Starting Your Own Blog
Blogging has really become a popular activity online, and for good reason. It's an easy way to get your message out to a lot of people. Here is a basic set of instructions for setting up a blog on this site.
1) Create a user account on the new site. You can do this by going to http://www.AlanTutt.com/user/register.
2) After you register an account, the system will send a automatically generated password to you via email. Also in that email will be a link to log you in to the system directly. Use the link if possible, because it takes you directly to your account page where you can set your password and other details as necessary. Skip steps 3 & 4.
3) If the shortcut link didn't work for you, log in with the username you chose and the password you were given. Then look for a link in your personal menu (under the Main Menu) that says 'My Account'. Click that to see your profile.
4) On your profile page, you will see a group of tabs across the top. The second one says "Edit" and is the link you need to click to change your account details. Click that link and edit your details as necessary.
5) Now that you have a member account, there are 2 ways to post to your personal blog. One way is to click the 'Blogs' link in the Main Menu, and then the sublink 'my blog' under that. The other way is to click the 'Blog Entry' link in your personal menu below (listed under Submit Content). Article posts are very similar, and the submission page is reached through the 'Page' link under Submit Content in your personal menu.
6) On the blog entry page, you will be presented with several choices. First is a title for your post. Next is a list of categories under which you may place your blog post. If you select any of these (multiple selection is possible), your entry will be listed under the appropriate category on the Articles page. Next on the entry page is a textbox for the body of the post. If you'd like to do fancy formatting, there is an option for a WYSIWYG editor. Just click the link under the textbox that says "enable rich-text" and a javascript HTML editor will be loaded for you. Under that area is a checkbox for an option to be notified whenever someone posts a comment to your entry. And finally is an option to upload a file attachment to your entry.
7) Once you've created your post, you may Preview it to see how it will look, or you may simply use the Submit button to post it. From there, your blog entry will be posted to the site, and visitors may find it in a couple of ways. One way will be through the 'Blogs' link at the top of the page. This page shows all blogs posts from all authors starting with the most recent post.
The other way visitors can find your blog is by doing a search on your name, or on the topics you've written about. Every 6 hours, the system indexes new entries, and once this is done, your blog entries will be brought up in relevant searches.
At the bottom of most pages is an orange icon that provides a link to an RSS feed for the content on that page. This link allows visitors to read your blog on their computer and allows other websites to syndicate the content on their site (with links back to the originating site).
All of this provides you with greater visibility and readership, which will result in more traffic back to any links you post in your entries. I think I've covered everything you need, but if you have any other questions, just let me know and I'll answer them for you.