Section 82. Power Up Your Blogging with Blogger Add-ins


82. Power Up Your Blogging with Blogger Add-ins

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

SEE ALSO

Create a Blogger Account

Use the Google Toolbar to Search from Anywhere

Customize the Google Toolbar


After blogging becomes a way of life for you, you'll want an easier way to create posts. Having to constantly navigate back to Blogger and go through the posting process can be unnecessarily time-consuming.

Two great Blogger add-ins make it much easier for you to post to your blog. Blogger for Word enables you to use Microsoft Word to post to your blogs, and Blog This! enables you to create a blog post from anywhere on the Web.

Power Up Your Blogging with Blogger Add-ins


Download and Install Blogger for Word

Blogger for Word is a free add-in to Microsoft Word that enables you to create a blog post from directly within Wordyou won't have to actually go to your blog posting page to create a post. To get the software ad-in, go to http://buzz.blogger.com/bloggerforword.html and download and install the add-in.

Edit Settings

After you install Blogger for Word, four new buttons appear on your Word toolbarBlogger Settings, Open Post, Save as Draft, and Publish. If these buttons don't appear, click the View menu, choose Toolbars, and select Blogger.

For Blogger for Word to post to your blog, it needs information such as your username and password. Click the Blogger Settings button in the Blogger for Word toolbar and fill out the form. In addition to specifying your username and password, you can also use the form to customize your Blogger for Word settings. Check the box next to Show toolbar on startup if you want the Blogger for Word toolbar to appear every time you start Word. If you want Blogger for Word to automatically create a title for your new posts, check the box next to Automatically generate a title for new posts. When you do this, Blogger for Word takes the first several words of your post and creates a title from them. (You can edit the title before you post.) And if you want to examine the HTML before you post it, enable the Preview HTML before sending check box.

Note

When you're not using Blogger for Word, you can turn off its toolbar in Microsoft Word. Choose View, Toolbars, Blogger to take away the check mark next to the Blogger option. To turn on the Blogger for Word toolbar, choose View, Toolbars, Blogger again to put a check mark next to the Blogger option.


Create a Post

Write your post in Microsoft Word as you would any other document. You can format your text using boldface, italic, fonts, and colors, if you want. Blogger for Word automatically creates the HTML for the formatting for your blog.

To save your post so you can edit it later, click the Save as Draft button in the Blogger for Word toolbar. To publish your post, click the Publish button in the toolbar. From the form that appears, choose the blog to which you want to post this message (if you have more than one blog on your Blogger account). Edit the title of the post if you want and then click Send. You get a confirmation that the post has been sent. After a few moments, the post is made live. (You, of course, have to be connected to the Internet to publish your posts.)

Edit Existing Posts

You can also use Blogger for Word to edit existing posts. Click the Open Post button in the Blogger for Word toolbar and select the post or posts you want to edit. (You can choose up to 10.) After editing them, click Publish and then Update, and the posts you edited are updated. (You, of course, have to be connected to the Internet to edit your posts.)

Display Blog This! on the Google Toolbar

Frequently, blogs comment on current events, websites, or on other blogs. When creating a post that comments on a website or blog, you should put a link to the original blog or website at the top of your post.

To make it easy to comment on websites and blogs, you can use the Blog This! feature of the Google Toolbar. This option enables you to write a blog entry and create a link to a web page without having to go to your Blogger accountyou can do it when you're on any web page.

Download and install the Google Toolbar if you haven't already. (For details, see Use the Google Toolbar to Search from Anywhere). Then make the Blog This! icon visible by clicking the Toolbar Options button, clicking the More tab, checking the box next to Blog This!, and clicking OK.

Use Blog This! to Create a Post

When you're on a web page about which you want to write a blog, click the Blog This! icon on the Google Toolbar. A window appears, at the top of which is the name of the page you're on and a link to the page. Write your blog post about the page. If you want to format the text, use the formatting toolbar in the Blog This! window. You can also edit the HTML directly by clicking the Edit HTML link. When you're done, click Save As Draft to save the post as a draft, or click Publish Post to publish the post directly to your Blogger account. After you publish the post, you get a screen telling you the post has been published. If you save the post as a draft, the post is saved to your blog, just as if you had created the post directly on Blogger and saved it there as a draft. You can open the draft post from your Blogger Dashboard and edit and publish it.

Tip

If you use the alternative browser, Firefox, there's an excellent extension (Firefox's name for an add-in) that enables you to see any blog posts made about a web page. The Blogger Web Comments extension shows you all the Blogger posts about a particular web page and enables you to click straight to them. It even includes a Blogger posting form so you can blog about the page yourself. Get the extension from www.google.com/tools/firefox/webcomments. Note that the Blogger Web Comments extension works only with version 1.5 of Firefox or above.




Google Search and Tools in a Snap
Google Search and Tools in a Snap
ISBN: 0672328690
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2007
Pages: 168

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