- Make sure you have accepted the invitation to join the blog for posting. Do this by following the link sent out in the invitation email. If you don't have the invitation anymore, email us and we'll send you another one. So far, 11 people have signed up to edit.
The body of the email looks something like this:The Blogger user Erik has invited you to contribute to the blog: Tuesday Dinner Club.
To contribute to this blog, visit:
http://long-link-here
You'll need to sign in with a Google Account to confirm the invitation and start posting to this blog. If you don't have a Google Account yet, we'll show you how to get one in minutes.
To learn more about Blogger and starting your own free blog visit http://www.blogger.com.
When you click on the link (http://long-link-here in the above), you'll be taken to a webpage that asks you to sign in. If you already have a Google Account (i.e. Gmail account), you can just enter that email address and password. Otherwise, follow the link that asks "Don't have a Google Account?". Once you set up your Google Account, try the invitation email link again and sign in with your new Google Account. You'll only be able to login to post to Tuesday Dinner Club using the Google Account with which you accepted the invitation. - Having signed in to Blogger using your Google Account, you'll be taken to the Dashboard, which shows all of the Blogger blogs you can post to. Tuesday Dinner Club should be on the list (maybe the only one on the list). To make a new post, click on "New Post". You'll be taken to a form that allows you to enter a title and the body of the post. It's pretty straightforward.
Here is Blogger's (Google's) help page for posting to the blog via the web.
Be sure to click the "Save Now" button from time to time in order to save drafts of longer posts you are working on. That won't post anything to the web, just keep you from losing what you've written if you navigate off to a different web page or something.
Once you're ready to make your post public, click "Publish Post" to release it to the Dinner Club community.
For posting photos, you can either upload them or add a link to an existing picture on the web, e.g. if you have a photo on a Flickr or Picasa site you'd like to incorporate into the blog. This is relatively easy to do with the web interface -- just click on the icon that looks like a miniature photo of some mountains and you'll get a pop-up that walks you through it. - That's should be enough to get you started posting, but if you run into trouble, email us and we'll help you out. If you don't like using the web interface, you can use a standalone blog editor, which can be much more convenient. For the Mac, ecto and MarsEdit are good ones; Melanie and I use MarsEdit.
- If you write a post, publish it, and then realize you made a mistake, you can always go back and fix it. Login to Blogger, go to the Dashboard, select "Edit posts" under Tuesday Dinner Club. You'll see a list of all the posts ever made to the blog. Click "Edit for your post and you'll be right back to the editing screen, ready to make changes.
- On a related note, you can also use the RSS feed for Tuesday Dinner Club. Just click on "Posts" button under "Subscribe to the Club" on the righthand side and you'll get a popup list of places you can get the RSS feed. I just use my web browser. I bookmark the link feed://tuesdaydinnerclub.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default, and whenever there is a new post, my web browser is notified. That way I don't have to remember to check the blog regularly -- my browser tells me whenever there is anything new. (I like using Vienna, a free RSS reader, to manage all of my RSS feeds.)
We hope these tips help, and we look forward to seeing more posts on the blog!
