IMPORTANT NOTE!

 

We would STRONGLY urge you to author much of your blog posts in a text editor on your computer, then copy and paste into your Crafty Nation blog editor page.  We DO NOT have "autosave" or "save as draft" functionality yet.  Yes, this is annoying and we're working on it. :)  Alternatively, toggle from WYSIWYG to HTML editor, copy and paste your work to your computers text editor, then hit the publish button your Crafty Nation blog editor. If your logged in status has timed out due to inactivity, you will lose your work on the site, but at least you'll have it right there in your text editor.

 

As you'll see, the best blogging take a little work, but once you get into a routine, it's simple and rewarding.  You'll also need to get used to the peculiarities of our tool and heeding the above advice will increase your happiness here! :)

 

IMAGES

 

Images are easy to add to your Crafty Nation blogs here.  You can use any picture you've uploaded or any user photo on the site.  You'll notice that all individual image views are accompanied by code snippets (one if you like the WYSIWYG editor, the other for you HTML junkies).  Just copy and paste in the appropriate place in the blog editor! easy! yay!   Most third party media sharing sites (Flickr, Photobucket, YouTube, Utterli, Blip etc) offer embed and links for placing pictures too.  So you can really add pictures from just about anywhere!  Just make SURE you have the rights to the material.

 

 

This is what the code looks like on a picture from "My Photos". 

 

 

 

This is what the code looks like on a typical users photo.

 

In the HTML blog editor you'll just drop in the cod you copied from the HTML box from the image.  For the WYSIWYG editor, you just click the tree icon that opens up the "insert/edit image" dialog box which looks like this:

 

 

Drop in the link you copied from the picture into the space that says "Image URL" and click "insert" You can play with BORDER, DIMENSIONS, VERTICAL SPACE, etc to see how those work.  So there, you have it! Pictures are easy!

 

VIDEO

 

Most video sites like YouTube, Blip, Revver, Veoh, Viddler and others offer embed code to drop into blogs. Toggle to the HTML blog editor and you simply paste the code you copied from the third party site into your page.  You may have to look at the dimensions in the code and adjust if the video player is too big.  This is what typical dimension code looks like:

 

object width="400" height="302"

 

Live video can also be embedded! How cool is that!?  Sites like Operator11, BlogTV, Ustream, Mogulus and others support live video streams.  Let us know if you have a live video event you want to promote on Crafty Nation and we'll see if we can get that on the front page. Again just as with recorded video, live is simply a matter of copying and pasting code.  With live video you may want to think about adding a chat room from Meebo to add to the fun. :)

 

Here's a typical embedded video from popular sharing site Vimeo.  The video is a tutorial from web-based scrapbook platform Scrapblog:

 

 

 

AUDIO

 

In addition to video and pictures, sharing site Utterli also lets you upload and embed audio. You can also do "phoners" - interviews using your phone as the microphone!  I love Utterli and use it a lot in my social media activity.  Here's an interview I did with Crafty Nation member Keith Burtis.  Keith is a very talented woodturner and a social media advocate.  You can read more about him here, but first click on the interveiw below!

 

 

 

 

 

Again, this little audio player is just a little code I copied and pasted into the HTML editor just like it was a paragraph.  Easy!

 

TEXT FORMATTING AND LINKS

 

If you toggle from HTML to the WYSIWYG Crafty Nation blog editor, you'll see this text formatting menu:

 

 

You'll likely use the following tools the most.

 

 

• The big "A" icon chooses font color (I like making links blue so they stand out)
• The chain icon it opens the Insert/edit link dialog box which allows you to add a link to text
• The tree icon opens the Insert/edit image dialog box which is one way to add images to your blog

 

 

You'll often find you want to share a link with your readers.  A nice way to do that without cluttering your blog with a URL is creating a text link.  To do that, simply highlight the word or words you wish to convert to a link and click on the chain icon in the WYSIWYG editor to open the "insert/edit link" dialog box seen here:

 

 

 

Just paste the URL and set target to "new window" and you're done!  Well almost,  highlight your text and use the text color tool and change the text link to blue so folks know it's a link.

The other tools there will allow you to do your typical formatting including font size, style, color, and alignment of your text.

 

So hopefully this little primer helps you better understand the blogging tools here at your disposal.  While the mechanics of blogging are important, embracing the spirit of blogging will help promote conversation here.  Acknowledge the work of people here on Crafty Nation and elsewhere with links.  Use your blog to ask questions or provide answers.  Blogging promotes shared wisdom here on Crafty Nation, and we hope you take to it!  Was this post useful?