A quick blogging how to...

This post will cover the basic technique to enter a post on a BlogSpot/Blogger web log entry that has no images or videos. In later posts I'll cover an entry with a single picture or newspaper style layout, an entry with a slide show style of set of pictures and an entry with an embedded video.

These instructions are based on using the Blogger web site to post entries. There are a few tools that allow you to build posts offline.

1. Basic entry with no pictures or videos

The program I used to build this post is Windows Live Writer. I've also used Word 2007, and you can post pictures and video via Picasa. These tools make posting considerably easier, but they require you to install extra software. If I get enough requests, I'll make a post(s) about using these tools.

So, first you'll need to go to the Blogger web site. It will ask you to log in with your credentials. One of the options you have is to stay logged in. I personally would choose this. This way, whenever you want to get to the blog or post, you won't have to log in again. Unless you clear your cookies or don't visit either the authoring site or the blog itself often enough.

You should see a list of blogs that you participate as an author. From beneath the blog you would like to post to you click on"New Post".

The next screen you come to looks like the screen shot above.

You'll see a place for the title of the post, and the body of the post. Here you can format in a similar way that you would use a word processor. There is also a "Preview" link that shows you what the final output will look like in the browser.

Once you've entered your post title and text, you can either click "Publish Post" or "Save Now". Publish post will immediately post to the blog, and the world will see what you've got to say. If you click on Save Now, your post will be saved as a draft. You can come back to your post later and edit it until you're ready to publish the final version.

It is also good to note that even after you publish your post, you can come back and edit a post later on, if you find that you missed something and need to fix it.

My next post will cover posting an entry with a either a single picture or newspaper style picture layout.