Posting to Your Blog with Email

Once you have set up your blog it is nice and easy to make a post just by sending an email. This feature wold be great if you have students overseas who want to share their travels on the blog- all the would need to be able to do is to send an email.

Also useful if you want people to be able to make posts but you don't want to the give them the password or let them change the sidebar or other setting.

To enable blogging via email go to SETTINGS, then look for MOBILE AND EMAIL.

Enter a secret word that you can remember. As an example the email address would be

allanahsblog.thinking.blogger.com

Click on the 'Publish Email Immediately' if you want to or you can make it go to draft but if it did that you might not notice it was there. 

If you send it straight to publish make sure you get an email letting you know it's there so you can check it.

To make your post simply send an email to the blog.

And very cleverly instead of just emailing text and photos you can email a short video as an attachment and that works as well.

Here is a video from Barbara Reid showing you how to do it.

Add recent comments to your side bar

Go to the LAYOUT of your blog. Click ADD A GADGET.

Now scroll down until you get to Feed. Click the plus to add it.

Where it says Feed copy this text into it.

http://YOURBLOG.blogspot.co.nz/feeds/comments/default

But where it says YOURBLOG type in the individual address of your blog. For example I would type 

http://bling4yrblog.blogspot.co.nz/feeds/comments/default

You can then decide how many comments you want to be shown, whether you wnt to time stamp them or whatever.

Save the widget and you can drag it down the sidebar if you don't want to have it at the top.

I acknowledge the assistance of http://blog.btemplates.com/ for this tip.

Adding Gadgets on Your Side Bar

Adding gadgets to the side bar of your blog really adds functionality and interest to your blog.

To add a gadget go to the OVERVIEW. Then go to the LAYOUT.

Click on ADD A GADGET.

Scroll down the list and click the plus for the gadget you want.

You can repeat the process and get lots of gadgets.

Here is a list of gadgets that I have found useful.

• Pages- add static page to your blog- one that doesn't scroll away over time.

• Search box- search your blog 

• Html- very useful for adding things like YouTube videos and services from other web sites.

• Text- it's good to write a little about your class so visitors know what year level you teach, who you are and why you are blogging.

• Picture- a good place to put a class photo

• Slideshow- add a slideshow of photos from the blog.

• Poll- ask your readers to vote on topics of interest.

• Link List- this is how I add links to Reading, Maths etc website to add usefulness and functionality to your blog.

• Labels- group your blog posts into categories or add children's names so they can easily find their blog posts.

• Logo- you will need this to quickly go the the log in page if you have removed the navigation bar at the top of your blog.

• Follow by email- interested people can add their email address and get an email update every time the blog gets updated. Here is a post that shows you how to do this.

Adding a Animoto Slideshow

Animoto Slideshows  add a variety of cool transitions and music very simply to your blog.

To make a slideshow you first have to do register.

First off all select your theme.

For the free version you can upload no more than 15 photos as the slideshow lasts 30 seconds. I suggest you put your photos into one folder and go CLICK + SHIFT on the first photo in the list and then click on the last photo and all of them will be selected.

You can fiddle with the music and photo order but for a quick production just click preview and produce your movie.

That will whirr away for a bit as Animoto renders the video.

When the rendering is done you will get an email telling you or you can just grab the embedding code and put it straight on your blog. Look for the SHARE tab.

Highlight and copy the code.

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Now go to your blog post. Click on the HTML tab and paste the code where you want it to be. Click back on the COMPOSE tab to see how it will look. Publish when you're happy.

I often put the html embed code at the bottom of my writing in a blog post so I know that I don't break the previous code.

Make a video of your own at Animoto.

Editing HTML

I don't know a lot about HTML but it's the code that underwrites what goes on the internet.

What I quite often do is make the Blogger video larger so that it is easier to see without having to go full screen. To do that I upload the video and then click on the html tab of the new post. You will see some html code as below. I then change the height and width to suit.

I sometimes do the same with YouTube videos
If I am gathering an embed code for a web site that I don't want children to be able to click on I can sometimes remove the words that would link to the site by taking out the Title so that the > and < touch.

Sometimes you may want to share a link in your comments. I use Blog Assist to do it for me but you can do it for yourself but putting a bit of html code around the URL address like this adding the black bits around the web address and the text.

I can't put the actual html code here so you can copy it because it actually tries to link it so you will have to copy off the picture below.

The word Nets in the example above will be all that the the people you left comments for will see but it will be hyperlinked to the URL you want to share.

Adding and Deleting Labels to Blog Posts

Adding a label to the side bar of your blog lets you group your blog posts into categories or names of children who have written or featured in a blog post.

To add a label go to the OVERVIEW. Then go to the LAYOUT.

Click on ADD A GADGET.

Scroll down the list and click the plus for Label.

Decide how you want your labels to look.

Then save your gadget. You can move where your gadgets are placed by dragging the rectangle where you want it to be and then save your arrangement.

To add a label you write your post and add the label that you want your viewers to see. like this...

Your labels will then look something like this...

At the end of the year you may want to get rid of all the labels that were children's names ready for the next class.

To do that open your post list on the dashboard.

Click in the upper right menu to display all the posts with the same label.

Now select all of those posts by clicking the box at the top of the list. This selects all of the blog posts.

Next to the check box is a Drop Down Label Menu.

Open it and click on the label you wish to remove.

This will remove the label from all of the blog posts it was used with, thus deleting it from the label list!

Adding an email link in the side bar

My email address for this blog is

bling4yrblog@gmail.com

To make an email link of your own type this into a html gadget in your side bar but put your own email address instead of mine. You have to type it exactly for it to work. If you can't see it clearly click on the photo to bring it up to a bigger size.

For the blog post on how to add an html gadget click here.

To be able to just copy the link click here.

When it is inserted a single click will open your email and put the email address in the right spot and you will be able to email. Clever eh?