Don’t like the direction of EMUTalk.org? Don’t like the rules, the restrictions? Well, why not set up a blog of your own, one where you can say whatever you want?!
Here is my promise: if you are someone who feels like they have something to say online about EMU and/or the community, and who feels like the best place to do it is in your own blog, then I will cheerfully do whatever I can to help you, and I will add a link to your site on EMUTalk.org.
The easiest way to do this is to use blogger; here are some basic instructions.
How to set up a blog with Blogger
Despite all of the hype with “blogs” in recent years, a blog really isn’t anything much more complicated than a means for publishing a writer’s work on the web in an easy to read and easy to update format. There are several different software options for doing this; Blogger is an excellent choice because it is both free and easy.
These instructions, which I updated in April 2008, should get you up and running a Blogger blog in about 10 minutes. Note that if you make some sort of error along the way, Google and Blogger will prompt you and you’ll have to correct the mistake before going on. And if you have questions or you get really stuck, you can always send me an email at skrause at emich dot edu.
Okay, here are the steps:
Step 1: Sign up for a Google account
I think the easiest way to do this is to begging with setting up a Google email account. Go to http://gmail.com and follow the instructions for creating a free account. If you already have a Google account, you can skip ahead to Step 2.
Step 2: Go to http://www.blogger.com and sign up for a blog
Sign into blogger with you Google account– that is, your Google username (you only need the part that comes before “@gmail.com” where it says “username or email”) and your password.
This should take you to a screen that shows your gmail email address (note that you can switch to a different email account if you want to do that), your Google name, and a box for your display name. Fill this in with whatever name you want to appear as the “byline” for your blog posts.
Be sure to check the “terms of service” box; of course, you might actually want to read through it a bit first, though the rules are pretty standard for these sorts of services. Then click the big orange arrow.
The “Blog Title” will be what appears in the title portion of your blog. I recommend you keep it something simple, and it is something you can change later.
“Blog address (URL)” is the internet address for accessing your blog. Again, keep it simple, and using your username in the blank that comes before “blogspot.com” usually works. You can also check for availability before you commit. You can’t change the address of your blog after you set it up, unless you set up a different blog entirely. Unless you know what you’re doing with ftp functions, skip the “Advanced Setup” and use blogspot.com to host your blog. Click the orange “continue” arrow when you’re done.
If this worked, you will be asked to choose a template for your blog. You can choose any template you want, and you can also change the template later if you would like. Click the orange “continue” arrow when you’re done.
The next to last screen is a notice that your blog has been created. Congratulations! Click on the orange “start blogging” arrow.
Step 3: Get posting!
The posting screen for blogger is pretty straight-forward. The default tab, “Compose,” is a “what you see is what you get” HTML/CSS editing tool. The other tab, “Edit Html,” allows you to edit the HTML and CSS coding. You can switch back and forth between the two as you are comfortable, though as is the case with all HTML/CSS editing tools, actually using the code is very useful for exact layout and look for your posts.
Give your entries a title, type text in the window, use the editing tools for your blog entry as you want. Play around with it a bit and experiment a little. Have a little fun, after all. It’s the best way to learn.
To post or “publish” your post, click the button at the bottom of the screen “Publish Post.” If you start writing something but you don’t want to post it until later, click where it says “Save as Draft.”
When you publish your post, blogger will process the information and then, if everything worked (and it usually does), it will give you the option to “view blog.” Take a look at it; you should notice a few things:
The address for your blog– something like http://stevendkrause.blogspot.com– is the address for your blog. If you are reading this because you are in one of my classes where I require blogging, send this URL (web address) to me!
Readers should be able to post a comment to your post by clicking on the “comments” link.
There’s a little under your blog entry. This means you can edit it– but only you can edit it because you are the one logged in.
There is a sidebar that probably has a heading like “Blog Archive” and “About Me.” These are all things you can change with the setting and layout adjustments I briefly describe in the next step.
Step 4: Do some settings adjustments to your account
There are a lot of different things you might want to do to make your blog a bit more useful. But here are some things you really should do no matter what.
Blocking blog spam. I know, hard to believe, but yes, the world of spamming extends to blogs too. Fortunately, Blogger has a pretty decent security feature that will eliminate almost all spam posts from your blog. Here’s what to do:
If you aren’t already logged in, log in to your Blogger account. You did remember your username and password, right?
From the “Dashboard” screen, click on the name of your blog.
Click on the tab “Settings.”
Click on the link near the top of that page under the tabs labeled “Comments.”
Set “Who Can Comment?” to “Only Registered Users.” It isn’t essential that you do this, but I’d recommend it.
