Frequently Asked Questions
by: Tom Sorenson
1) How do I register or sign up to become a user?
A) By clicking on “Register” in the upper right hand corner of the page, you’ll be taken to our registration page. Simply fill out the information and click, “Next.” On the next page, you can name your blog, and once this is completed you’ll be sent an email to the address you gave asking you to click on a link to confirm your registration. After you’ve completed this step, you’ll be sent another email with your automatically generated password.
2) How do I change my password from the automatically generated one I was given?
A) Log in by clicking “Log in” in the far upper right corner of the page. Once you’ve logged in, you will be taken to your “dashboard” This is where you will write blogs and do any administration changes. There will be a link that says, “Howdy [username]” in the upper right corner of the page. Clicking this will take you to the site administration area where you can scroll down and update your password. You must enter it in each box for the change to take place.
3) I’ve got a blog set up. Now, how do I write a blog?
A) By getting into your site admin (see FAQ 2) you will see the tabs across the top of the screen. You can click on the tab “Write” and you’ll be taken to your text box. Enter a subject for your post, then write your blog in the main text box. At the top of your text field box will be your formatting toolbar. If you hover your mouse over the button it will tell you what that particular button does.
4) How do I upload a picture to my blog?
A) On your formatting toolbar is an asterisk that says, “Add media” click on this asterisk and a new window opens. By clicking on “choose file”, or, “browse” depending on your internet browser, it will take you to your computers hard drive. You can find photos saved on your computer and upload them to your upload folder. Once they’ve been loaded into your upload folder, you can find them by clicking the “Media Library” located next to the “upload” tab. When you’ve selected the picture you’d like to upload to your blog, simply click on the picture, and it will appear with several options. Select “Insert into post” and your picture will appear in the area your cursor is located within the text box.
5) I can only send my picture to the text box as full size or as a text link.
A) This is a problem we have that we’re not exactly sure the cause of. However, it seems to have something to do with the file type. If you encounter this problem, there is a quick way to resize the picture. Once you’ve sent the picture to the editor as a full size picture, click on the picture in your editor to select it, then click the button in your formatting toolbar that looks like a tree (it will say ‘insert/edit image’ if you hover over it). This will bring up a box that lets you change the dimensions of your picture. A good size is 320 x 240, or 240 x 320 depending on which way the picture was take (horizontally vs. vertically).
6) How can I upload video to my blog?
If you know how to use embedding codes, you are in business. Upload your video to YouTube, Bliptv, or any other WordPress supported video hosting site and use the WordPress embedding codes to embed your video in your blog post. Otherwise, video cannot be uploaded to personal blogs. We are currently exploring our options with this. A good site with video embedding codes for WordPress can be found, here.
7) How can we contact BCL?
