Blogger Tutorial

by Emily Barney

Here's a tutorial that explains the basics of setting up one of these group blogs for projects like this:



To edit posts you absolutely have to be logged in. Otherwise everyone could change everything! This isn't a wiki!

To add a post, you can start at your dashboard (that first screen that shows when you login) or click on the "New Post" option in the top right of your screen, on the "blogger ribbon" that appears when you're logged in.

To save a post without publishing it, click on "Save As Draft." You can remove a post you've already published from public view by opening it in edit mode and saving it as a draft again. You can do this two ways:

• Click on the small pencil symbol at the bottom of the published post. Click on the blue "save as draft" button and it's removed until you choose to open it and click "publish post" again.
• Or, click on the "Manage: Posts" button in the "dashboard" screen. This will take you to the full list of posts, where you can select "Edit" beside any post to start making changes or to save as a draft.
  

To get back to a draft post or just to make quick edits (without searching through your whole blog) you need to either start with the "Manage: Posts" link on your "dashboard" or get to the Posting tab and click on the "Edit Posts" link. There are two ways to get to the Posting section once you're looking at the blog:

• Click on the "New Post" option in the top right of your screen, on the "blogger ribbon" that appears when you're logged in. You'll see an empty text box appear - ignore that and click on the "edit posts" link (It doesn't look like a link - it isn't underlined in this view - but it will take you to the right place).
• Click on the little pencil symbol at the bottom of a post you've already started. (You won't see this unless you're logged in, of course). This works the same way as the "New Post" link, except you'll see that the text box is filled with information from the post you clicked on. Don't worry - it's been saved already. You can ignore that and go directly to the "Edit Posts" page.
  

See the second point above for information about the "Edit Post" list of blog postings.

I wish they had an easier way to get to the page where you can view all the posts, but those are my workarounds right now. Leave a comment if you need any clarification on this. I don't have time to make another flash tutorial right now, so I've tried to break it down into short steps.