Blog - technical - 1 -getting started

From Elaine - About Blogs and the idea of a Blog Beam.

I have been playing with this blog, on and off, for several months.   I am now confident about setting up the LAYOUT of a blog - confident means I can show others - and adjust things easily.  It is time, therefore to consult the Blog Team.  I think six people have indicated an interest anytime I have talked about this - so you are the team at the moment.  

 

Please have a look and see what you think ... but there is no hurry.

Devon, June, Velda - I am assuming your are new to blogs. Basically you can think of them as log books (as in navigation etc. - just keeping a note of what is going on as it happens) but these are on the web - so they are WebLOGS or BLOGs for short.  Have an explore - no hurry!  Let us know what you reckon. 

Niki, Karen, Bron - same thing - have an explore when it suits you and give feedback and advice - I do not know all sorts of stuff - but this is a start. 

 

What next? ... these are both aims for the day for me. 

1. I am writing this from within sevenplusfg@gmail.com and therefore I expect this post to have the 7+ signature (not Elaine's)- I need to figure out how I join, and how I invite you folk to join. I want to join as an individual searching for the blog - and I want to be able to invite you to join - these are two different things - and when I have succeeded we will be able to invite others to join. 
2. I have read up on how to insert a calendar in a blog a couple of months ago - it involves html but looks quite simple - I need to find that again, and do it.   

 

Information:  about LAYOUT  (Kren/Niki - Small writing is where I do not have the technical language - help please OR also, additional knowledge that is not relevant today but I do not want to lose it.)

Layout is a heading with the side bar in the background administration of this blog ?? (what word to I use for the control of the blog - it is called Post: Edit at the moment because I am editing a post) Contol? back room? editing?

Gadgets are the things (called widgets on my cell phone?) that can be "laid out" in various places on the page (or blog - not the post - but the appearance of the entire blog).  Layout is just one aspect of appearance - there are eight others.) There are 25 gadgets available.

These are the gadgets I have chosen: 

Full width - 

• Navbar - this is the blue row right at the top - something to do with navigation!  Ah - now that I look at it - there are several useful looking places to go - one could be to search for blogs and another is to sign in to this blog - or something - this might solve my question 1. 
• Header - this is where I have blathered on about N4W - the wording is up to the organisation to tidy up and sort out - I have just made up stuff that is goodenough for now.  

Left column 

• Text - the first and fourth items are simply text - I have used them as temporary explanations about the development. It is not possible to have any formatting - like paragraphs.  
• Pages - these are for permanent reference - this is where we will describe each of our networks and groups so they can be looked up easily by anyone who visits the blog. At the moment I have popped a little info into a couple of them - but these need to be agreed by the groups concerned.
  
• Blog archives - this is simply a list that shows how may items have been posted each month and it lets us jump back to the blogs from each month

Centre column

• Blog posts - This is the heart of a blog - this is where the posts appear. The gadget has has choices - I have chosen that we see the date of the post, the author of the post, but not the time of the post. 

Right column 

• Labels - Labels are magic in a blog - imagine all sorts of posts appearing about all sorts of stuff - and you do not want to scroll through them all.  If we use the label of "Blog-tech" whenever posts fit into something like "technical knowledge around this blog and blogging in general" then it will be easy for anyone interested to find them, and anyone who is not interested can ignore them.
  
• Search - this lets us search for any word or phrase within the blog
  
• List - This was an experiment with what a list looks like - I have, recently started giving books to N4W and circulating them. It's sort of a lending library of books I'd sort of like to keep track of - but would not be heartbroken if I lose them. It could grow into a useful list - or I might move the information to a more private blog.