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Introduction
Create A BLOG
Manage BLOG
Templates
Upload Graphics
Posting Articles
Viewing Articles
Adding Security
Personalizing
Team Members
RSS Feeds


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SpanBlog Introduction - Getting Started
Blogs allow you to publish on-line journals of information. A Blog can manage information that might be a personal diary, pictures from a wedding or notes for a project team. Anyone who can access the web can view your journal as a web page. It is also possible to make the Blog private to be read by only certain individuals. You can post text and pictures to the Blog and readers may add comments. Using your existing knowledge of email, you can post information to your Blog by sending an email to your own address with an additional PIN. BlogS can also be used for a variety or content such as pictures, movies, documents, PDF’s, POD casts and, of course, opinions and news items and web documents.

 

As a user of the SpanMail webmail system, you can create up to three distinct BlogS. To access this capability, login to your SpanMail email account. On the left-hand side of the screen where email folders are dusplayed, click on the SpanBlogs folder and the Blog owner’s page will appear.

 

The Blog administration page or owner’s page provides a list of current Blogs, a form to create a new Blog and links to view, post, edit or manage each Blog. So, let’s create a new Blog.

 

Creating a Blog

When you create a Blog you select a unique short name which will become the web address to the Blog, for example you might choose Juggling. Next, you provide a title for the Blog such as "The jugling Blog”. This title will appear on each Blog page as a banner.

 

After completing the form, using information discussed above, click the Create Blog button. See first post in demo BLOG

 

Manage Blog Settings

 

The Owner's page lets you select from several templates for the Blog style. There are two modes for the Blog settings page; Basic and Advanced. Basic contains all the main functions to administer the Blog. One of the first items to customize is the theme or “look and feel” or skin for the Blog.

 

Setting the Theme Template

Manage Blog Settings


There are five templates ready. Clicking on each of the theme previews shows the template in full screen mode. To make the final selection, choose the template from the drop-down menu and then click the Change to button. Most templates will also allow for an introduction paragraph that describes the purpose of the Blog. See a BLOG post on settings

 

Personalizing your Theme Template

 

Two files provide information about the Blog. The file, _intro.txt, can be edited by clicking on the Edit Intro button. This file provides a brief description of the Blog. Similarly, the file your_profile.txt, may be edited by clicking the Edit Profile button. Your profile may be used to display a brief description of yourself or if the Blog were being used for a discussion, the profile could be used to provide guidelines for discussions. Essentially, you can use the profile file for just about anything. The profile is displayed in a separate boxed area and may include a photo or graphic.

 

Uploading a graphic for the Blog Page

 

Before beginning the upload of a photo or yourself or for the Blog’s theme be sure that or the file is on your local machine and rename it or copy it to the filename your_photo.jpg. The graphic should be sized to be about 100 pixels wide.

 

To upload a graphic, go to the bottom of the Owner's screen, as shown to the right and enter the file name in the form, or use the Browse button to select the file from your local machine. Then click the Upload File button to send the picture to the Blog. We recommend that you click the “Use Thumbnails” option.

 

Posting New Entries

 

1) Using the form

 

You can post new entries to the Blog by selecting the New Post button on the Owner's page.

 

The figure to the right illustrates the window to post a new message. Enter the subject and then enter text. Note: the subject should clearly reflect the topic of discussion as this is how the entry will be displayed on the Blog home page. The subject is very important for reader of the Blog.

 

2) Emailing a Post

 

An easy approach to posting a message is to send an email to the Blog’s email address. The email address takes the form of blog.ABC.nnnn@spsp.net, w where ABC is the short name of the Blog, “juggling” in our example. And, nnnn is a pin (like a bank’s debit card number) which is used to restrict who can post to your Blog. An initial pin is generated automatically when you create the Blog. If for any reason it is compromised you can change the pin on the Owner's page. There is also a button on the Owner's page that allows you to easily notify all other team members when you update the pin.

 

The email message can contain many attachments. If it is a PDF document, the Blog software will automatically store the item and create a link to the document. If the attachment is a picture, the item will be displayed as a thumbnail (if “Use Thumbnails” is checked). NOTE: if you want to add multiple pictures for a single post, the only way to do this is through this email posting procedure which includes the files as an attachment. See what the post looks like

 

Posting through email with attachments can also be used to add audio files to your BLOG. For more info...

