Week 1- Setting up the LOOK of Your Blog

July 15, 2009 · Posted in Assignment · 6 Comments 

This first week is going to focus on setting up the LOOK of your blog both behind the scenes and using templates. For these assignments, you’re invited to use the personal reflection blog that you set up in Basic Blogging or Intro to Web 2.0. If you’ve already re-purposed that blog, or you’d like to take this opportunity to switch over to Blogger, you can do that as well.

Switching to Blogger is easy. Here are a couple of short video tutorials to get you started.

 Changing Your Blog’s Settings

Comment Moderation   We’ll begin by looking at the comment moderation settings. By default, Blogger is set to “Never review comments before they are published.” This means that anyone can comment on your blog and it will be published as soon as they click they “Publish Your Comment” button. There are pros and cons for this setting. We would recommend “Always moderating your comments before they are published,” but if you’re interested in reading more about it; here are a couple of posts that address comment moderating.

Guest Bloggers – When you first decided to embark on your journey toward blogging, one of the fears expressed to us was not having enough time (and it may still be one of your top concerns.) Utilizing guest bloggers is one way to get back some of that time. Here are a couple of articles that discuss the advantages of having guest bloggers and examples of how guest bloggers can contribute.

Here’s the how-to video if you’re having trouble finding the settings to allow comment moderation or guest authors.

comment_guest

There are a few other things worth exploring in the Settings tab on your blog. This video highlights a few of them but feel free to explore on your own. Pay special attention to the portion that allows you to set up an email address to publish to your blog.

 

additional_settings

Mail-to-Blogger- The Mail-to-Blogger feature turns any email account into a blog-posting application. In Settings | Email you can create a Mail-to-Blogger address which you will use to send posts via email to your blog:

Settings | Email tab

To post to your blog via email, you need to configure your Mail-to-Blogger email address in Settings | Email:

 

mailtobloggerThe format of the email address is username.secretword@blogger.com. Note that this email address must be kept secret. Otherwise, anyone who gets it will be able to post as you.

Also be sure to specify whether or not you prefer your email posts to publish automatically. If this option is not checked, then your posts will be saved on your account but will not appear on your blog until you log in to Blogger.com and publish them yourself.

Once you have saved your Settings, you can send email to your blog. The subjects of your email letters will be the titles of your posts, and the body of the emails will be the posts themselves. To include an image in your post, you can attach an image to you your email.

Notes:

  • Sometimes email programs append text to the bottom of each sent message; to make sure this cruft doesn’t get posted to your blog, put #end at the end of your post.

(2009). How do I post via email?- blogger help. Retrieved July 13, 2009, from Blogger Help Web site: http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=41452

Playing with the Blogger Templates

There are multiple templates available in Blogger under the layout tab (Edublogs calls them themes and they’re available under the design tab.) Each time you change your template in Blogger; you’ll have to edit the html again to remove the “next blog” feature, so you may want to find one that you really like before taking the time to edit the html code.

layout

Assignment 

  1. Comment on the Introduction post with the information about yourself and the web address for the blog you’ll be using for the course.
  2. Read through this week’s blog post and watch the embedded videos.
  3. Adjust the settings on your blog to moderate comments, reflect the correct time zone, and make any other changes you deem appropriate.
  4. Use the Mail-to-Blogger feature. You can either ask a classmate, a friend, or try it out yourself. Set up the secret email address described above and give it to someone you trust to write a post or draft. 
  5. Answer these reflection questions in a blog post on your blog. 
    •  
      • What did you learn?
      • How will you use what you have learned?
      • How did you feel about this information?
      • Do you feel that comment moderation is a benefit or a detriment? Why?
      • Who did you ask to try the Mail-to-Blogger feature? Did it work? Would you use this with your students? colleagues?
      • What do you not want to forget about this week’s information?
      • What questions do you still have about blog settings and templates?
  6. We want to address your needs, so week three will include a topic of your choice. Please comment on this post with an idea or concept that you’d like to see covered in Week 3.

Optional Extension Activity

 

  1. Ask a classmate to be a guest blogger on your blog (You may do this by commenting on their blog or emailing them directly.)
  2. Accept a classmate’s request to guest blog for their blog.

 

Resources to Complete Assignment (Guides & Tutorials):

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