Ok, folks, I heard my name over here and I thought that I'd pop in to let you know some of the stuff I've learned by playing with the blog buttons over the last couple days. First, you want to click on the Blog button at the top of this page. That should take you to the BLOGS page. At the top you should have a couple tabs: MY BLOG, RECENT ENTRIES, MOST POPULAR, MEMBER BLOGS, and BLOG SETTINGS.
Click on BLOG SETTINGS to name your blog. In the text box, type in your title and in the bigger text box you can add a description of your blog. To walk you through this tutorial, I'm going to title my imaginary blog "Mayberry Moments." Blog description: "Highlights from every Southerner's favorite classic television show."
Off on the left-hand side of this same page, is a BLOG SETTINGS box. After you've named your blog, you can change some of the settings of your blog.
ORGANIZE SIDEBAR simply allows you to rearrange the order of the options in your sidebar of your blog. By changing the numbers in the display order boxes in the middle column, you can switch around what comes first, second, etc. in your sidebar. Each box is automatically checked, but if you don't want to offer that option in your blog, just click it to uncheck that box. I've used the original settings, since I haven't thought of a good reason to rearrange them.
EDIT CUSTOM PAGES-- Not sure yet what this does. I will play with it some more this week and report back what happens.
PERMISSIONS AND PRIVACY--This allows you to manage who can leave comments, view your blog, etc.
BLOG STATISTICS--Allows you to track how many people are looking at what you are posting
MANAGE CATEGORIES--This tab lets you create tags that will help organize your blog entries with just a few clicks. For my fictitious blog, I might add categories Andy, Blundering Barney, Opie and Ernest T. Bass.
MANAGE GROUPS, MANAGE GROUPS, MANAGE ENTRY SUBSCRIPTIONS—These all allow you to manage the way your blog is shared with others.
After you have set up the basics of you blog, you can post your first entry. So, you will go to the MY BLOG tab at the top of the page. This should take you to a page that displays the title of your blog, and in a box to the left, some information about the blog. It will display your profile pic and a couple other things, along with some of your pertinent blog information, like tags, categories and a search feature. These things will help visitors find extra information in your pile of blog entries.
To begin your first post, click on the button in the upper right hand corner that says CREATE NEW POST. This will take you to a screen that includes everything you need to create a blog entry. At the bottom of the page are check boxes for you to help categorize your newest blog entry. You can also decide how you want your view comments to be displayed, or whether you want them displayed or not. You can add photo attachments at the bottom of the page using the MANAGE ATTACHMENTS button. And don't forget to select the PUBLISH NOW tab when you are all ready to publish your blog. Otherwise it may be saved as a work in progress and noone will ever see it but you!
When you have every thing just the way that you want it, you can click the preview button to get a peek at how your entry will look when you do publish. Then just click on POST NOW to send your entry to the World Wide Web for the first time.
So there you go. Clear as mud, right? Let me know if you have any other questions and I will try to answer them if I can. I am still learning myself, so I may or may not be able to answer, but I will give it my best shot!