Ning: Adding a Blog Post

Adding a blog post. There are two different ways you can add a blog post:

• Click on the Blogs link in the main horizontal menu bar at the top of every Ning page, and then click the +Add button which appears just to the left of your name on the right-hand side of the screen.
• Click on the My Page link in the main horizontal menu bar at the top of every Ning page, click on the Blog Posts link under your name in the left-hand column (this takes you to your blog page; you can bookmark this page if you want), and then click the +Add button which appears just to the left of your name on the right-hand side of the screen. 

(To edit or delete an existing blog post, see these notes on Managing Your Ning Blog.)

Post Title. Make sure you read the assignment instructions to see what kind of information you need to include in the blog post title, in addition to the specific title you want to give to your post.

Adding Content. I would strongly urge you to type the content of your blog post separately first (no links, no images, no formatting, just the content) inside GoogleDocs; that way you can spellcheck your work and do a word count. Then, when you have finished the text, you can paste that into the Ning blog box, knowing that you have already met the word count and spellcheck requirements. After you paste the text into the box, hit the Return key to add some white space down at the bottom of your post; that will make sure the text has been entered into the Ning blog editor. If the text does not look right (problems with margins or other formatting, etc.), you can use the Paste as Plain Text option to strip all formatting first.

Formatting the Post. You can use the blog post editor to format your post and add links, images, videos and more. Here are some specific tips about using the Ning blog post editor.

• Links in Posts
• Images and Video in Blog Posts
• Formatting Blog Posts

Save / Preview / Publish. When you are done typing your post, use the buttons down at the bottom of the screen to either Save it as a draft (so you can come back and work on it some more before publishing it) or to go ahead and Publish the post. You can also choose to Preview the post:

If you choose the Preview mode, you will be able to see just what the formatting of your post will look like. The links should display correctly, and you will be able to see the images. After you have seen what the post looks like in Preview mode, there are buttons at the top of the screen that allow you to go Back and do more editing, or to go ahead and Publish the post.

Don't worry if you Publish something and decide you need to change it; it's easy to open a blog post and edit it some more after it is published! Here is information on how to Edit Existing Blog Posts, including instructions for editing a post you have already published; you will also find instructions there for deleting an existing post.