South Dakota

Leave it up to my technologically savvy folks up north at the Webster blog training to be unsatisfied with just blah black and white text! Well, this is more for advanced bloggers, but if you really, really think you need color here’s how you do it…

In the Write post window you will see a tab for Visual or Code–you usually use the Visual tab–also known as the WYSISYG (say ‘whiz-ee-wig’) editor or “What You See is What You Get”. Since this version of Word Press doesn’t have color as a choice in the WYSIWYG editor, we have to do things the old fashioned way. Anyone who has worked with HTML in creating web pages may find this quite familiar. Here’s a little tutorial for you to watch…

Font Color Tutorial

Here’s a basic color code chart so you can be creative, just replace the number in the code: <font color= “#insert number here”>. Let me know if you have questions.

One of the questions asked at our blog training included, “What role should we give new users that we add from our communities?” Here’s a summary of what each of the 5 roles are:

Choosing the right access level is really up to you, but I would suggest that your main community bloggers have the Administrative role, and the rest of your community members can probably get by with either Editor or Author roles. Remember that as an Administrator, you can change these roles at any time. Happy blogging!

What in the world is a feed, you ask? Take a look at the Screencasts on http://communityblogs.us/ called RSS in Plain English this explains the basics.

If you want to quickly see if your favorite sites (in this case the 21 Horizons communities) added anything new, instead of having to check each and every site, you can just take a look at their “Feeds”. I’ve created some very simple instructions here for you to learn the basics.

Want to get some feedback from your blog readers? Add an opinion poll! There are several websites where you can create them in just a matter of minutes, get the code and paste it in a web post, and ta-da! You can find out what your readers are thinking. I created this one at www.vizu.com, it’s free and user friendly. Here’s an example of one that Newell might use…

Opinion Polls & Market Research

Administrators can change the number of posts that can be seen on the front page of your blog. The default is set at 10 posts, but you can increase it if you want more information to stay on the front page where people can see it before it goes to the archives. If you want to increase the number of posts, go to the Dashboard, choose Options > Reading > Blog Pages and change the “Show at Most” option to a higher number, I’ve chosen to change ours to 20 posts as seen in the graphic to the left. Then click Update Options.

If you are looking for an easy-to-use online photo editor, try www.picnik.com. You can upload your photo, make the changes and save it to your computer. For those of you who want to make a new customized header for your blog, Picnik makes it easy to crop and re-size the photo to the required 750 x 150 size.

Don’t forget to “Moderate Comments” on your blog. On the Dashboard, go to Comments, where you can view the comments “Awaiting Moderation” choose Approve

Now your readers can see the comments others have posted in response to something they read on the  Community Blogs.

When you are reading messages or comments and you want to go back to the main blog page, just click the community name in the header…it’s a hyperlink back to the main page.

I will share an occassional helpful hint or tip here on the South Dakota page for our community bloggers. Here’s the first…

 Think about a blog post the way a reporter writes a newspaper article:

1. It should have a great headline (title) to get the readers attention.
2. The most important information should be at the top of the post. (Who, What, Where, When Why, How)
3. Try to keep it short, readers are less likely to read through miles of text.
4. If you have a particularly long post, use the “Split Post” function so it takes less space on the front page of the blog, but interested readers can click if they want to read more.
5. Use pictures and videos to help tell your story.

Data from the Study Circles Pre- and Post-Surveys has been added to each community page, check out the side bar to your right, under the heading “Survey Data” to find results from Study Circles and LeadershipPlenty.

You may have photos that you want to share on your blog. This slide show was created using Picasa, a free program available for download from Google. You can get the “codes” from Picasa to add it to your Community Blog. For more information contact Cheryl for instructions…in the mean time, take a look at your Community Coordinators and other Horizons staff having a little fun in Philadelphia in April 2007.

At our Tyndall blog training we came up with an idea to get input from people in the community and to add more content to your blogs as you work toward the incentives:

Using a community facility with internet access (schools, libraries etc.) host an Open House Blog Night, where people can come in for a snack, write a post and/or use the new cameras and tripods to create short videos of themselves talking about Horizons, community change, hopes for the future, etc.

You can use your $5000 Community Budgets for the Community Visioning & Strategic Planning phase to support these events. It would be a great chance for people without internet access or technology know how to make sure they are included. Ask teens and tech savvy residents to help make these events a success!

Wow, we’ve seen some great content added to some of the blogs already! Check out Oldham and Sanborn Central as some great examples of blog posts. They definitely get the gold star for this week! Keep up the good work!