Well now that we have covered the basics of blogging, its time to get into the more interesting elements of creating and maintaining a blog. If you missed the first part of this tutorial, 'Starting Your Own Blog' you can view it here. From the previous article we have learned the basics of creating a post and including images and content. The next step to look at is managing these posts by either editing content within them, or deleting them completely.

The first thing we will look at is our edit post screen. The example I am using here is from Google's Blogger as it is one of the more common Blogging tools out there. If you are using another Blogging program, such as Xanga, Wordpress or Typepad, the principles are all similar; they will just have different menu formats. Firstly we are going to go to our dashboard. This is accessed by logging in to our Blogger account. The dashboard will display all the blogs currently available under that particular user name, as well as access to the settings of that blog. The tab we want to go to is the posts tab as shown in figure 1:

fig. 1

From here we are directed to the edit post screen. This screen displays all the posts that are currently up on the blog and allows you to view, edit or delete them. Clicking on the edit tab will direct you to the same screen as the create post screen, which, like a word processor, will allow you to modify the content within any given post. The same deal as with creating a post, clicking on publish will save and update the changes. Clicking on view will display a preview of how the post will visually appear, and finally the delete button located on the far right will obviously delete the given post. Note that if the post is deleted it is gone forever, so be certain you wish to delete it!

fig. 2

Most other options within this field are very self explanatory, though would serve best left as default. Lastly we'll look at the permissions option which is used to provide multiple users on a single blog. This option allows the monitoring and organisation of users within a blog allowing the invitation or termination of new users and the accessibillity option that apply to each as seen in figure 4. Being the creator of the blog, your name will be set to administrator by default and cannot be changed. Administrator access gives the ability to use all three tabs (posting, settings and templates) as well as edit and delete any previous post, no matter who the author is. To add a new author it's simply a matter of clicking add authors, and entering the individual's email address. They will then receive an email with a link asking them to join, and once approved they will appear on your permission screen with guest access.

Guest access can only allow posting of new posts and only the editing of posts made by this individual. They cannot edit or delete posts by other users. Only the administrator can grant admin access, and this is achieved by clicking on the word guest, changing this to admin. Once this has been completed, the new admin will have access to all options available to the blogs creator. Note that although the original blog creator can delete any individuals username from the permissions table, no one can delete the creator's username.

Lastly, there is the option to choose who you wish to allow to be able to view the blog. Quite self-explanatory but unless you are an extremely private person, just leave the 'anybody' option depressed.

fig. 4

Phew! Well we've been through the settings, and in Blogger there is quite a few. A lot of the options I have not been through, but these are mainly options that are left as default, and unless you are creating a large company blog, not necessary for a private user. Lastly we'll look into creating custom templates, to make your blog appear a little more attractive. To access this area, we will need to click on the template tab (figure 5)

fig. 5

As you saw from when we first created a blog, there was an option to select a template from Bloggers pick new template section. If you want to select a different template then the one you currently have, you would click on 'pick new template' the option on the far right of figure 5. However I want to use something a little more custom so I'll show you another way as well.

Open a new window in your internet browser. Google is your best friend here, and by simply typing 'Blogger templates' into the search field (for those using another blogging program substitute blogger with your blogging program) there should be a huge array of template sites at your disposal. One site I would recommend investigating is Gecko & Fly as they contain a great selection of template designs and links. Now for the purposes of this tutorial, we will be using classic templates as oppose to XML templates. The difference here is that the code for classic templates is in HTML, whereas XML templates are in, you guessed it, XML. These are basically two different ways of telling a browser how to display content on a website but I'll demonstrate the relevance of this a little later.

At any event, scroll through the list of available templates, find the one you like and click on the visit that templates page. You should now have the option of being able to download the code for this page as indicated in figure 6.

fig. 6

Download this code by either saving or opening the file. Just use a program like notepad to view this html file. What you now have is the necessary code for the template. Select all this code by pressing Ctrl+A or by clicking edit then clicking select all. You then need to copy this by either pressing Ctrl+C or clicking edit again and clicking copy.

fig. 7

Once you have the code copied we're going to head back to the template screen in Blogger (check figure 5. if you're unsure of what I mean). From here we need to change what format blogger is going to create our blog in. By default, the blog will be using XML formatting. Do you remember when we discussed this? We selected a HTML template this is a different format, but if you selected an XML template, this is where you would paste your code. This is done by highlighting all the code in the table. This table scrolls down so ensure all the code is selected by pressing Ctrl+A and then Ctrl+V which paste the code you copied from notepad. But we're using HTML so we'll set it up for that purpose.

Scroll to the bottom of the screen and you will see two blue links with bullet points. (see figure 8)We need to change to the classic version of blogger, so click on 'Revert to Classic Template' and click on OK when prompted.

fig. 8

You will notice now that the screen has changed to the classic template screen. This is where we will update our code. So like before click on any bit of text within the code table, press Ctrl+A to select all and then Ctrl+V to paste your copied code.

We're almost there! Now we have to publish the changes that we have made in order for them to update on our blog. scroll down and click on save template changes like in figure 9.

fig. 9

Now if we go to the top of the screen, next to the template tab we click on 'View Blog' to view the blog. And look at the difference! A much more organised and unique blog that is attractive to look at. This is a simple way to use a new template other than the default blogger items and can be changed very quickly. If you know your HTML, you can even go into the edit HTML screen again to modify elements of the code to alter the design even further. Only do this however if you are confident with HTML, as deleting a wrong tag or word can have a disastrous result on other elements of the template. Now you can focus on adding your content, and enjoying publishing your thoughts and creating a readership for your blog!