Ning: Adding a Blog Post

When you join a Ning community, you get a blog to go with that community. Here is some information about how to start using your Ning blog!

Your first blog post. To access your blog, just click on the My Page tab, and you will see the link to My Blog on the line just below it. Click on My Blog, and you will be prompted to create your first blog post. To add your first post, just click on the Add Blog Post link. (After you have added your first blog post, you will see the Add Blog Post link off to the right-hand side of the screen.)

Creating a blog post. You will need to give your blog post a title, and then type the content of the post into the text box.


This is not a WYSIWYG editor ("What You See Is What You Get"); this is an actual HTML editor. Don't worry if the content in the box looks a little strange - what you are seeing is the specific HTML code that determines exactly how your blog post will function. For more information, see these tips: Formatting Blog Posts, Links in Posts, and Images in Blog Posts.

Save / Preview / Publish. When you are done typing your post, use the buttons down at the bottom of the screen to either Save it as a draft (so you can come back and work on it some more before publishing it) or to go ahead and Publish the post. You can also choose to Preview the post:


If you choose the Preview mode, you will be able to see just what the formatting of your post will look like. The links should display correctly, and you will be able to see the images. After you have seen what the post looks like in Preview mode, there are buttons at the top of the screen that allow you to go Back and do more editing, or to go ahead and Publish the post.


Don't worry if you Publish something and decide you need to change it; it's easy to open a blog post and edit it some more after it is published! Here is information on how to Manage Your Blog, including instructions for editing a post you have already published.

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