A bit further down, set “Show word verification for comments?” to “Yes.” This is a security feature that requires the comment poster to type a specific word that shows up as slightly distorted text in a window.
Select “Save Settings” at the bottom of the page.
Description and Time zone. It’d be nice if you had a short blog description and if the time was right on your blog, right? Here’s how to do that:
If you aren’t already logged in, log in to your Blogger account. You did remember your username and password, right?
From the “Dashboard” screen, click on the name of your blog.
Click on the tab “Settings.”
Make sure that “Basic” is selected.
In the box next to the word “Description,” add a one sentence or so description of your blog. You can change this later, and remember, you only get 500 characters maximum. So keep it short.
Next, click on the link near the top of that page under the tabs labeled “Formatting.”
Under “Time Zone,” select the right time zone (and if you’re reading this as part of one of my classes, chances are that’d be “Eastern Time.” Duh.)
Select “Save Settings” at the bottom of the page.
And again, as you can see from poking around just a bit on the site that there are lots of things you can do to customize the way your blog is set up.
Doing things to customize the look of your Blogger blog. There’s lots of stuff you can do customize your blog. At a minimum, I’d recommend including some links to your classmates’ blogs or other blogs you like to read, but there are a lot of other things you can do, too– include pictures, lists of stuff you like, polls, videos, etc., etc.
This is something best learned by experimentation/playing around a bit. So if you are really nervous about messing up the format of your blog, you might want to create a new “test blog” first. See below on “Creating multiple blogs.”
If you aren’t already logged in, log in to your Blogger account. You did remember your username and password, right?
From the “Dashboard” screen, click on the name of your blog.
Click on the tab “Layout.”
Make sure the “Page Elements” tab under this is selected, and click on “Add a Page Element.” From here, simply follow the instructions. To rearrange the page elements on your blog,simply move them around. Be sure to save you page element additions and double-check that it worked.
Want to change the Fonts and Colors on your current template? Look under that tab on the Layout screen. Want a whole new template? Then select “Pick New Template.” And if you are really adventurous and want to look at the code running this, take a look at “Edit HTML.”
Step 5: Repeat
This is all you need to do to set up your blogger interface (though, as you can see further down on this page, there might be some other things you will probably want to try to do sooner than later). Easy, right?
To publish new posts and to manage your Blogger blog from now on, here’s all you need to do:
Once again, go to http://www.blogger.com
Log in with your username and your password (you remembered your username and password, right?) This should bring you to the “Dashboard,” where you can view your blog, manage it, or create a new post. To create a new post, click New Post. Don’t create “Create a Blog” because that will set up an entirely different blog– something you might want to do (see “Creating multiple blogs”), but probably not every time you want to post something new.
Creating multiple blogs
Blogger allows as many different blogs under one account as you want, and you can set each one up differently, too. This can be very handy. For example, I use different blogs for different classes I teach, and I set up some blogs in my account just to experiment with the layout features in Blogger.
Creating another blog within your account is easy: just click on the link “Create a Blog” and follow the instructions.
But remember: each blog you create in a single account is still tied to that particular account! In other words, if you want to set up a blog based on some sort of “secret identity” (the Batman blog?), you will need to set up separate Google accounts.
Trouble-shooting
“Hey, what should I do if it didn’t work?!” Well, blogger really is pretty easy to use, and while it does sometimes have bugs that are of course not your fault, usually if your blog doesn’t work, it is is because of something that you did (or didn’t) do.
So the first thing you should do is re-trace the steps above: are you sure you did everything I outline here? Really? Doubly sure? Are you positive?
If you’re confident that you did everything right, here are a couple of other thoughts:
“I tried to enter in my blog address into a web browser but it didn’t work”
Then try this:
- Log in to blogger, using your username and password that you used to sign up for blogger in the first place.
- Get to your blogger “dashboard.”
- Click on the link to your blog.
- Click on the tab at the top that says “view blog”
- The web address (or URL) that appears in the window is the address to your blog. It will be something like http://something.blogspot.com Copy this information and paste it into an email message to me.
“I wrote my posts but nothing has shown up yet”
If this is the case, then you probably didn’t “Publish” your entry yet but you did a “save as draft.” Go back to it and push the “publish” button. This should bring up a window with a time-clock where Blogger indicates it is publishing your entry.
“This crazy thing just isn’t working at all!”
Well, I have to be honest and tell you that 95% of the time, if something goes wrong, it means you made a mistake. But Blogger is not a perfect service and it is sometimes down. So if you are really sure you did everything right and it still is “wrong,” wait 10 minutes and try again.
This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License Steven D. Krause | Eastern Michigan University |2008