 

3) Displaying Pictures

 

Several options are available as to how the picture will be displayed in the Blog entry. The best approach is to check the “thumbnails” box on the basic Owner's screen and the “Link to Item box on the Advanced Owner's page. With these conditions set, an uploaded picture will be displayed as a thumbnail which when clicked will display the full post with the pix displayed full screen.

 

Viewing Information in the Blog

 

Click the View button to view the basic outline of your new Blog.

 

Alternatively, you can provide other users with a link to your new Blog. The link is displayed on the Owner's page and is the form blogname.blog.speedspan.com, where blogname is the name of your Blog. Whenever you wish to view Blog entires, simply click this link.

 

Adding Security to Your BLOG

 

Restricting Viewers

Normally your blogs can be viewed by anyone - thats the idea. But if you want to restrict viewing you can add a password to the blog. People will then get a dialogue box with username/password when they first go to view it. They should just enter their own name in the username field and the password you have set in the password field for this blog. Actually the username field is not checked it is only what they enter in password field that matters.

If you wish to use this option, simply enter a password on the Basic settings page.

 

Listing / Unlisting Your BLOG

The name, and url of all blogs on the SpanBLOG system can be seen by entering the url http://blogs.spsp.net/blogs. For the listed blogs, information is also sent to search engines and blog monitoring sites each time a post is made. So that people can find your blog and see what interest is being shown in it. However, if you prefer that your BLOG is not found by search engines, then you should check the Unlisted option of the Basic Settings page.

Personalizing Your New Blog

Banner Image

 

You can add your own banner image to your Blog by entering it here. You can either provide a URL for the banner image such as

http://website.com/mybanner.gif or you can just enter a file name such as mybanner.jpg. If you use a filename, you will then need to upload the file using the Upload button on the settings page.

 

Body Tags

 

You can directly add body tags for you Blog by entering them here. For example you might enter background= "/web/blog_back1.jpg" bgcolor="white" text="black" to set the background color to white and the text to black. This is simpler than editing the template directly but also less powerful. It is probably best used with plain template sets as more complex templates will include their own co-ordinated colors. If a template set uses a style sheet it may override body tags set in the template.

 

Post Name

 

You can specify the name that will be shown as the author of each post you make, this would normally just be your name but you may want to setup an informal name or pseudonym.

 

Disable Comments

 

You can allow others to make comments on the posts to your Blog. These comments are automatically added to the Blog. You can disable comments from the Blog Owner's page. If there is a need to edit the comments, this may also be done on the Owner's page.

 

In-line Comments

 

You can specify whether comments appear in-line on the main Blog page or whether just a link saying 3 comments appears. If the latter option is chosen, then the link takes the user to a page showing just that one posting and the comments that go with it.

 

Email Notification

 

You may want receive email notification whenever someone adds a comment to your Blog. You can then review and edit or delete the comment if appropriate. Note : this option does not provide email notification to team members of the Blog.

 

Thumbnails

 

You can set your Blog to show received images as thumbnails. This is particularly useful if you are going to post a whole series of images to your Blog but still want to show other text etc. The thumbnails can be clicked on to see the full image.

 

Thumbnails link to items

 

Normally, if you click on a thumbnail it will take you to a page containing the full size image. If you set this option then thumbnails will link to the item containing the thumbnail but with all images expanded to full size - still limited by max image width setting.

 

Owner, Created, Visits

 

This choice displays the email address of the owner of this Blog, when it was created and how many visits have been made to the Blog itself. Note: the display of this count is only updated when a post or a comment is made. It is incremented each time someone views the Blog.

 

Edit File

 

You edit the template.htm and other associated files such as user_profile.txt or blog.css. You can also edit any txt style or html files that you have uploaded to form part of your Blog.

 

Team Members

 

You can add team members to your Blog. Team members have special privileges. They can make posts and optionally you can allow team members to edit posts etc. by clicking the administrator box on the entry form for the particular team member. One blank entry is always present for adding a new team member. Clicking the delete box and pressing save will delete the selected people from the team.

 

When new team members are added to the BLOG, the system will send email notification which provides information as to how the user may access the blog for posts and administration.

 


 

Making it Easy for your Readers (RSS Feeds)

 

When you post an article to the Blog, you receive notification but your readers do not. Unless they frequent your Blog, they do not know when postings are added. The Blog software has the capability to inform each user of new postings through the RSS feed mechanism. To use this capability you will need either a separate RSS reader or an RSS enabled browser. The Firefox and Safari browsers already have the capability for RSS feeds. For Internet Explorer, you will need a plugin such as Feed Reader. For a standalone RSS reader, you can search the web for appropriate software.