Setting up a Blogger Account

The first thing you need to do is get yourself a Google Gmail Account. This is a really handy on line email account that you can access anywhere in the world from any computer in the world. It has a ton of storage space and you can use it to chat to others who also have gmail accounts.

Gmail Account

The big thing to remember with this one is you HAVE TO WRITE DOWN YOUR USERNAME AND PASSWORD as you go because you may have to change it and you don't want to forget what you have decided on.


Then go to Blogger and make yourself a blog. It is quite straight forward but again write down your username and password. I like to keep the same username and password for both so I don't confuse myself.

Here are three documents that are much more detailed that hopefully will spell it out more clearly if you are stuck...

How to set up a blog

Moving to the new beta Blogger

Getting rid of the navigation bar

If reading isn't your thing then watch this excellent video on how to set up a Blogger blog.

Fine tuning your blog

Make yourself a post with a photo just to prove how clever you are.

Now to the fine tuning...

Go to the settings - BASIC - and change the add to blog listings to NO.

Scroll to the bottom and SAVE.

Go to the settings - COMMENTS - and change who can comment to ANYONE


Now scroll further down until you get to Comment Notification and type in an email address you want Blogger to send a note to to let you know someone has commented.
For a school I think you need comment moderation to be turned on- moderation means that all comments get sent to the email address that you nominate and you get to decide whether you want to publish or delete the comment.
You may also like to show word verification for comments- this means the commentor has to type a string of meaningless letters before posting so as to stop computers making comments but I have never found it to be a problem- more of a hindrance really.

And again save the settings.

You may also like to go to formatting and change to the Time Zone bit and select the time zone for the country you are in.


And SAVE the settings once more and you're done apart from any other tinkerings that you might fancy.

Adding a photo to your profile

Here is a HELP page from Blogger to help you add a photo to your profile so that when you comment you get a small photo to accompany it.

I will give you the same thing with a few more screen shots. First of all upload the photo to one of your blog posts as you would normally do and then click on the EDIT HTML tab next to compose.
You will see the code for your photo that similar to what I have highlighted in the above screen grab. Carefully select the whole bit of code but be careful get everything inside the speech marks and not to select the speech mark itself.

Now go EDIT and COPY the code. Now go back to your Dashboard and click where it says EDIT PROFILE.
Scroll down to where it says photograph and PASTE the code you just got into there.
Now scroll down to the bottom of the page and SAVE YOUR PROFILE.

Now when you make a comment people will see a little photo as well as the comment which is quite sweet really!

You may like to leave a comment on this post and let me know where in the world you are!

The Navbar Option

The navigation bar at the very top of your blog can be a worry if your blog is going to be viewed by children as the NEXT BLOG option could lead them to random places that it is not good that they go.

This bar can be removed if you want by placing a little bit of code in the blog template (Look for the tab Edit HTML on the template tab). Tricky but cunning!


Here is how to do it.

To disable the navbar go to the dashboard and look for the tab that says TEMPLATE at the top. Click on it. You will see this bit.
Click the tab that says EDIT HTML. Copy and paste the code given below just before the tag in the css section.

#navbar-iframe {
height:0px;
visibility:hidden;
display:none
}

Click on the photo to get a closer look!

I would add once more that it is a good idea to preview the changes before you actually publish them in case you have put the code in the wrong place. If you muck it up just discard the changes and try again.

One last thing- seeing you have got rid of the NEXT BLOG option you still want a link to the Blogger log in page.

Go to your template and add another element- this time a logo.



Now all you need to do is click on the Blogger logo and it will take you to the Blogger log in page.

Changing your Blogger Banner

Afiliate Marketing have excellently created a screencast video that shows you in detail how to add a banner to the top of your blog. This could be a photo or a piece of art work from your class.

Click on the link or the screen grab to take you to the site.


Basically- you take a photo, crop and export it to make it the pixel width you need for your blogger template and add it to the banner of your blog.

Remember as always to preview any changes before saving in case you have mucked things up.

Changing Things on Your Side Bar

Go to your template

To move things around you only have drag them up or down.

To add a new page element you click on ADD A NEW PAGE ELEMENT!

We will look at these in later posts but editing html is the one that you can mostly use to add bling to your blog!

Adding Links to Your Blog

To add a set of links to your side bar got to the template again and add another page element but this time add a link list.

You then just type in the Link Group Title and type copy in the web address that you want.
You can add lots of links and different groups of links as well as change the order of the links. It is up to you.
Remember to save the changes.