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The Plan

An introduction to blogging This blog is primarily to provide support content for a talk about blogging. I will add posts to it as need arises, so please feel free to add comments to any of the posts. Observations, suggestions and questions welcome.

1. Blogging overview
2. Starting with Blogger
3. Wordpress option
4. Blogger settings
5. Writing and editing a post
6. Inserting images and video
7. Who can read and comment
8. Adding pages
9. Using a tablet computer
10. Storing images, annotating images
11. Gadgets for extra features

Address of this blog:  jtblogging.blogspot.com.au
jtravers@gmail.com

Blogging Overview

Origin

'Blog' came from 'Web-Log'. It is a specialised web site designed to display a collection or articles (posts) in an organised manner. Blogs are the number one publishing tool on the internet. That is a bold claim, but if I mean two-way, multi-author communicating, then blogs provide this more than any other format. Blogs have the advantage of simplicity of structure over general web sites.

Why blogs dominate online publishing:

• Easy to set up.
• Easy to navigate: generally linear with most recent posts at the top*.
• Easily include media images, video and links.
• Tags or labels on posts [stories] allow content to be sorted, searched no matter how large the blog.
• Comments can bring a blog to life by engaging readers.
• Privacy is easy to manage: public, limited or specific access is possible. 
• No specific software required: it's all online.
• Are particularly suited to topics that are regularly updated.
• Blogs can be effective with a huge audience or a tiny one. 
• Many authors can cooperate.

Address of this blog:   jtblogging.blogspot.com.au

Contact me: John Travers jtravers@gmail.com

* I have altered the dates of this blog so that the posts appear in a logical presentation order, with the introduction at the top. They generally have most recent post at the top

Starting with Blogger

There are many blog platforms available. They have a lot it common and since they are all web based it does not matter which computer you are using. One of the largest, and free is Blogger, with is part of the Google empire. 

An even larger platform is Wordpress, which offers some free access, and is very good if you become serious, and want a blog with extra features and appearance. There is a charge for these extra features. Tumblr is a very recent and huge platform that is geared for social networking with your blog.
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How to sign up and get started with Blogger: 20 steps
http://www.wikihow.com/Start-a-Blog-on-Blogger
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To get started, you create (or use your existing) Google or Gmail account. Blogger is just one of many services available. 

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My golden rule: focus on content, not presentation*.

(*However lousy presentation will cause your audience to give up.)

Blogger versus Wordpress?

Blogger Vs Wordpress
These are the two big blog platforms. A detailed and fair comparison is Here. In short, Blogger is free and adequate for simple blogging. Wordpress has many more options, is generally not free and has more options and capabilities. 

The giant blog platform is Wordpress, has a free version. Wordpress is an open source  platform (community owned and developed) and thousands of programmers have developed themes and variation on the basic structure of Wordpress which they sell. 

Here are a couple of examples of what you can get, and one pathway to get on-board.

1. Create a Wordpress account and sign up for a Premium Account $99 a year which gives you a bunch of nice themes, many of which don't look like a blog at all: more like a fully fledged web site. With one of these themes you don't have to know anything about web design. Just insert the design features that you want for your blog. 
2. To get the best themes, look for 'Wordpress Themes' and browse the many options. Here is one for $99. http://my.studiopress.com/themes/foodie/#demo-full 
3. For another $99 or so a year, you can get your own domain (site) name.

Blogger Settings

This is the main Settings menu. It is found by clicking Design

in Settings A once-only action is to set the time zone. This is found under Language and formatting.  

Template sets the overall design and colour scheme; it can be changed later

The Layout needs to be set in the beginning, and it can be changed anytime.

In Layout add Gadgets to perform useful functions, such as Labels (Tags), Blog archive, Follow by email, Search and more. The gadgets can be moved around in Layout. You can add a Header image at the top of the blog.

Posts and comments controls whether comments are allowed and whether they are moderated or not..

Writing and editing a post in Blogger

1. Click New Post, and don't forget to add a Title (above the page)
2. Use the icons to manage the text.
3. Save it to keep it in draft form, and when finished Publish to put it on the web immediately (and no doubt return to update it later).
4. See the Post settings to the right, and add Labels to help readers find topics, modify the date to alter the order of Posts (click Published on) 
5. In writing, use the web to add value to your message.
1. Add images wherever helpful - grab images from the web. Learn screen capture, to grab parts of images. [Windows 8 Snipping tool, Apple Cmd/shift/4]
2. Add links: "One of the main predators of roses is the aphid, which will quietly suck the juices out of your most precious roses." See the Link button on the editing toolbar.

See Add images and video

Inserting images and video

Adding images

1. Place your image on the desktop or another easy to find location. Avoid large images - more that 500kb (0.5Mb)
2. While in edit mode on a post, click the Insert image icon, click Choose file and add it. 
3. When the image appears, click it and choose Centre, or left or right text wrap, and image size on the page. Having the text wrap around an image usually improves appearance.
4. Add a caption to an image by clicking on the image in edit mode.

Adding video (yours) 
It is best to upload video to a service like YouTube rather than uploading them to your blog because readers may not be able to download quickly. Streaming (from YouTube) is quicker.

