Thursday, January 24, 2008
Step 5 - Modifying blog settings
Approximate time: 30 minutes
In this step, you will change the "look and feel" of your Blog. You will also add links of interest to your blog sidebar (left hand column of your blog). Finally, you will add an RSS feed (information from another website that will automatically be updated on your e-portfolio blog).
Copy the URL of your selected feed to the "Feed URL" box (you get here by clicking on the Feed page element.
To modify the look of your blog, go to the template tab.
a) Changing Look and feel of your blog
Click on the Fonts and Colors tab from the main Template tab. On the left hand side, a drop down menu shows the different components of your blog that can be changed (e.g. Text Color, Blog Title Color). Simply click on your preferred color for the different components. You can even select a "shuffle blog colors" to get a random selection of colours.
If you don't like the changes you made, you can always revert to the original template by selecting "Revert to template default".
b) Pick a new template (optional step)
If you like, you can pick a new template from the "Pick New Template" tab within the Template section. There are more templates to choose from than when you first set up your blog (mostly variations on the main templates)
Remember that changing your template will discard any changes you made in Fonts & Colors.
c) Adding page elements
Now it's time to customize the components that will be included in your blog by adding page elements. To start, click on the Page Elements tab within the Template section.
Click on the "Add a page element" link. From here, you can add a lot of content and functionality to your blog including adding links from your sidebar to your hosted assignment files, adding a RSS feed to automatically get news feeds updated on your website, adding Google's AdSense text ads, adding a picture, adding a text welcome message, configuring labels.
Here are the different page elements and which ones are required for inclusion or optional for this assignment.
List (optional)
Picture (optional)
HTML / Javascript (we will be looking at this later in Step 9)
Feed (required)
Logo (optional)
Link List (required)
Text (optional but strongly recommended)
AdSense (optional)
Labels configuration (optional)
Profile (optional)
A few extra notes about the Link List and the Feed...
Feed
The feed page elements lets you conveniently add a news or other feed to your blog. The technology behind the scenes for this is RSS (stands for really simply syndication or rich text summary). According to the Wikipedia, RSS is:
The first step in getting your feed set up is finding a feed with useful information for your website. You can search for a topic and include "RSS" in the search term at a search engine like Google.com or you could go to a RSS directory such as Chordata:
You can select a related feed such as from the business list... for example, you could select the CRM (customer relationship management) feed.
Adding links on your sidebar
The other important page element is the "Link List" page element. You can add links to e-portfolio related sites such as associations you belong to, companies you are working for. You should also set up a link to a Web-version of your resume. Finally, it's good to set up links to the assignment files you are showcasing in your e-portfolio.
d) Edit HTML (optional step)
You don't need to learn HTML for this assignment but if you already know HTML or would like to learn HTML, you can make more customized modifications to your Blog template. An excellent site with free tutorials on learning HTML is W3Schools If you do decide to fiddle with the HTML in your template, make sure you do the next step -- template backup!
e) Backup / Restore Template
It's a very good idea to save a copy of your template, especially if you have modified it... just in case you accidently delete it or modify it in a way that you don't like and you have a hard time reverting back to the original format.
To backup, just click on the "Download Full Template" link and then save your template file to your computer or removable storage (e.g. USB).
In the event that you want to start again with your saved template, you can upload your saved template.
Now that you have your blog modified to look like you want, it's time to make the postings showcasing your work.
In this step, you will change the "look and feel" of your Blog. You will also add links of interest to your blog sidebar (left hand column of your blog). Finally, you will add an RSS feed (information from another website that will automatically be updated on your e-portfolio blog).
Copy the URL of your selected feed to the "Feed URL" box (you get here by clicking on the Feed page element.
To modify the look of your blog, go to the template tab.
a) Changing Look and feel of your blog
Click on the Fonts and Colors tab from the main Template tab. On the left hand side, a drop down menu shows the different components of your blog that can be changed (e.g. Text Color, Blog Title Color). Simply click on your preferred color for the different components. You can even select a "shuffle blog colors" to get a random selection of colours.
If you don't like the changes you made, you can always revert to the original template by selecting "Revert to template default".
b) Pick a new template (optional step)
If you like, you can pick a new template from the "Pick New Template" tab within the Template section. There are more templates to choose from than when you first set up your blog (mostly variations on the main templates)
Remember that changing your template will discard any changes you made in Fonts & Colors.
c) Adding page elements
Now it's time to customize the components that will be included in your blog by adding page elements. To start, click on the Page Elements tab within the Template section.
Click on the "Add a page element" link. From here, you can add a lot of content and functionality to your blog including adding links from your sidebar to your hosted assignment files, adding a RSS feed to automatically get news feeds updated on your website, adding Google's AdSense text ads, adding a picture, adding a text welcome message, configuring labels.
Here are the different page elements and which ones are required for inclusion or optional for this assignment.
List (optional)
Picture (optional)
HTML / Javascript (we will be looking at this later in Step 9)
Feed (required)
Logo (optional)
Link List (required)
Text (optional but strongly recommended)
AdSense (optional)
Labels configuration (optional)
Profile (optional)
A few extra notes about the Link List and the Feed...
Feed
The feed page elements lets you conveniently add a news or other feed to your blog. The technology behind the scenes for this is RSS (stands for really simply syndication or rich text summary). According to the Wikipedia, RSS is:
"a simple XML-based system that allows users to subscribe to their favorite websites. Using RSS, webmasters can put their content into a standardized format, which can be viewed and organized through RSS-aware software or automatically conveyed as new content on another website."
The first step in getting your feed set up is finding a feed with useful information for your website. You can search for a topic and include "RSS" in the search term at a search engine like Google.com or you could go to a RSS directory such as Chordata:
You can select a related feed such as from the business list... for example, you could select the CRM (customer relationship management) feed.
Adding links on your sidebar
The other important page element is the "Link List" page element. You can add links to e-portfolio related sites such as associations you belong to, companies you are working for. You should also set up a link to a Web-version of your resume. Finally, it's good to set up links to the assignment files you are showcasing in your e-portfolio.
d) Edit HTML (optional step)
You don't need to learn HTML for this assignment but if you already know HTML or would like to learn HTML, you can make more customized modifications to your Blog template. An excellent site with free tutorials on learning HTML is W3Schools If you do decide to fiddle with the HTML in your template, make sure you do the next step -- template backup!
e) Backup / Restore Template
It's a very good idea to save a copy of your template, especially if you have modified it... just in case you accidently delete it or modify it in a way that you don't like and you have a hard time reverting back to the original format.
To backup, just click on the "Download Full Template" link and then save your template file to your computer or removable storage (e.g. USB).
In the event that you want to start again with your saved template, you can upload your saved template.
Now that you have your blog modified to look like you want, it's time to make the postings showcasing your work.
# posted by Cyri @ 2:38 PM 
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