Blog Help

[pineapple275]

Ok so Ashleigh, how do you make separate pages and stuff for your blog? Like what you did in the chapters page. I also need to say that I am jealous of the fact that you have so many ways to advertise your blog. Most of my friends think Sims is stupid and my parents didn't even want me to get a blog so they are pretty much in this-blog-is-all-you-are-getting-for-a-while mode. Twitter is definitely out of the question, and I'm sixteen! Oh and how do you link to people's blogs? Can you tell I am new to computers? Got my own like two months ago. What's photo shop and is it free?

[Ashleigh825]

I would be glad to help you out. I'm also glad you got your own computer. Knowing your way around online is very useful for everyday life, so it's great that you're starting to learn about computers.

Photoshop unfortunately isn't free. It can run up to 700 dollars depending on what version you want. I have the latest version, Photoshop CS4. You may be able to find some cheap, used copies on E Bay or something (E Bay is an online marketplace where people put their stuff up for sale). You could also torrent an illegal copy (like me, heh heh), but torrenting can be pretty complicated if you're new to computers. There's also free programs you can download online, like GIMP, which works pretty much the same way as Photoshop, but I can't guarantee you'll be able to follow the tutorial on my Family Tree page with GIMP.

As for helping you with organizing your blog, I need to write out a whole separate tutorial for that, since it's a very long process for a beginner blogger and I want to make sure I put it in easy, step-by-step instructions so I don't confuse you. I'll post that here tomorrow sometime (hopefully), since it's midnight where I am right now and I need to be up at 6am to go to work tomorrow. I need my sleep, heh heh.

Anyway, I'm glad to see you in the forum and I hope I helped a little bit at least with some of your questions.

[pineapple275]

Oh...family tree isn't going to happen then. Heh, maybe next time. Ok well thanks for helping and I'll check...here and my e-mail or whatever later to see if you've posted the steps. BTW I just wanted to ask if you got around to my blog. I'd also like to apologize how the beginning is a lot like yours. Gen. 1 has doll house problems and siblings like Mandy and Marcie but I think I get pretty independant later in the story. (Though the beginning is better then later on!)

[Ashleigh825]

Well, you can download GIMPhere. If you fiddle around with it long enough and look up some beginner tutorials, you may be able to follow the Photoshop tutorial with GIMP because you'll be familiar with the program. If I get the time, I'll make a tutorial for GIMP. I know not everyone has the money for Photoshop or the know-how to torrent it.

Okay, so here's what you need to do to set up your blog like mine:

Getting Started

• Go to WordPress.com and log into your account.
  
• Click on the link that says "Dashboard" underneath the link to your blog.
  
• You're now at your main control panel for your blog. Any editing and maintenance you do will be done here in the dashboard.
  

Adding Categories

• The "Categories" link is essential for you if you want to set up your blog to host more than one story or challenge.
  
• In your sidebar to your left, you'll see a list of options, such as Posts, Links, Media, Pages and so on. Click the Posts link to get more detailed options. Underneath the Post link in the detailed options (or sub-options as most people call them), is a link called Categories. Click on that link.
  
• On the Categories page, you'll see you have one category, called Uncategorized. Anything you post that isn't put into its own category will automatically be placed here.
  
• There are options on this page to add categories. I use this tool to add the name of whatever story or challenge I'm blogging about. Just type the name of your story or challenge into the Add A Category bar and click Add Category at the bottom.
  
• You also have the option to add sub-categories. I personally don't use this option, but if you play a lot of the same kind of challenge or story, you may find it useful. For example, you could have a category called Legacies and then put sub-categories under that, listing all of your legacy challenges that you've played or are playing.
  
• To make sub-categories under categories, first type the name of the category. Going back to my example, type Legacies and click Add Category. Then do the same thing next time, except type The Smith Legacy (or whatever your legacy is called). Before clicking Add Category, click the bar underneath with the words "Category Parent" over it to get what it called a drop down menu. In the drop down menu, you'll see all your current main categories, including Legacies. Select Legacies and then click Add Category. Your individual legacy challenge is now a sub-category under Legacies. Of course, this is completely optional and like I said, I don't use it myself. It is useful to know, however.
  
• There's also an option to add descriptions to your categories, but don't bother with that. I find it pointless, since category names should be self-explanatory and most blog layouts don't show the descriptions, anyway.
  

Putting Your Posts Into Categories

• Now that you have all your categories set up and ready to go, you'll need to know how to organize your different posts into categories. This is actually a very simple process.
  
• When you add a new post, you'll see a section to your right called Categories. Under this section, there'll be all the categories and sub-categories you've added along with a little box next to each one.
  
