Step by step guide for creating a simple, nicely formatted blog

( I am working on re-writing this now to simplify it)

• Start a blog
• Upload images
• Inserting an uploaded image into your blog
  
• Using Templates
• Adding a table
• Publishing
• Final notes

Start a blog:

To start your blog, go to your Profile page and click on '-create-' on the right side of the page under the Photographer Blog section. You will get a page with an HTML editor on it. This HTML editor has a menu bar similar to any Word processor but it will create HTML for you.

Make sure you enter a title in the provided input box.

Now you could start your blog but I am going to upload the images first.

Uploading miscellaneous images:

To start uploading my miscellaneous files, I will click on the image icon in the menu bar.

Here I see a place to type in a URL or to "Browse Server". Note: If I know the URL and the image is on the web somewhere, I could just type it in the URL box. Doing this will insert the photo by linking to it. In other words, the photo will stay on the web wherever it is, it will not be copied to the photocritiq server. If it is deleted or moved, your link will become a blank with an X in it. But for this example, we will Browse the Server by clicking the "Browse Server" button.

Now I get a file manager with my initial folder "Portfolio". This folder has all my photos in my Portfolio. I want to upload some misc photos so I will create a new folder.

To to that, I click on "Create folder" on the bottom of the page.

Now I have a folder available, I will upload some photos to it. To do that, I click on the "Browse..." and select a photo on my computer that I want to upload. This "Browse..." button will be a little different depending on what web browser (IE, Firefox, Safari) you are using but it is the same Browse/upload button you usually see when uploading files. Currently, after you select the file from your computer, you must then click the "Upload" button. Soon this will be automatic.

Now you should have your necessary photos available on the server so you are ready to write a blog.

Write your blog:

To start writing your blog, I would recommend looking at the available templates. Click the button to see the currently available templates. Then, just start filling them in.

You can save often. If you make a mistake, there is an undo button. But for big mistakes, just go back to your Profile and start the edit over (assuming you have saved often).

Publish:

When you are satisfied with your blog, click the publish button. If, after your blog is published, you want to edit it again that is no problem. But, if you click the save button, it will become unpublished again. So, when you edit a published blog, you can just click publish to save it and keep it published.

Using Templates

Click the button to see the currently available templates. Select the one that is closest to the layout you would like to use. The page will now have your layout with the heading saying something like: Enter header here. Highlight this text (hold mouse down while moving over it) and start typing the header you want. You can enter text in the area reserved for text, enter a carriage return for a new paragraph. In the place holders for images, right click on the box. The image properties dialog will come up. Here you can Browse Server to select the image you want in this location, or specify the URL. You can adjust some other settings then click OK. The placeholder will now be replaced with your image.

More examples:

Adding a table:

I will walk through adding a table. It is an easy layout of your blog that will scale for various browser widths and resolutions.

To start, click on the button.

I used a two column table in this examle.

I selected 90% as the table width so that it would fill up the viewer's browser window for whatever window size they are using.

You can set the border size to 0 for no borders and I ended up putting Cell padding at 10 to provide some space around the cells.

Now I have a blank table to start filling in:

(Note - the above image was too big so I right clicked on it, and selected "image properties" and adjusted with width. I can set quite a few other options in the image properties by right clicking on any image. )

Now there is a table. All I have to do is click in one of the boxes and start typing.

Inserting an image from the server:

To insert an image click in one of the cell boxes, and then click the "image" button. Then click "Browser Server" and find the image you want. Clicking on the image will bring it into the Image properties box.

Here I played around with a few settings. I added a 10px border, added spacing above the image (VSpace 20px) and added space to the left and right (HSpace 20px). I set the alignment to the Right so that the image will show up here on the right of the text.

Once you have these setting as you want, click on ok, and you have inserted a photo into the cell. Now you can fill in the rest of your table the same way with text or uploaded images. You can select a photo from your portfolio the same way as any image by just selecting it from the "Portfolio" folder. This will insert the thumbnail into your blog. Soon there will be more options for adding an automatic link (when someone clicks on this thumbnail in your blog) to link it to the large version of your photo.

So that is it, fill in the table, hit the publish button and you have a blog!

A couple notes.

• Supported web browsers: Firefox, IE6, IE7 on Windows, Firefox on Linux, Firefox and Camino on MAC
• I saved this a few times while creating it. It is always safer to save often. When I was done and it looked ok, I then hit the Publish button at the bottom of the page.
• There is a "Source" button available. This allows anyone who knows HTML to switch to HTML mode at any time, add some straight HTML, and then click it again to switch back to WYSIWYG format.

• When you upload your photos to a folder, if you insert one of those photos in your blog, you should be careful to not move that photo to a different folder, delete it, or even rename it as that will void the link and you will get a box with an X in it on your blog.
• I will most likely add to or clarify this over time.
• Currently there seems to be a problem with some web browsers. On some, you do not even get a menu bar so can not do much unless you know HTML. You can enter straight HTML in those cases. Other browsers give you a menu bar but I have seen a case where clicking on the image in the folder does nothing, it does not bring it into the image properties box. Let me know if this happens on one of the supported Browsers: Firefox, IE6, IE7 on Windows, Firefox on Linux, Firefox and Camino on MAC.