This is a tutorial is for customizing your blog with things like adding YouTube videos, animated pictures , downloading links and tips & tricks to customize your blog. There is another blog on Ballyfermot.ie with a tutorial on the basics of blogging and help setting up a blog on Ballyfermot.ie. This can be found on The Ballyfermot Bloggers page (just click on the highlighted text to be automatically directed to the page). The document was prepared by Andrew Clarke and is entitled “How to blog on Ballyfermot.ie”. If you are new to the world blogging I would advise reading that document first to get a better understanding about the basics before attempting some of the topics on this post.

YouTube Videos

If you wish to insert your YouTube videos into your blog to living it up a bit or show a video presentation on what ever your topic may be. The good news is inserting the YouTube video is extremely simple to embed into your blog and I will show in a few easy detailed steps followed by image screen shots for a better visual of the instructions.

Before embedding your You Tube video, you may have to login to your personal blog site administration dashboard and go to settings. Once you have the settings tab open, you should see a new tool bar with new options/headings present at the top of you page. Focus on the tool bar and click on the option for Easy Tube and the Easy Tube options page should open (figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1

The most important box to tick is Enable Relevant Videos followed by the two other enabling options to be ticked. You can also customize the size of your video screen size by scrolling through the video dimension options with selections such as Default, Small, Medium and Large sizes and you also have the option of choosing a boarder colour style to boarder/frame your You Tube video. When you are comfortable with your settings just click update button at the bottom of the page.

Now, to insert the video you must first go to You Tube and find the video that you want to insert.

1. Get the video URL code starting with http: by copying.

2. Go to your personal blog dashboard.

3. Click on write and the click in the writing box were you wish to insert the video.

4. Then type this

5. You just replace the red text with your YouTube video URL code. ( I apologize if the the image is hard to see but it was the only way I could insert an example of the code without step 4 turning into a youtube video size blank space, but the start of the code without the symbol is youtube:

6. Then just click the save button and exit.

7. Enjoy…

If you have any trouble getting your video to display or any questions just leave a comment and I will get back to you A.S.A.P. and there is also a voting pole at the end of the post with the options of letting me know if you found this post useful or not.

Inserting Animated pictures

figure 1.2

Inserting animated pictures can some times be difficult because the are usually large GIF files and the average blogging host usually just allow about 10MB of a space/storage for each blogger’s personal blog and I noticed that some of the animated pictures I created sometimes exceeds about 15MB-16MB in file size. “It’s a lot, I know”.

The way I worked around this was too upload my pictures with other another free web host like Photobucket.com and Flickr.com and just copy the image URL links from the upload picture/s and paste into my blog. Show my blogs space/storage is not effected the image or its file size.

To insert the image link

1. Go to your blog dashboard and click on the write option on the tool bar menu.
2. With the mouse click on the text area/box were you want insert the image.
3. While the cursor is flashing on the area click on the insert image button (IMG) at the top of the text box or you can click the add media button to do the same.
4. Then just insert the image URL by pasting (Ctrl & V) or right clicking on the URL box.
5. Then just click ok to insert to post.

If you have any trouble getting your image to display or any questions just leave a comment and I will get back to you A.S.A.P. and there is also a voting pole at the end of the post with the options of letting me know if you found this post useful or not.

Changing your writing tool bar from HTML to Visual

The Default HTML tool bar and page layout looks like this (figure1.3).

figure 1.3

And the new version will look like this (figure 1.4).

figure 1.4

Which includes more options like font options, adding polls, flash objects, numbering and text size etc…

To change the tool bar and the visual layout and also get the extra options is actually pretty easy to do and it can all be altered from your personal blog dashboard.

1. Enter your personal blog dashboard.
2. Look at the top right side of your screen you should see the options for settings, plugins & users.
3. Click users.
4. Two options should appear. Authors & users and Your Profile.
5. Click Your Profile.
6. When the page opens you should see a list of options and boxes.  At the top of the list tick the box beside the words VISUAL EDITOR to enable this mode.
7. Then your finished.
8. Once again Enjoy!

