Cathus Photography Blogs

OK, so you’re ready to try a new Photo Blog, here are some steps which should get you up & running within a few minutes.

It would probably make sense to have these instructions open in one tab on your browser with your blog open on another so you can switch between these guidelines & setting up your blog.

1. Go the the Create a Blog link which will open up the process for creating your blog.
2. If you’re not already a user of our blogs, then you’ll need to enter a username & email address. Please note that your username can only consist of lowercase letters & numbers - no brackets, underscores or anything else.
3. Enter a name for your blog, this is what will show in the heading of your blog, so choose carefully.
   You will then be advised that the blog is nearly created & you should check your email
4. The email should arrive within minutes but could take longer depending on your mail service. There is an activation link in the email which you must click to activate your blog. This will take you to the front page of your new blog - the address will be cathus.com/blogs/your-username.
   You will receive another email with your login details, but they are also visible on your activated blog the first time it loads - make a note of your password (you can change it in a minute)
5. If a link to your blog isn’t already displayed, enter the URL in your browser & welcome to your new blog!
6. The first time your blog loads you are met with a fairly plain default blog which has a short message. Unless you are happy with a plain (& if I might say so, quite boring) theme, you’ll want to go in & change it about a bit. See the ‘meta’ link on the right-hand side of the page?
   Under that is a log in link, click that to go to your log in screen & enter the details provided to you in your activation email.
7. Once logged in you will be taken to the admin screen, cool eh? Here you run your blog, change the settings, enter your posts & pictures; it’s your Command centre. Feel free to have a look around to see what all the links do but for now we need to do a couple of important things:
8. On the far right of your Admin Screen there are  links - ‘Settings, Plugins, Users‘. Click ‘Users‘ & you will see a list of all the members of your blog, i.e. you, together with your email address & the fact that you are the administrator. Click your username to open your profile.
9. In your profile you can add information about yourself, change the color scheme etc. The two main things you need to do is define your nickname; this is the screen name which will appear on your blog entries. (you can leave it the same as your username if you wish. Then scroll to the bottom where you can change your password to something more memorable for you.
   Right at the bottom click ‘Update Profile‘.
10. Now you can change how your screen name appears by choosing it in the dropdown box ‘Display Publicly As‘.
    Remember to click ‘Update Profile‘ again.
11. Now it’s time to change the theme or design of your blog.
12. In your Admin Screen there are four links; ‘Write, Manage, Design, Comments‘. Select ‘Design‘ to go to the Themes Page.
13. At the top of the Themes Page is your current theme, which should be the one with the plain blue top. Under this are a selection of different themes to which you can change at any time. When you click on a theme a full-size version opens where you can check out whether you like it, if so click the ‘Activate‘ link top right, if not click the ‘X‘ button top left to close it again & choose another.
14. Once you have chosen a theme there are theme-specific alterations, such as changing individual colours, in the ‘Header Image & Colour‘ link.
15. We’re just about done for setting up the blog, phew.
    Lastly, you’ll want to change the only blog entry in your blog, which is a generic welcome entry.
16. In your Admin Screen, select ‘Manage‘ & then ‘Posts‘. You will see your lonely blog entry entitled ‘Hello World‘, click on it to open it up in the editor. Here you can change it to your own welcome or whatever you want as our first post. You do this in the mini wordprocessor which has all the features you’ll need to add text & photos. (more in a different tutorial)
    Change the title & the text & click the ‘Save’ button. Your entry is currently showing as ‘uncategorized’, don’t worry about this, you need to set up your categories in a while (different tutorial).
17. That’s it!
    Congratulations, you’ve now got a new blog with your first posting.
    If you’re new to blogging, don’t forget to check out the other tutorials.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 7th, 2008 at 11:46 and is filed under Tutorials.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.