The Screen Printers Blog is open for every member here to use, and we strongly encourage our members to make use of this powerful tool. However some considerations must be made to ensure that the blogs here are for providing useful, and relevant content for our readers. We wish to allow our members a wide latitude when it comes to writing your blogs, but we must insist on some basic rules for our blogs to ensure that they both entice and educate our audience.

What we mean is that the blog entry should contain several paragraphs of content. A few sentences of text and a picture is not of any value to our readers, nor does it entice anyone to want to read any other of your entries if there is nothing to read about. So we please ask that your entries be at very least 2 paragraphs.

That does not mean that you can't write about your business, or even your personal perspectives so long as its related to this industry. Writing a "shout out" to your pals is really not valuable content that anyone wishes to read about. The forums, or your friends wall is the appropriate place for such content.

The readers of the blogs will be looking for solutions to their problems or information about some passionate topic. So, please stick to the central theme of your blog and try to satisfy their information seeking needs. If you are writing from you own expertise, try to present it in a desirable, positive format. If your subject is about something negative, please try to present the information in a meaningful, but general way without making it an attack on any person or business.

Ok, so now on to how to get your blog started.
Once your logged on to the site you will need to navigate to your profile page. From there you will click on the tab called "Applications" this will display all the application that have been created for this site that you can add to your profile. You will want to find the application called "MyBlog". You will see a little green icon to add this application to your profile, all you need to do is click the icon and it will be added. There are no special settings other than your privacy settings that you can change at any time. Now that you have added the application you can now click the top menu link located on your profile tabs called "Blog" where you will be taken to a new page that shows your blog control panel.

The first thing you will want to do is click on the menu option called "Preferences". This is where you will name your "Blog Section" and all your blog entries will be placed under this section, so try to use a name for your blog that represents what topics that you will be writing about. You can always edit this, and any content so if you have a writers block or change your mind later it's not a problem. After you name your blog the section just below that is where you will provide a short description describing your view. Try to keep this to one sentence as their is limited space where it will display on your blog section.

Now we are ready to start writing your blog entry. Simply click the menu option called..."Write New Entry". This will cause a pop up window to appear (make sure to have any popup blockers disabled) This is whats called a rich text editor. It functions just like an email composing tool, and most should be familiar with the buttons with a few exceptions that we will cover here. Of course the first field to use will be located at the top and its where you will provide the blog entry title. Just below that you will see a series of small buttons to format your text. The normal options are Bold, Italic, Underlined...ect. You also have margin options for your text content. You may wish to avoid using margins as the site template may create "quoted" content that you may not want.

Next you will see a small button that looks like a tree. This is where you will manage the image properties if you include images in your entry. To use this function simply insert an image into your blog from the image manager on the right side, then click on that image in your blog to highlight the bounding box, a small box with an X across it should appear on the image. The click that button and another popup window will appear. From this window you can now manage your image. Some options include resizing it, making what are called "alt image tags", create vertical and horizontal spaces around it so the text does not butt up to the image. You can also select a position for your image such as left side, right side and other options. You may have to play with this some to get an idea of how it works....remember you can always edit your entries if it does not look correct.

On the far right is a button that has a red line going through it, this is used to create page breaks..or the "Read More" links seen after an opening paragraph. To use this feature simple write your opening paragraph and then hit enter to start a new line. Then click the page break button and a dashed red line will appear in your article. Everything you add after that line will appear only in the full article entry. This is a very useful tool and carefully selecting your opening content and the page break can lure your readers to click the read more button where they will see the entire blog entry.

Moving on...on the right side menu op the popup blog editor you will see several options, and these options are displayed as dynamic sliding tabs.
These options are as follows.

General:
Publish / Unpublish. With this function you can decide if the article is ready for readers to see or not. By simply clicking the unpublish button you can save your entry but it will not be displayed on the website. This is especially useful when your still working on your article and you don't want it seen yet by others. Next we have a publish date option. With this option you can decide when an article will become active in your blog section. Lets say for instance that you wrote a blog entry for a special event, but you did not want to show it until a given date. Well all you do is choose the date that you want to have it show in tour blog, make sure the "publish" option is clicked and when that date come, the blog entry will automatically appear in our blog section...a very handy tool that allows you to write date associated content weeks, and even months before that day comes.

Tags:
Tags are a way of categorizing content. They're used for blogs, pictures, social bookmarking, articles, and more. Instead of the traditional categories, tags allow you to create categories "on the fly". They're then grouped together in whats called a tag cloud, with the tags dynamically linking similar types of content together. To add these tags toy our blog entry you can choose from the default tags provided with the browse menu option, or add your own in the text field provided separated with commas if you use more than one new tag. Click the green + sign to add them to your entry. 

Meta Info:
Meta info is for search engines. This is like hidden "markup" details that explain to search engines what your blog entry is about so that it can be categorized for searches from your readers. A meta-description is nothing more than a short sentence that quickly describes your entry. Usually its easy to just use the blog entry title. Meta-tags are simply words, separated by a space and a comma that someone who is searching say Google might use to search the internet. When thinking of meta-tags merely place yourself in the searchers mindset and think if you were looking for your blog entry what words might you use that are related to your entry?...try to use about 4-8 keywords per entry. An example might be something like this...Screenprinting, Ink, Mesh, Tutorial

Images & Documents:
This is where you can upload images that you may wish to use on your blog. These images will only be available to you and a dedicated folder is created the first time you upload an image. Please note that the first time you upload an image you may get an error message. This is due to the fact that until you upload the file, there is no folder to load it too. If you get this error, don't worry just close the blog entry popup editor then reopen it and the folder should be created and your image should show up there. You can upload most image files using the upload tool included such as .jpg .gif .png and some others. Please try to size your images BEFORE you upload them and remember that on the internet there is no need to use high resolution images. The best way to prepare an image for your blog is to use a program like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator and use the "Save For Web" option. There you can resize your image and reduce the file size to a lower level. I have found the best setting to be a jpg at 25-35 percent quality. Doing this will not only make uploading images faster, but also make them load faster when readers click on your blog. This is fairly important as nothing is worse than making your readers wait to have the oversized images load.