New User Guide - Blog Module Guide

Blog Module Settings: Besides the general settings described in Part 5 of this guide you can specify the following:

• Blog Content Height: You can set the height for the blog entries from this dropdown. If you pick to fit the module it will resize to fit the whole entry.
• Default Sort Order: You can sort oldest to newest or newest to oldest.
• Number of Entries to Show: Pick how many entries will load into the module. If you have a lot of entries paging controls will show at the bottom of the module.
• Date Format: Pick either long format (date and time) or short (date only).
• Default Blog Icon: This will be the icon for all new entries. Old entries will not change and you can always change the icon afterwards.
• Note: When you registered a number of sample icons were added to the icons folder in your images folder.

Make sure to click the Save Button when you are done or you will lose your changes.

Blog Module Entries: If you are logged in and viewing your page you should see buttons to:

• Create a New Entry: If you click this button a blog editor should open up, see below for more on how to use the editor.
• Edit or Delete an Entry: If you click on edit you will open the editor for that entry. Deleting an entry is a permanent action
• Show Drafts: If in the editor you check the Mark as Draft checkbox, the entry will be hidden by default, you check the show drafts only when you are logged in to view these entries.

None of these buttons are shown to public viewers of your page, so if you do not see them you are probably not logged in.

Blog Module Editor: When you either create a new entry or edit an existing entry you will access the editor with the following features:

• Title: The title is just a plain text title that will show beside or above the entry.
• Date: The date will default to today's date but you can change this. Note the editor uses a mm/dd/yyyy format (ie month, day, year).
• Icon: The default icon you specified in the settings will show here for new entries, but you can always change it by clicking the Browse button.
• Editor Toolbar: Many of the same features as a word processor are available from the toolbar. This includes: font type, colour, bold, italic, underline, alignment, indents and list formats.
• Spell Check: You can click the spell checker on the end of the toolbar to review the entry. We currently only utilize an English dictionary but may change this to include other languages if we get enough feedback. Use the Site Feedback page to let us know if you think another dictionary should be added.
• Copy/Paste: You can copy the entry from another source and paste it into the content area. Any formats will be stripped though.

Make sure to click the Save Button when you are done or you will lose your changes.