar simply by clicking on the button all the way to the right on the toolbar you do see. It has three horizontal lines made up of multi colored dots and is to the right of the button that looks like a TV. With your full array of buttons you should be able to work this blog almost how you would Microsoft Word. But before I give you the low down on specifics lets talk about some things you should always do.

1. Save and then view your blog as you write it, especially if you made a formatting change or added a picture or video. Things don’t always look the same as they do on the finished product, so check it out to make sure it looks the way you want. Also if you don’t save it and you navigate away from the page, then you’ve just deleted all your work since your last save.

2. Give it a category. You choose a category while editing your post by scrolling down a bit and picking a category. They will always be All Posts by default. This is bad, you should change it. Categories help readers find all the articles on that topic later. Never post something without un-checking All Posts and checking an appropriate category, or you can give a post multiple categories.

3. You have to click Publish (Top right, near Save) before the post will go live or before it will show up on the blog. You can save and edit a post for as long as you want before you publish it. This also means you should not click Publish until your post is totally ready to go. You can (and should) click View This Post (top right) to see it before you publish to make sure it looks good. If you accidentally click Publish too soon, no worries mate, just go back up there and click the little down arrow next to the word Published and select Unpublished.

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New buttons, new options.

There are four things these buttons will allow you to do that are different from Microsoft Word that you should be aware of. The first is how to add a link.

LINKS

There is a faded button that looks like a link in a chain just to the right of the right indent button and next to another faded button that looks like a broken link. When you highlight the text you want to make into a link these two buttons fade in. You’ll want to highlight your text, click on the link button. This will bring up a small window that you paste the URL (web address) in. Next to the word Target you choose whether or not you want the link to open in a new window or the same window when the reader clicks on it. Usually you want links to open up in a new window so that the reader doesn’t automatically navigate away from your post.

If you later decide you don’t want that text to be a link, highlight it and select the broken link button and that will get rid of it.

PICTURES

Pictures lively up the look of a blog post, as well as the overall blog in general, and can give a human face to our stories. I try to put a picture in every blog post that I write.

Ed Wiley Walked From Sundial WV to Washington DC with that huge blue flag.

To add a picture you click on the first icon next to the Add Media text above your tool bar. If you ever forget this or the purpose of any button, don’t worry: you will notice that every button will tell you what it does if you leave your cursor on it for a second. That button then gives you the option of uploading a picture from your computer, or putting in the URL of a picture that is already on the web somewhere. You can also add an caption and description, but that is optional. You also get to make your picture link to a web site by editing the Link URL text to whatever URL you wish. If you click on Ed here you get directed to the organization he set up to buy his granddaughter a new school.

If you are unsure how to find the URL of a picture that already exists on the web her is how: right click (control click for mac) on the picture, go down to and click on properties the properties of the picture will include th URL.

YOUTUBE CLIPS

You also get to add youtube videos to your blog, which makes them especially cool.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9afd2K6xx_I

Ed Wiley Telling his Story

To add a youtube video, find the youtube video on the youtube.com web site. Then copy the link and paste it into your post where you want it to show up. Wherever you put the text, left indent, center, right indented or in the middle of a paragraph, thats where it will show up. You cannot resize the video.

Once you have posted the link change “http://www.youtube.com….” to “httpv://www.youtube.com…” Did you see that? Just add “v” after the p in http. Thats it.  Simple huh?

BLOCK QUOTES

When you quote a person or an article at length it often makes sense to make it a block quote which seperates it from the rest of the text like this…

For Example:

Ed Wiley and the people behind penniesofpromise.org believe that,

no child should be forced to attend a school that is surrounded by a massive coal mining operation that includes a coal silo train load-out 200 feet away, a preparation plant that uses chemical scrubbers within 250 yards, and a mammoth seeping toxic sludge dam containing over two billion gallons of coal waste pointed directly at the school from 400 yards up hill.

—Example over—

Makes sense right? To make this dramatic quoting effect happen on your blog post highlight the text you wish to put in the block quote and click on the button with the two large quotation marks on it.

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Alright, that is all that I have for you now. If you can’t figure it out after going over all this, send me an e-mail before you publish. mike@appvoices.org

Happy blogging!