So you want to post a blog...

Here's a quick tutorial on blogging for JewishBoston.com.

FIRST STEP FOR INDIVIDUALS:
First, make sure you have an account on the site. If you don't, just go to www.JewishBoston.com and click on "Join" in the top, right-hand corner of the page. Most important among the account setup would be to upload a photo of yourself and write a one-line byline that will show up below your posts. If you already have an account, when you log in, you are taken to the "My JewishBoston" tab - on the right side of the page is a button to edit your profile, which will take you to the page where you can write your byline and add your picture. Your byline can be as simple as "David lives in Jamaica Plain" or as complex as you'd like.

FIRST STEP FOR ORGANIZATIONS:
There are two ways to blog on behalf of an organization. The simplest way is to log into that organization’s account and follow the instructions below. However, we’d recommend you set it up to make the individual authors visible by linking their personal accounts to your organization’s blog. To do this, log into the organizational account. Click on “Admin” in the top, right-hand corner and then on “Our Blog” on the admin menu (below the “home” button). On the upper-right hand corner of the “Our Blog” page you’ll see a list of authors with a search box. Type in anyone’s UserID there to add them as an author. The site will ask you to confirm that you want to add that user as an administrator – click yes.

TO WRITE A NEW BLOG POST
Click on the "Blogs" button and then click on the blue "Add a post" button to create a new blog post.

If you have been authorized to post on behalf of an organization (see above), you will see a drop-down menu at the top of the blog-posting page labeled “Associated with.” Be sure to choose the organization before doing anything else on the page. You can not switch this choice after beginning your blog without losing all your work.

If you prefer to compose your blog in a word processor and paste it into the blogging tool, beware that copying from other websites (including blogs and Google Docs) embeds invisible style tags that show up in ugly ways when you paste into our site, so it's necessary to paste into a Word Processor first and then paste that into the blogging tool. As of July 2011, we've upgraded our blogging software so that copying and pasting from Microsoft Word directly into our blogging tool should work just fine.

If you have ever blogged before, the blogging tool should feel familiar. The icon that looks like two links of a chain enables you to add links. Because of the way our site is formatted, I'd encourage you to also bold any linked text -- it just looks better. The icon that looks like a framed picture is for inserting images, and the icon that looks like a strip of film is for inserting videos. Let me know if you need some tutorial on how each of those tools works. Here are some quick tips on inserting pictures & videos as well as style and formatting.

And, of course, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask. You can e-mail me at editor@jewishboston.com or give me a call at 617-457-8535.