I'm Tyler, from Ms. Gaboury's block 6 English class. I've constructed this guide for two purposes:
1. To save other people the trouble of going through what I did.
2. To test the picture I loaded to my profile.
Click on one of these sections to go directly to it, or just browse.
Table of Contents
1. Account Creation
2. The Dashboard
3. Manipulating a Post
1. Account Creation
Ms. Gaboury's blogpage requires that you have a google email account and that you be invited by Ms. Gaboury herself. To create a google account, go to google.com and press on gmail. From here, you will need to make an account with the requested information. Once Ms. Gaboury sends you the invite, you check your email on your google account. You should, if Ms. Gaboury sent you the invite, have an email from her with an invitation url enclosed. Copy the url described and paste it into the browser's url window(A browser is a program from which you view the contents of the vast Internet. A common browser is Internet Explorer.) Below is the email I received. Circled in red is the url you need to copy and paste.
<--- Paste the URL into this search window bar thingy
When you copy and paste it, a window should pop up asking for your google account name and password. Feed it the information (Note: I haven't tested tried not doing it, but I always use (account name)@gmail.com. Now you're in! This brings us to our next area, the dashboard.
2. The Dashboard
The dashboard is your window to other blogs. On it you can edit your profile, account, settings, and posts. You can also create your own blogs, post on others blogs, and view various other things from blogspot.com. I will now show the various functions of the dashboard. Below is my dashboard. Circled in red is my profile: My name, picture, and link (I don't have one) as well as the options to "Edit Profile" and go to "My Account." Circled in blue in a link entitled "View Blog." If you click on it, you will go to the displayed blog. In my case, it is Ms. Gaboury's English Classes blog. Finally, circled in green is the almighty "New Post" link. We'll start by how to use that link. (See under picture)
If you pressed on that new post button you will be brought to a window fairly familiar to anyone who has ever been on forums or blogs. There is a spot for the title of your post, a link spot, and the almighty text space. The title and contents of your post will be visible from Ms. Gaboury's blogpage, which can be accessed by clicking on the View Blog button (circled in blue above). Using the various tools in the post window provided by blogspot, you can make cool effects like THis or add links and pictures, like I've done above. You can even show a movie. Anyway, I will now go over the editing of one's profile.
If you press on Edit Profile from the dashboard, you will get a list of information all about you (isn't it great). You can post a neat picture, a video, your own homepage, a wishlist, and much more. Thanks blogspot. Anyway, I'll get to the cool stuff (pictures). To get a picture, the easiest way is to go to a search engine like google.com and search under the image tab whatever it is you want your picture to be of. I searched "Duck" and now my profile sports that dazzlingly handsome mandarin duck. But Tyler, how did you get that dazzlingly handsome duck to appear on your blog profile? Just click on the picture when you get all of those silly thumbnails and hotlink to it by clicking on the picture again at the top of the window you are forwarded to. Then, when it is just the picture you see, copy the url and paste it into the available space. Save your profile and BOOM! Mandarin Duck. Or whatever. I haven't bothered with videos yet, but if I do, I'll update the guide. EDIT: I figured it out. Just go to a url where the video is playing. Copy and paste the link into the provided space. There will now be an option to go to an audio clip when you view your profile. Pressing on it will link to the page and the video will start playing or will wait to be started by the viewer.
One more thing about the dashboard. If you press on View Blog, you are brought to that blog. To get back to the almighty dashboard, click on a small sprite (that's geek for icon) in the top-left of your screen. This concludes the dashboard section.
3. Manipulating a Post
So you've got the gist, now you have cast your evil eye to the buttons above a post. Below is a picture of this very post, and I have circled some key buttons. Basically, these buttons make the job of making a pretty post a heck of a lot easier for anyone that doesn't know HTML coding (Which I am going to assume is most of the people who view this post). If you look below, circled in green are, in order, Font Style, Font Size, Bold, Italic, and Font Color. These are fairly self explanatory, so go nuts, but ask questions if you need to. In red are formatting options. These should remind you of Microsoft Word. They determine from which margin your text starts. In blue is the option to insert a picture. Here is how to get a picture.
Okay, first press on the button circled in blue above. This will bring you to a window that may or may not be overwhelming. Really it is simple. There should be two areas where you can type stuff. The first is under something that says Add an image from your computer and the second says "Or Add an image from the web." To add one from the web, use the same concept from how you got a picture into your profile. Type in the url of the picture into the text space, check the small box on the bottom that says something like "I agree with your terms," and press UPLOAD IMAGE. Then press done. To get one from your computer, press Browse and then sift through the folders to find the image you want. Press OK on the one you want, then check the terms of agreement box and upload the image. Then press done. Some other things, before we get onto manipulating the picture on the page... You can choose where you want your picture. You can align it to the left, right, or in the center. If you align it left or right, the text you type before it will display an effect we HTML geeks call "float." Basically, the text will wrap around the picture. You can also make the image smaller or larger on the right of the window. Once you have loaded the image, it will be at the very top of your post. To move it, click on it and hold the mouse button. Release it where you want it. This may take a couple tries.
Watch this tutorial to learn how to make a video and get it on blogspot. This took a while to make, but it should work. It lags a little, so the audio is sometimes behind the actual video. Make sure you save it as a .avi file.
That concludes the guide. I hope everyone enjoys it, and more importantly the blog gets going. I would like to give credit to Pagetutor's html guide and the 9th grade teachers for giving a small amount of homework allowing for this page to be made.
~Tyler
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