• The little box beside the Uncategorized category will always be automatically marked. Click that box to unmark it, then click the box beside whichever category you want your post to be in to mark that box. You can select as many categories as you want for your post, but if you're using your categories to organize and separate all of your Sims stories/challenges, then you probably don't want your post to be in more than one category, anyway.
  
• Put whatever pictures and text you want into the main text box of your post, title it and then click Publish. Your post is now publicly viewable on your blog and has been placed in the right category.
  

Showing Your Categories on Your Blog

• Some blog themes/layouts will come with a Categories section in the sidebar. Others don't have that feature, but no worries. If your blog doesn't have a categories section that shows up automatically, you can add one yourself using widgets.
  
• In the sidebar on your dashboard to your left, where you just clicked Posts to add your categories, click the link that says "Appearance". The link will expand, giving you more options, just like the other links in that sidebar. Click the "Widgets" link.
  
• There are many different options on this page, many of which you can fiddle around with yourself and see how they work and what they add to your blog, but the widget you need to worry about for our purposes is called "Categories". Find the "Categories" widget in the list of available widgets and click it.
  
• Keeping your left mouse button pressed down, drag the widget over to the sidebar on your right. When you see a little grey dotted outline of a rectangle in the sidebar, release the widget.. It should drop itself into that outlined space.
  
• If you click the Categories widget after placing it, there will be some options for you to look at. You can change the name of the Categories section of your blog here. If you want, you can make it something creative or witty, or you can just leave it titled as Categories. It doesn't matter either way. Underneath that, there's three boxes with text beside them. Just click the middle box that says "Show post counts". The others aren't really necessary, but feel free to play around with them if you'd like.
  
• You now have a fully-functioning Categories section on your blog.
  

Adding Pages

• Adding pages works pretty much exactly the same way as adding posts, except that you can't have multiple posts on a page, like you can with the homepage of your blog. Think of a page as exactly that; a piece of paper that you can put whatever you want on.
  
• Pages are useful for story-writers because they can have entire pages dedicated to a related topic while keeping it off their homepage. It eliminates clutter and adds organization.
  
• On my blog, I have a Family Tree page where all of my Sims families' information is kept for readers to look at. I also have a Resources page where I link to all of the custom content I feature in my stories, a Chapters page where I have links to each individual chapter of my stories, and a Legacy Links page where I link to other people's Sims blogs that I recommend for reading. You can add whatever pages you want to your blog.
  
• To add a page, click the Pages link in the sidebar to your left on your dashboard and click Add New under that. Title your page, and add whatever text, images and/or links you want, then click Publish and you're done.
  
• Some blog themes won't have your pages show up automatically. In this case, I'd recommend just picking another theme that does show them, but if you really don't want to change your blog's theme, you can add a Pages widget to the blog's sidebar yourself the same way you added your Categories widget.
  
• Just like with categories, pages can have sub-pages. I use this a lot on my blog. I find it quite useful. I link to my sub-pages on my pages. For example, on my Chapters page, I have links to a list of chapters from each one of my challenges. Each of those lists is a sub-page under my Chapters page and I linked to them from my Chapters page.
  
• Be careful not to add too many sub-pages to a page. Just one or two at the most. Although there is no limit to how many sub-pages you can have, it can get very frustrating and confusing to navigate through your blog if you have an entire labyrinth of pages floating around in space. Visitors to your blog don't want to have to wander through a maze just to find what they're looking for.
  
• To add a sub-page, do exactly what you did to add a page, but before you publish it, look to the right on your screen. There, you'll find a section called Attributes. In that section, it will give you the option of choosing a Parent Page for your page. Just like you did to add a sub-category, click the drop down menu and select which page you want this sub-page to be under. Then click Publish.
  
• To find the address of the sub-page you want to link to from one of your pages, click Edit under Pages in the sidebar to your left on your dashboard. Here, you'll see all your pages you've created, along with all it's sub-pages underneath it. Sub-pages are marked with a long dash symbol (---) in front of the name.
  
• Find the sub-page you want to link to from its parent page and click the View link underneath it.
  
• This will take you directly to that page, where you can copy the address in the url bar and paste it as a link into its parent page. To clarify with an example, my Chapters page is the parent page for all the chapter lists of my stories, which I have links to on the Chapter page.
  

Other Neat Tools

• The above information pretty much has all you need to set up and organize a blog with multiple Sims stories/challenges, but there are some other cool things that will prove useful to you as well.
  
• Two simple things I rely on to keep my blog looking neat are the Read More and Next Page links. These are very easy to use and prove to be infinitely helpful when it comes to organizing a blog.
  
• The Read More link is the little link you see at the bottom of my post previews. On my homepage, I have the first paragraph or so of many posts. In order to see the full post, you need to click the Read More link under it. This is great to allow people to see all your recent posts on one page without having to scroll down too far.
  