If you have any trouble getting the new tool bar to display or any questions just leave a comment and I will get back to you A.S.A.P. and there is also a voting pole at the end of the post with the options of letting me know if you found this post useful or not.

Adding a Voting poll to your side bar and into your blog

( See my poll at the top right of the scroll bar & the one at the end as an example )

To activate the poll options you must first go to your personal blog administration dashboard and click on plugins. The plugin option can be found on the top right corner of your dashboard (figure 1.5). When you find the plugin called WP-Polls, activate the option by clicking on activate. If you are not using the ballyfermot.ie blog you may have to find and upload this plugin into your WP-plugin folder and activate it.

figure 1.5

When the poll plugin is activated you have a new heading on your top tool bar in your dashboard, entitled POLL. Click on Poll and a sub toolbar with should display with 5 new sub options for polls. Manage polls, add poll, poll options, poll templates and uninstall wp-poll.

Adding a voting poll near your scroll bar

1. Go to your admin dashboard.
2. Then go to polls->add poll.
3. Create your poll and save it.
4. The on the menu tool bar go to Design->Widgets.
5. On the left side you will see polls and add on it, click add.
6. A poll options should now appear on the right side side.
7. You can edit your polls title & choose to display the polls archive if you want, but personally I think it may be best not too. You can also move/change the order of the poll widget in which you want it displayed.
8. Then click save changes and exit.
9. Then go to manage polls to check your polls status.
10. (Optional) You also go to poll options and edit to suit your poll.
11. And exit dashboard when done.

Adding a poll into your blog post

Visual Editor must be enabled first. ( See “changing your writing tool bar from HTML to Visual” at the top if your visual editor is not enabled yet )

1. Go to your admin dashboard.
2. Then go to polls->add poll.
3. Create your poll and save it.
4. Then go to manage polls and get your polls ID. The poll ID is on the left side of the screen and is usually numbered like Poll ID 1,2,3,4,5,6 etc… Remember what your new poll ID for later.
5. Then go to write on the menu tool bar.
6. With your mouse click in the text area were you want to insert the poll.
7. Then click on the add poll icon on the visual editor toolbar at the top.
8. A box should appear requesting the poll ID, enter your poll ID from step 4 and then click ok.
9. Your poll should now be inserted to your post.
10. Click on save post and exit.
11. Enjoy…

If you have any trouble inserting polls or any questions just leave a comment and I will get back to you A.S.A.P. and there is also a voting pole at the end of the post with the options of letting me know if you found this post useful or not.

Adding Smileys/Emoticons

To make emoticons available on your blog. On your admin dashboard go to settings->writing->formatting and tick the two boxes to enable.

figure 1.6

I have another page on emoticons/smileys, just click the red heading above and you will be automatically directed to the page and on the page you will find all the coolest emoticons around and a list of instructions on how to use them.

How to make downloads available from your blog

To make items such as your personal E-books, Documents, Videos, Widgets, Games & files etc available to download/share. What you have to do is set up a free account with a webhost like MediaFire. With Mediafire you can upload file sizes of 100MB per file and you get unlimited free storage for your files on their server. When you have your account set up and the file you want to make downloadable from your blog uploaded. Just copy the file URL link.

1. The go to your admin dashboard.
2. Go to write on the menu tool bar.
3. With your mouse, click on the text area were you want to insert the download link.
   
4. Write a title for the download and highlight it with your mouse.
5. While the text is highlighted blue go to the Insert link icon on the text area tool bar and click it.
6. A box should appear requesting the download URL link.
7. Paste the URL link & set the target, then click insert.
8. Then your done, Enjoy…

Just be original about your downloadable items and try not to break any copyright laws.

 Loading ...

I will add more topics like adding games to your blog and using Google Analytics stats to keep a record of your page views and the the amounts clicks and visit stats for your site, I will add these topics within the next fews days so keep an eye out.