blog help

Blog stands for Web log. In a blog page, can write your own log entries, post online polls, and express yourself creatively. Log entries, polls, and boxes do not expire.

Blog options vary according to your user privileges:

For help on signing up for an account, becoming blog-worthy, and creating your own blog page, refer to the main page help.

To view a blog page, simply click the owner's user name.

To vote on a poll, select your choice and click the Submit button. The voting rules are:

Updating your blog page

To update your blog page, click one of the following menu options:

New Entry
Posts a new log entry on your blog page. You can edit or delete your own log entries. If you start typing an entry and your Web browser accidentally clears the field, then click the Recover button to restore what you typed. If you select Allow Comments?, then a comments link displays in your blog entry where regular logged-in users can add chat threads.

New entries appear with a yellow header (default) until you re-visit the page. Also, an "updated" tack appears next to your user name on the main page.

New Poll
Posts a new poll in the right margin of your blog page. If you de-select Allow users to vote anonymously?, then a "Non-anonymous!" warning appears within the poll. This means that later, any logged-in user can click V to view exactly how the participants voted.

Whenever you add a new poll, an "updated" tack appears next to your user name on the main page. You can click D to delete your poll.

Edit Header
Posts an introduction at the top of your blog page. If you select Full width header? when you submit a new header, then your introduction spans across the entire page rather than just over your blog entries.
New Box
Posts a new box in the right margin of your blog page. You can edit, delete, and vertically re-position any of your boxes. If you select Mark blog as updated when you submit a new box, then an "updated" tack appears next to your user name on the main page.
Settings
Customizes the following features on your blog page:
Current Portrait
Displays a 128 x 160 pixel image (.JPEG file) of you. You can upload one from your computer. If you upload an image of a different size, then blog.flup.org stretches it to fit. If your image is not a .JPG file, then blog.flup.org automatically transcodes it into a JPEG.
Home page
Links to your personal Web site, if you have one. The link appears as [ Home Page ] directly under your portrait.
E-mail address
Provides an address for others to e-mail you at. The link appears as [ Email ] directly under your portrait.
Display link to your info page?
Posts a link to your information page. The link appears as [ Info ] directly under your portrait. This is the default.
Disallow webcrawlers/search engines from visiting your blog? (Updated hourly)
Blocks search engines (for example, Google) from exposing your blog entry in their search results. This is the default.
Update weblogs.com and blo.gs whenever you have a new entry?
Exposes new entries as a link on two Web sites that monitor blogs. This is not enabled by default.
CSS Editor
Modifies the cascasing stylesheet, which controls the default appearance of your blog page. You can either edit the current stylesheet, upload your own, use a pre-existing contributed theme (or contribute your own), or download and customize the default system stylesheet.

To customize the look of your blog entry boxes, edit the following classes of your stylesheet:

To customize the look of your poll boxes, edit the following classes of your stylesheet:

To customize the look of your menu boxes, edit the following classes of your stylesheet:

Access Control
Restricts the users that can view your blog page. If you leave this list blank, then any anonymous Web surfer can view your blog page.
Comments
Displays a list of links to all of the comments on your blog entries.
Statistics
Displays the daily number of hits on your blog (excluding your own hits). Also lists the top ten referrers (Web pages that link to your blog). You can only view your own blog's statistics.
Export
Displays XML source code for all of your log entries. You can then save this as HTML through your Web browser.
RSS Feed
Downloads all of the blog entries into a format that a portable device can read (for example, a Palm pilot). Requirement: You need RSS feed reading software (for example, BlogPluck).
Subscribe/Unsubscribe
Adds/removes the current blog page from your subscription list.
Help
Displays online help for blog.flup.org as WIKI entries (which everyone can edit). If you log in to WIKI using the UserPreferences link, then you can click EditText to revise the online.
Logout
Logs you out, and returns your privileges to that of an anonymous Web surfer.
Blog entry: Edit
Re-opens a single blog entry for you to modify.
Blog entry: Delete
Erases a single blog entry forever.
Blog entry: Link icon
Launches a single blog entry into its own Web page. You can then bookmark or link directly to this entry. To link to the entry, copy the Web address and paste it into an HTML hyperlink reference tag. For example, <a href="http://blog.flup.org/saoki?entry=45">Steve's blog entry about layers</a>.