Getting Started
OK, you're all set up and now you want to start blogging. You could start now, with what you've got set up. but let's take care of some things first that might make life easier in the future. The first thing we're going to do is familiarize you with the layout of the posting screen. This will make your life much easier while blogging. Let's take a look at the screen:
There are two text fields on this screen, the one on top and the one on the bottom . The top field is where you will type out your blog entries, and the bottom field will list your most recent entries for reference and editing purposes (before you make any entries, this area contains a "getting started" overview of blogger). To the right of the entries field is a calendar and various menus to help you find older posts to view and edit. this is all fairly self-explanatory; you can use the different drop-down menus to change the way your blogs are sorted and listed, and the calendar lets you choose particular dates. When you've been posting for a few weeks this area will become important, but until then it's just aesthetic. remember to experiment with this calendar area after you've got a few posts, because experimentation is the easiest way to learn something well. I recommend reading the "getting started" overview that is on the page for now, as it's loaded with information to help out a beginning blogger. also, if you have any other questions that i don't covere here on this site, there's a yellow box labeled "blogger help" on the right side of the screen which is designed to answer even the most basic questions. you can get rid of it for now, but if you need it again you can get it back by clicking on the small box with the "?" at the upper right corner of the page.
There are various buttons located throughout this page. The buttons at the top right are labeled "Posts", "Settings", and "Template". These are the main navigation buttons for blogger and they will appear up at the top of the screen no matter where you are within the application. Everything below those tabs, starting with the "NEW POST" bar and going all the way down, belongs to the "Posts" page: this is where you'll end up if you click on the "posts" tab from anywhere else in the application. The "Settings" tab will take you to a page where you can set up some of the aesthetic and technical details of your blog (covered in part three of getting started). the "Template" tab (covered in part two) will allow you to modify your template, or to input an entirely new one. The "X" button, at the very top of the screen, next to the "?", works much like the x button at the top right of any open application in the windows operating system: it will exit you from the application, in this case logging you out of blogger as well.
Let's start by looking at the posts page, everything associated with the "posts" tab i mentioned before.
Posts page
So here we are at the Posts page, the one you see above. This where you post entries into your blog and modify your entries. The Posts page has some of its own buttons that don't appear anywhere else in blogger, and they're very useful for the beginning blogger, you! On the "NEW POST " bar, right below the actual posts tab, there are five buttons. The first has a little image of a globe with a chain link in the foreground. This is the "Link" button. This allows you to make links to other webpages and sites in your blog. The next two buttons are "B" and "I", and they allow you to make highlighted text bold or italic, respectively. After that comes the "Post" and "Post & Publish" buttons, which allow you to send content to Blogger to be processed.
Let's try posting an entry now. I want you to write something into the text entry field, press the "post" button to post it. when you do that, the entry you just typed will appear in the entry navigation area, and a bright orange "publish" button
appears somewhere on the page. you guessed it, that's going to publish your
entry to the blog, once you're done proof-reading your entry. what are you
waiting for? push the button!after you push the "publish" button, right next to it some text is going to appear that will tell you that blogger is in the process of publishing your entries. when it's finished, it will say "publish successful" and your blog will be accessible. you can access it using the url for the page, which will look something like "newblog.blogspot.com", where "newblog" is replaced with the word that you chose back when you signed up. you can also view your new blog by clicking the "view blog" tab.
Wasn't that easy? Congratulations, you are now officially a Blogger! Let me tell you a little shortcut now: if you are certain that your entry is going to look all right, and want to skip a step, next time you make an entry you can press the "Post & Publish" button rather than the "Post" one, and it will skip the proof-reading step.
Your blog looks pretty boring, doesn't it? I know, trust me. I felt the same way the first time i published to my blog. The appearance of your blog is modified through the template page, so let's go ahead and click on that "Template" button at the top of the page and modify that, shall we? Click here when you're ready.
graphics, content, and design © MMII Andre Araujo