1. Create a YouTube account (using your Google ID)
2. In YouTube, click Upload...
3. Choose your level of privacy and upload it, and complete a few more details.
4. In edit mode of a post, click Add video, see My YouTube Videos and select one.

Permissions: who can author, read and comment

There are three levels of permission to read Blogsy.

1. Public - anyone, however if you select the setting to remove the blog from search, in effect the only people who will have the address are people you give it to. 
2. Only authors of the blog.
3. Only registered people. This means that you have to invite people to join and register and see the blog, but they will need to log in each time they do. 

See these options in Settings, in Design.

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As owner of the blog you will see the settings tool. 

When you see this you can click to see settings for this section.

Comments on this Blog

Please feel free to add comments to any of the posts and I and others can respond. Questions, comments, suggestion and corrections are welcome. What would be very useful are examples of different types of blog you have seen, or maybe are working on, that may be of interest to other beginning bloggers. I can add them to the Gallery to browse for ideas.

 For some blogs, Comments are the key ingredient for the blog's success. If readers are motivated and welcome to comment, more readers are attracted to the blog to hear what others have to say, and to participate in discussion, disagreement, fresh ideas and additional perspectives. 

Saving images, images markup [annotation]

Blogger stores its photos in Google Photos, which is a comprehensive online photo management system. People use it to store all their photos. Previously Blogger stored photos in Picasa, which is now being shut down in favour of Google Photos.

Pending improved integration between Blogger and Google Photos it is easiest to select and export photos for a blog, and upload them into Blogger.

Here is the Upload view. These two images have been imported into Blogger from the desktop, or tablet library.

Here, From your phone is visible and any photos on a phone can be selected. (via wifi or bluetooth)

Markup [annotating] images

It can be very useful to annotate some images to help tell a story. Skitch is an excellent computer and mobile app that does this. Text, symbols, lines, and shapes can be added to an image which is then exported. There is a markup tool in IOS photo editing but Skitch is superior.

 

BlogPad for the iPad

Blogs can be edited seamlessly on any computer using any browser. Blog editing in the past has not work smoothly on an iPad and a dedicated App is required Many editing features work OK in Safari on an iPad, but it cannot be relied upon.

BlogPad is a very impressive new app for editing Blogger and Wordpress blogs on the iPad.  Android users can use the Blogger app which works smoothly.  From the help button you can access videos which explain all the functions. This finally brings the full range of blogging functions to the iPad. It functions very much like a computer editor, except most blog settings are not available.


Wrapping Text  

This image, for example, was inserted from my iPad photos collection, inserted, then had its size reduced. This image, for example, wads inserted from my iPad photos collection, inserted, then had its size reduced. This image, for example, wads inserted from my iPad photos collection, inserted, then had its size reduced.  inserted from my iPad photos collection, inserted, then had its size reduced. 

This image, for example, wads inserted from my iPad photos collection, inserted, then had its size reduced. This image, for example, wads inserted from my iPad photos collection, inserted, then had its size reduced. 

 

Edited with BlogPad Pro

Gadgets for extra features

Gadgets (or widgets) are additional features that can be added to a blog. Some are already built into Blogger, like Archive and Search. You can remove these but more likely, add more. There is a long list of Gadgets. They are managed in Layout where you drag and drop them where you want, and modify their settings.

Some useful ones are:

• Follow by email - allows your readers to get email notification of updates.
• Labels (sometimes called Tags) which help find topics of interest.
• Pages - static pages that can have content
• AdSense - displays ads from Google to earn income 

...and many many more

Mini photo collages - Diptic

Diptic is a perfectly designed app for IOS or Android that allows you to create a single image with many layouts made up of a number of separate images. The name comes from diptych which is an altar design with folding panels with images on them. (I had to look it up.)

The resulting image can be quite large in memory size so might need to reduce the size of individual images, which are quite small in the final product. 

The process is useful if you have lots of image to use and where they fall into themes. So the result like on the image below that puts the bushland scene together with the marsupials that live there.

There are many layouts and it is very easy to move the images around and get the best combination. The layouts allow you to manually drag the borders to suit the images. It works very well on a mobile device. You put together your collage and then upload it to your blog, or wherever. 

It also lends itself to the creation of small collages that can be printed and framed. 

The image to the right shows some of the layouts, and the tab to enable text captions to be added if you wish. 

Gallery of blogs

The Gallery is a collection of very different blogs that are inspiring, provoking, show examples of what to do and not to do and in general are stimulation to see what can be done with the blog format. Suggestions are most welcome. Send a link and some comments on why you have suggested it.

Note: the More blogs link at the top of a blogger page takes you to random examples of the millions of blogger blogs.

Tina Cassati blog is in German and she is an artist. The display is spectacular. It is one of the complex layouts and you can choose which view you see from the selection at the top. This is the flipcard view.

Pages as well as Posts

Blogs mainly consist of Posts - individual 'articles' one after the other. But there can be 'pages' as well, like a regular web site. This blog has just this one. See next to Home, under the banner, is About me. This is a static page that is good for fixed material that might add to the blog.