• When you add a new post, on the top of the main text box, you'll see two small tabs on the right side. One is called Visual and the other is called HTML. When you finish writing your post in visual mode, click the HTML tab to go into HTML mode. HTML is basically computer language. Web designers use HTML to tell a computer to make a background red and other things like that. HTML can get quite high tech-y and complicated, but you don't need to know any of that computer mumbo jumbo, so don't worry.
  
• Find the point in your post where you want the post preview to end. Just the first paragraph or two should be a perfect amount. Type the following code at that point where you want the preview to end.
  
  <!--more-->
  
  This simple code will cut off your post on your blog at exactly where you typed it and add a Read More link at the bottom of that short preview to allow readers to see the full post.
  
• Sometimes, your chapters can get pretty lengthy which means a lot of scrolling. People don't generally like having to scroll down a page for too long, so to shorten it, you'll need to split your chapters up into two or more pages.
  
• Adding a Next Page link works pretty much the same way as adding a Read More link. Write out your post in visual mode, switch over to HTML mode when you're done, then go back and type the Next Page code wherever you want it to go to the next page.
  
  <!--nextpage-->
  
• One other very useful thing is naming your links. Rather than just having a plain url, you can name your links to make them look neater and more organized.
  
• Example of a plain link: thecharmlegacy.wordpress.com/
  
• Example of a named link: Reflections Blog
  
• Normally, you'd need to know a bunch of HTML in order to name a link, but luckily WordPress has made it very easy to do without having to know any HTML. When you add a post, make sure you're in visual mode and wherever you want to put a named link, type what you want your link to be named.
  
• Then highlight that name and click the link icon at the top of the main text box where a bunch of other icons are. The icon is quite literally a little picture of a link. Beside it is a picture of a broken link. That's the tool for removing links.
  
• A little menu will appear when you click the link icon after highlighting the link name, asking you for the link url. That's basically just the raw link that shows up in the address bar of your web browser. The link you posted to your blog on my comments page is a url.
  
• Paste the url of the page you want your link to go to into that empty bar and click Insert.
  
• You now have a nice, neat named link in your post.
  

And there you have it. As you can see, it's a long process and a lot of work to maintain, but well worth it in the end when you have a nice, organized blog for everyone to enjoy.

[pineapple275]

Thanks! I've played around a little with those tools before but if I'd known that's how you did it then I wouldn't have totally quit on them and I would have tried to figure them out! Well I better get going. I have 29 chapters to make nice and neat! I'm watching for the next chapter!

Happy Simming,
Julie Andrews

[Ashleigh825]

No problem. I'm glad it all made sense. I was afraid I was just rambling nonsense for most of it.

Also, is Julie Andrews your real name? If it is, that's awesome. Julie Andrews is one of my favourite actresses (Mary Poppins and The Princess Diaries, just to name a couple of movies she was in).

[pineapple275]

Well actually my name is Julianne Andrews but, yeah. I use Julie for a nickname. I like the actress Julie Andrews too! She's awesome! I loved watching Mary Poppins when I was younger. Princess Diaries is my stepsister's favourite movie! She has all the DVDs. Oh I was so stunned when you said Juliana in one of your chapters! I was like, she's practically got my name! She is pretty too. (Well..not as a kid..)

[pineapple275]

What's a sticky? Does it say sticky? I just wanted to know how you got that post to stay at the top of your homepage. I saw the comment saying you used a sticky. Get back to me anytime. I finally figured everything out. (Not with the mods sadly) I have figured out how to make a chapters page. Three different legacies but one is cancelled because I lost EVERYTHING! Not in the mood to start over cuz I really don't think I can make the kids last name be the same as it turned out to be. That was pure luck...

[Ashleigh825]

Hey. Sorry, I've been busy this past little while. Not many people post here so I don't check it as often. I'll remember to check it more regularly from now on.

A sticky is a post/thread that quite literally sticks to the top of the page. It doesn't get pushed down as new posts/threads are added.

To create a stickied post, do everything you would normally do to create a post, then at the bottom beneath the main text box, there should be an option to make the post a sticky. Click that option to checkmark it and that post will stick at the top of your homepage.

[pineapple275]

Oh I don't have that option. Oh Well. Thanks anyway.

[Ashleigh825]

Oh sorry. *d'oh*

I was thinking about making a forum post sticky, not a blog post. I'm dumb, heh heh.

To make your blog posts sticky, write it up and publish it, then go to Posts > Edit in your dashboard and find your post. Then click Quick Edit underneath it. On the far right, there should be an option to make the post sticky.

[pineapple275]

Cool thanks! It worked out. I think that should help get people reading the Hopkins since I've only gotten a couple pingbacks on it I don't know how many people are reading it.

Happy Simming!