Blogger Tool

The Blogger tool allows you to add a blog to your OWL-Space site. A blog is an online journal that readers can add comments to.

Clicking on the Blogger link in the left-hand menu bar takes you to the Blogger tool main page. On the main page are three tabs at the top: Home, which takes you back to this main page; New, which allows you to add a new blog entry; and Show all, which shows your blog entries in a slightly different format.

Home takes you to the main Blogger tool page. On the main page is a list of the latest entries in your blog, showing the title of the entry, the subtitle/description of the entry, who made the entry, and the date it was made. From here you can click on the name of any entry to go to the page for that entry.

The page for an entry shows the title, keywords, author, date, subtitle/description, and the entry itself. Below the entry is a comments section, where reader comments are shown. Comments are displayed in a table with the commenter's name, the date, and the comment itself. Below the comments are three buttons. Edit allows you to edit your blog entry. Delete allows you to delete your blog entry. Add comment allows you to add a comment.

The New tab allows you to make a new blog entry. You can enter a title for your blog entry, search keywords (if desired), an abstract (ie, a subtitle or short description), select whether the blog is private (only you can view it) or viewable by the entire site membership, mark whether the blog is read only or can be edited by others, and decide whether to allow comments from others.

Below these choices is a box to enter the content of your blog. There are four tabs. The Text tab allows you to enter text with a number of text formating buttons. The Images tab allows you to upload image files into your blog (jpg and gif format files of less than 4MB will as images within the blog, while other images will be added as attachments). The Links tab allows you to add links to web sites. The Files tab allows you to upload files of any type and add them to your blog as attachments.

When viewing your blog, links from the Links tab will open a new browser window when clicked. These links will appear spaced apart from the rest of your content. Links added in the Text tab will appear as part of your text (depending on how you choose to format your text). These links will open in a new browser tab.

When you choose to edit one of your blog entries, a similar page to the one that is used to create a new blog entry will appear. At the top you can change all the details that were set when you first created this entry. In the middle of the page, you can enter new content the same way as when creating a new entry. At the bottom, you can edit or delete any of the current content of your entry. Each different element (a piece of content created in the Text, Images, Links, or Files tabs) can be changed or removed, and you can also change the order they appear in your entry by clicking on the arrows on the right.

Note that when you choose to edit a current element of your blog entry, you are given two choices on how to add it back to your blog entry. Pressing the Add to document button adds a new element to your entry with whatever changes you have made (if any), but it does not change or remove the old element.

Pressing the Modify in document (index: X) will change the element in your entry at position X to match whatever changes you have made. No new element will be added to your blog entry.

The Show all tab on the main Blogger tool page displays all your blog entries in a searchable table. You can use the search box to search for any keywords. This will search through the title, keywords, content, and comments of each blog entry. You can Filter by access type by choosing an access type from the selection box and pressing Apply filter. You can sort your results of searching and filtering in the table below by clicking on the column headers.