How to Create a Blog Post

 

Creating a posts for your blog is as simple as filling out a form. To get started, you can either click the “Start Blogging” link or the orange pencil icon in the Blogger dashboard. If you are viewing your site on the web, alternatively click the “New Post” link in the top right of the Blogger nav bar.

This will bring up the blog posting form in which you can write your post .

Tip: When choosing a title for your post, try to include a relevant description of what the

post will be about. This will help people find your post more easily in search engines

and attract more page views.

You can jazz up the text-based content of your blog posts in a number of ways:
• Use bold, italic, underlined or strike-through text using the buttons above the form
• Use different coloured fonts and background colours using the drop-down buttons
• Insert a numerical (ordered) or bulleted (unordered) list
• Select an area of text to appear as a quote using the blockquote button

Adding links
To add a link in your blog post, select the text you would like to form a link and click the
hyperlink button. This brings up a pop-up dialogue in which you can specify the URL of
the page you would like to link to, and choose whether or not clicking on the link will open
in a new window:

Tip: Links are regarded as the “currency” of the web. Web pages which are linked to by
many other sites are regarded as having more “authority” and often rank higher in
search engine results. If you would prefer not to pass on this “link love” to the site you
link to, check the “rel=no-follow” box which tells search engines not to follow this link
from your published page.

Instead of a web address, you can also use the hyperlink tool to link to an email address.
However, linked email addresses can become the target of spammers unless the address
is encrypted.

Inserting images
There are many ways of choosing images to include in your blog posts:
• Upload an image from your hard drive
• Insert an image previously uploaded to this blog
• Add an image hosted in Picasa Web Albums
• Upload from your mobile phone (requires the Google+ app)
• Use your webcam (requires confirmation of use via Adobe Flash)
• Paste the URL of an image hosted elsewhere (e.g.: Flickr, Photobucket)
To add an image, click the image button in the posting toolbar and select the method you
would like to use.
The images which are available to paste into your blog post will appear in the larger
section on the right.

Tip: You can choose to paste in more than one image at a time by holding CTRL (or
CMD) and clicking each image. The selected images will feature a blue border and will
be added to your post when you click the “Add Selected” button.

By default, the images you paste into your posts will be “medium” sized and will be aligned
to the centre of the page.
If you would like to change the alignment, size or other image options, click on the image
in the text editor to see a menu of available options. You can also add a caption to appear beneath your image by clicking the “Add caption”
link.

Tip: To ensure your images are more “accessible”, add a title and alt-text for your image
by clicking the “Properties” link in this menu. This ensures relevant code is in place for
those who view your site with images disabled (it's also said to improve search engine visibility, though cannot be relied on).

When you upload images to your blog, these will be added to an album on Picasa which is
named using the title of your blog. If you ever want to reuse a previously uploaded image,
you can select “From this blog” in the image menu.
Images added to blog posts are automatically linked to the URL on which they are hosted.

Add Video to your Posts
You can add video content to your blog posts in many ways:
• Upload a video from your hard drive (most video formats are accepted)
• Search YouTube for a video to embed
• Insert a video from those you have uploaded to YouTube (using the same Google
account as you are using for your blog)
• Add a video from your mobile phone (requires the Google+ app)
• Record a video using your webcam

Again, videos which are available to embed in your post will appear in the main section to
the right. If you upload a video, the code required to embed the video in your post will be
automatically added so you don't need to tinker with the post's HTML.
Select the video you would like to add. The video thumbnail will enlarge enabling you to
preview it in a small player before inserting into your post.

Publish or save to draft?
Once you've finished adding content to your blog post, you can choose to publish it by
clicking the “Publish” button. Your post will then appear on your blog.
If you would prefer to save your post to edit it at a later time, you can choose to “Save”
your post, then click the “Close” button to return to the Blogger dashboard.

Tip: when composing or editing, your posts will be automatically saved every few
minutes.