Basics on blogs

I want to start a blog on my business website. I am at the “basics” stage, needing to know whether there is a built-in capability within Freeway or I need to go third party.

I am not a web developer (as has been alarmingly apparent to anyone who has tracked by foibles on this message board!), so simplicity is my guiding rule.

I also am interested in knowing how to link my blog to an e-mail push campaign to get it to current clients and associates.

Thanks for an early help.


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Any help at all on this question?


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Hi Skipll,

There is no built-in blogging tool in Freeway but we do provide a way
to edit/create Blogger (a Google service) templates to make them look
like your own. There’s a KnowledgeBase article that talks about that,
along with some other options too:

http://www.softpress.com/kb/questions/36/Blogs+in+Freeway

Joe

On 21 Oct 2009, at 16:29, SkipII wrote:

I want to start a blog on my business website. I am at the “basics”
stage, needing to know whether there is a built-in capability within
Freeway or I need to go third party.

I am not a web developer (as has been alarmingly apparent to anyone
who has tracked by foibles on this message board!), so simplicity is
my guiding rule.

I also am interested in knowing how to link my blog to an e-mail
push campaign to get it to current clients and associates.

Thanks for an early help.


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Thanks. I’ll spend some time with the article.


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Joe,

I went through the articles but am stuck on a few things.

I do not understand Step #3 - "Click on the Upload tab and type your web address or the path to the place you will be uploading the template to in the Web Address field (for example http://www.yourdomain.com or yourdomain.com is available for purchase - Sedo.com). Click OK.

Do you mean the address of my websitre or some external hosting site, like Google? What exactly do I put into the address? Just my main domain or a subfolder?

I do not understand the difference between Google’s blog application and the “roll your own” option. Seems like roll your own is easiest, but is that true? Ideally, i would prefer having a daily/weekly blog where people can access the blogs by scrolling down, but I also would like to “market” the blogs through Facebook and Twitter. Does that mean each blog has to have its own page?


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Joe,

i do not understand on the video what they mean when they say “put in the name of a url where you want you resources to be found.”

What does that mean? Is that the Google site?


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Is there anyone else who can help with this?

Thanks.


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Click on the Upload tab and type your web address or the path to the place you will be uploading the template to in the Web Address field

Now I haven’t actually done this but my understanding is that once you have created the template within Freeway you then need to upload it/host it on your own site so that the Resources etc are available to blogger.

So then the path to the to the place… would be something like www.yoursite.com/mytemplate/

This page might make it clearer

http://home.comcast.net/~fwtuts/lessons/Creating_Blogger_Templates.html

David


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David,

This helps.

I’m still unclear where someone sees my blog. Your note suggests there is one blog page appended with “template” yet the instructions seem to suggest a new page for each blog and yet another page for RSS registration and archives.

  1. Do they see it on my website? If so, why am I creating it on the Google site and how does it know what content to transfer over to my website?

  2. If on the Google site, do I have to somehow get their template to look like me website?

Given all of the above, I still want to have archives blogs on my site and a listing or “new” blog on the first page, Not sure how to do that.

Does anyone have a sample of their site where they use Google and yet have the blog on their website?

Am I better off using Joe’s “roll your own” approach?


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Here is where I am still very unclear, quoting from the guide you sent me:

“…enter an external domain address to where your Resources and CSS folders are going to be located…” What does this mean. Does this mean where my current website is hosted? d space to store your files.

“For example, if an external address was your method, you’d enter “http://www.mydomainname.com/” and if you were using any subfolders you’d add those to the end of the URL and make sure you finish your URL entry with a /.” Subfolders? What subfolders? I jsut loaded my entire site to the server.

“Once you have the template design finished you’ll want to choose one of the non-master pages in your Site Panel in Freeway.” Huh? Which non-master page? Do I save the template as the “blog page?”


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Do they see it on my website? If so, why am I creating it on the Google site and how does it know what content to transfer over to my website?

No. The blog is hosted by Google or whoever because that is where all the code to run the blog lives. You can show it in an iFrame on your own site if you wish.

do I have to somehow get their template to look like me website?

That is what the tutorial is all about - making a template for Blogger that looks like your own site.

david


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Does this mean where my current website is hosted?

Yes - where you uploaded the template you created with Freeway.

Do I save the template as the “blog page?”

What you call it doesn’t matter as all you are going to do is copy the HTML from it and paste it into Blogger

David


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Sorry, I want to make sure I am clear. If someone goes to my website, and they “click” to see my blog, they are actually going to the Google site? That means they would not have access to all of the other site navigation I have on my regular website page. I thought the idea was to keep people in your domain.

You mentioned iFrame, but I don’t see that mentioned anywhere.

I guess what puzzles me is that I see website all the time that have blogs built right into the site. Is that not possible with Freeway? Does anyone have an example of how they have done it?

