Section 191. Change Settings

191. Change Settings

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

182 Build a Blog Through the Wizard

SEE ALSO

188 Set Your Blogger Profile

Changing your settings is easy and you can do it as often as you like. When you change your settings, you will be prompted to save the settings and then to republish the site. Republishing your site is covered in 194 Republish Your Blog .

1.	Add a Description and Save Your Settings Click on the Settings tab in the Dashboard . You should be in the Basic Setting view of the Settings tab, which opens by default when you click on the Settings tab. Type in a description for your site and set the Show Email Post links to Yes . When you are done, scroll down to the bottom and click on the Save Settings button. It's best to save your work from time to time. Doing this now ensures we're okay if the power goes out right now! The description you enter here tells the viewer your reason for having the blog. If you are working on a site for business, you should put your mission statement here. When you set the Show Email Post links to Yes , it creates a link at the bottom of your post, which enables people to email the posting to their friends . This is particularly cool if you want to get a message out. Instead of having to copy and paste things to another email program, you can just have them sent directly with Blogger .
2.	Configure the Publishing Destination This is where you would change the path of your files on your FTP server if you configured the website to publish your blog to your personal website via FTP . For now, you do not want to make any changes here. You also can change your site to be hosted from the Blogspot.com free hosting server. 191. Change Settings
3.	Configure Your Blog's Formatting The Formatting view is where you can change the date and time formats. You can also set your time zone. This helps the reader understand the context of your blog. Blogs are created and edited and read across the world 7x24. If a reader in Russia posts a comment and knows it is 03:00 your time, she won't expect an answer for some time. Treat your readers nicely , and they will treat your blogs with respect. There are also settings here to convert your returns to breaks when the post is displayed as you type in the editor. You do want this to happen. If it doesn't happen, the returns you type in the editor will not appear in your posts. The default is for this to be onso keep it on.
4.	Configure Archiving Your blog is backed up regularly by Blogger.com and sent to a file on your server. You probably want to do this so that if there is some data loss somewhere, you can get into your posts. It is set to back up monthly by default. If you want the files archived, you will have to give a path to the archive file folder. You should consider a daily archive and selecting to Enable Post Pages to give each post its own URL. This allows others to quote your blog or reference the whole document by URL .
5.	Configure Your Email Options The Email view enables you to set a couple of great features in Blogger that you definitely want to have turned on. BlogSend Address is an address archive that shows where every one of your posts is mailed. This provides you a handy backup of your blogsent to your email address. This is really handy when you use it in tandem with the next feature, Mail-to-Blogger Address . Mail-to-Blogger Address enables you to enter a "secret name " in the Text Entry box and create a unique email address that only you know, such as tacothechook. jelly @blogger.com. After the email address is created, you can use your email program to post to your blog. This means you can email from your phone, someone else's computer, or any other way you can send email without having to actually use the Blogger interface. When you choose this option, you'll want to click on the Publish box, which enables your email postings to go straight to the blog rather than being held as a draft for your approval later. Enter your email address in the BlogSend Address and create a secret name for the Mail-to-Blogger Address . This has to be at least four characters long.

TIP

If you do email your posts, be sure to add #end at the end of the part of your email that you want to be the post. If you don't, some email programs will add some text, often advertising to your email and thus to your posts. Also, if your blogs are used to help sell your company, sell your image, and so forth, don't use this feature. Secret email addresses don't stay secret long.