Dashboard settings
From your Dashboard (Control Panel) you can control many aspects of your blog. Some of the most important are explained below:
Options > General
Title and tagline (sub-title): you can change these
Comments: check box to make user login to add comments to your blog
Other settings: you can change your email and date and time settings
Options > Privacy
Here you have the option to make your blog private. It will not be listed anywhere on ESL Blogs, but you can browse to it with the url.
Users > Authors & Users
Here you can add or delete users for your blog, and change their Role to allow them to write, edit or administer your blog.
Users > Invites
Here you can send an email to friends inviting them to visit your blog.
Presentation > Themes
You can select a new theme for your blog, which will change the look and colour scheme. It will not change anything you have written.
Presentation > Widgets
Lets you customize your side-bar.
Presentation > Header Image & Color
Lets you change the background and font colours of your header (only for some themes).
Blogroll
These pages let you add and manage links to your favourite sites.
Comments
These pages list all comments, and let you approve comments, delete them or mark them as spam.
Manage
Here you can edit and delete your existing posts and pages.
Write
This is where you can write a new post or page.
Dashboard
Normally the first page you come to when you login.
Tips
- When you write a new post, you can add “tags” below it - these are like keywords and will help people to find your post.
- Your blog has a url or address like:
http://eslblogs.englishclub.com/username
When you know your blog’s address, you can add it to search engines like Google and Yahoo!, or any web directories in your country or language. This will help people to find your blog and bring you more visitors. - You can add pictures, videos and audio to your blog.
April 12th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
what’s the real difference between a page and a post for all practical purposes? Can you change a post in to a page and vice-versa?
April 13th, 2008 at 4:11 am
If you think of the real meaning of blog (weB LOG = journal/diary etc on web) it may help. A log is something in which events are recorded chronologically. The original blogs had only “posts”, and they were (and still are) recorded chronologically. You write posts day by day, or week by week etc, and they stay in that order, with the newest at the top. They also get archived by month. And they can be in categories.
Later, blogging software added “pages”, which are outside the blog chronology. They are timeless and independent. They are more like a plain old-fashioned “static website”. You can put them where you like, and you can give them subpages. The classic example of a page is “About this Site”. Or you could have pages such as “About Me” or “Teaching Tips”. These are things outside the normal chronology.
You can have links to your pages direct from you main page or sidebar. On the other hand, a post you wrote a year ago will only show up if someone searches for it, or looks in the appropriate monthly archive or category listing.
You cannot change one into the other. You would need to create a new page/post and delete the old post/page.
April 28th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
thank you. very helpful as always!