Creating blog entries

1. Write your text in Word first. This is very important: keep all your posts in a folder on your computer as back-up, just in case something goes wrong on the website.  Do not write lengthy entries directly into the text box on the website; things sometimes go wrong and you may lose what you wrote even as it’s being posted.  Don't put in any formatting (italics, etc.) or links while you are still in Word.

2. Once the text for your post is written, look for an interesting picture to go with it.  Google Images is easy to use, but you can find more ways to search for images here.  If you're using one of your own images, make sure it's not too big (you may need to import it and export it at a smaller size using something like iPhoto).  Once you have a jpeg image on your desktop, go to "Create content>image," and upload the image to the website.  Click on the "Choose file" icon and find your image on your desktop; select the course and type your user name in the Gallery box; if you want to give the image a caption, type it in the body box.  More detailed instructions are here.

3. Copy the text from your Word document and go to “create content > blog entry” on the website.

3. Give the entry a title; it won’t post without one (that’s what the red asterisk means).

4. In the “Class” box, scroll to your course, and in the "topic" box for that course, scroll to the appropriate assignment and select it.

5. Below the "Body" box, click on "disable rich text," and then paste in your text.  It is important to disable rich text before you paste in the text.  If you paste in the text without disabling rich text first, you may end up with line breaks where you don't want them and the formatting will look wrong.

6. Next, insert the image: Once the text is in place, put the cursor at the beginning of the text, and then click on the +image icon below the body box.  The Image Assist window should open and you should see your image.  Select the image, decide whether you want to leave the title and/or caption (you can delete either or both if they're not necessary), and then select the size of the image—if it's taller than it is wide, select "portrait," and if it's wider than it is tall, select "landscape."  Then paste in the URL of the source page for the image, which will create a link to that page and give credit to where it's due. More detailed instructions are here.

7. Next, formatting and text links.  Click on "enable rich text," and you'll see some icons below the body box.  You can use the italics icon to italicize book titles and to emphasize phrases.  To create a hyperlink, select the phrase you want to link from, click on the chain icon, paste in the URL of the page you want to link to, and click on insert.   There's also a full-screen option that may makes it easier to see your whole post.  Note that while the hyperlink should work in any browser, the italics does not work properly in Safari, so it's best to use Firefox.

8. The Location feature allows you to add a map to the bottom of your post with a flag on a location relevant to the post.  Click on "Location" and do one of three things: type in the address of the location (this works for the US, but it's not great for foreign locations); or click on the map and a flag will appear, which you can drag around; or find the coordinates of the location using this website or, if it's a well known place, using wikipedia.

8. Click on "submit." If you want to go back and edit, click on the "edit" tab. You can also go back and edit posts that have been submitted.