On 22 Oct 2009, 10:04 pm, DeltaDave wrote:

Do they see it on my website? If so, why am I creating it on the Google site and how does it know what content to transfer over to my website?

No. The blog is hosted by Google or whoever because that is where all the code to run the blog lives. You can show it in an iFrame on your own site if you wish.

do I have to somehow get their template to look like me website?

That is what the tutorial is all about - making a template for Blogger that looks like your own site.

david


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Thanks, helpful. But how do I get the Google site to look like mine? I have graphics and other visual elements. I do not see that the Google site allows me to do much at all as far as placement and design.

On 22 Oct 2009, 10:04 pm, DeltaDave wrote:

Do they see it on my website? If so, why am I creating it on the Google site and how does it know what content to transfer over to my website?

No. The blog is hosted by Google or whoever because that is where all the code to run the blog lives. You can show it in an iFrame on your own site if you wish.

do I have to somehow get their template to look like me website?

That is what the tutorial is all about - making a template for Blogger that looks like your own site.

david


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Hi Skipll,

On 22 Oct 2009, at 23:26, SkipII wrote:

Thanks, helpful. But how do I get the Google site to look like
mine? I have graphics and other visual elements. I do not see that
the Google site allows me to do much at all as far as placement and
design.

This is what the Blogger Actions are for. You can basically create a
dummy blog page in your site, that looks the same as your site and
then paste the code into Google’s service (follow the steps in the
guide) and have your Google hosted blog look the same as your main
site. You can out navigation, ads, and other content from your main
site in this template, but one thing to look out for is that you can’t
use anything like rollovers (apart from the CSS menus), or any of the
FX Actions on the blog. You need to make sure you upload the dummy
page (I tend to just make it another page in my main site) so that all
the images that you are using are somewhere online that Google can
access them from.

Hope this helps,

Joe


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Since I wrote the tutorial here’s some answers to your questions.

  1. The ‘Resources’ and ‘CSS’ folders are only if you use graphics or have ‘Use External Stylesheets’ turned on for your site. Google doesn’t host these too well so if you have an external server space you’ll have to link out to them using the ‘Web Address’ spot in the ‘Document Setup’ under ‘Upload’. This is what is referred to as the BASE HREF in the template which is automatically handled by FW (in step 2 of the tutorial).
  2. If you were to just put your blogspot address in there (‘Web Address’ field in the ‘Document Setup’) then you couldn’t use any custom graphics or external CSS to make your site look all fancy. You could however leave the CSS inline (uncheck the box) and then ‘be creative’ with the graphics. But that’s bound to look terrible.

Did you watch the screen-cast I made on it? I believe I made one on my blog there and it had sample files and what not with it.

Here:

http://danjasker.blogspot.com/2008/05/fw5-your-first-blogger-template.html

and here:

http://danjasker.blogspot.com/2008/06/fw5-your-second-blogger-template.html


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Joe,

That helps. Thanks.

I still do not understand two things in your note:

“…you can’t use anything like rollovers (apart from the CSS menus),…” What are CSS menus? One of the tutorials says to turn off CSS on the dummy page. I’m confused.

“You need to make sure you upload the dummy page so that all the images that you are using are somewhere online that Google can access them from.” Upload where? To my server? If so, how does Google know how to access them at that location?


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Dan

I have a note in to you to ask for paid help.

I don;t understand #1. I am pretty literal. I need to know what website address I put where. All I know is that I have a website hosted by an outside server and I have a Google account with a blgspace all set up but not looking like i want it to look yet. So I can’t tell if there is some other kind of file I need to upload and where.

I see your two samples, but would need to better understand the step by step.

I hope you can respond to my e-mail. I would prefer to pay you and see how you did it.


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Dan,.

You asked if I looked your screen cast. What screencast? What tutorial?


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On 23 Oct 2009, at 12:50, SkipII wrote:

Joe,

That helps. Thanks.

I still do not understand two things in your note:

“…you can’t use anything like rollovers (apart from the CSS
menus),…” What are CSS menus? One of the tutorials says to turn
off CSS on the dummy page. I’m confused.

CSS Menus is the name of an Action, sorry I should have been more
clear. It makes navigation menus.

“You need to make sure you upload the dummy page so that all the
images that you are using are somewhere online that Google can
access them from.” Upload where? To my server? If so, how does
Google know how to access them at that location?

The Blogger Action manages this for you, the place you upload it to
needs to be added to the Web Address field of the Document Setup
dialog. This gets then gets added to the template so that Google can
find the images. so, for instance, if you just added the blog template
page to your regular site then add the site address to the Web Address
field, if you are making a standalone blog template (in a file with no
other pages) and are uploading it to a specific folder on your server
then add the web address plus the path to the folder. Example
(capitalized for readabiity, each folder level is separated by a /):

http://www.yourRegularWebAddress.com/path/to/folder/

Joe


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