All Blog Posts Tagged 'tutorials' (16)

Tags are a great way to group similar blog posts on our network together and a great way to make it easier for people to find you.

 

When we have critical mass on our Contact an Author page, I will create a menu to make it easier for people to find you. But this requires all listings to be properly tagged. The menu will classify speakers according to the following categories - please suggest a tag if you think I've missed one:

 

Geography - regions, cities - eg.…

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The Ning has finally improved its interface and you might notice that you can now easily add images and format blog posts using the buttons that have appeared above the input windows.

But how do you add images to your page if you're not using the blog?

There are several ways.

1. You can use an app like Photogrid…

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Without further ado:



1. Drag unnecessary/annoying stuff to the sidebar on the left. Yup. Just drag 'em away. (eg. "Gifts Received" ... does the Ning think it's Facebook? Away with it!)



Make sure you're logged into the Ning. Point the cursor at the annoying item Click and hold. Drag it to the left sidebar. It will slot under the immovable stuff (profile info, etc)



2. Give yourself a photo. This is your public face. Use it.



On the left… Continue

Ning membership!



just to explain - it's Sue Hyams or me approving the membership enquiries (update! Nick Cross has kindly taken over from me as webmaster of SCBWI British Isles. Please direct all enquiries to him - he has also taken over the webmaster@britishscbwi.org email address!). and the delays? usually have to do with child care, holidays, not checking our email - also we have to contact the US to confirm memberships and that adds to the time it takes to… Continue

I am very pleased to see that so many of you have gotten the hang of your Ning pages. It's a very powerful tool if you know how to use it. YOu can set up a web page to display all your work and you can also develop links with a large network of like minded people who will be interested in your successes and will support you in your work.



Just some quick suggestions to those who haven't managed to get on top of it yet -



1. use the blog on your page to promote yourself,… Continue

If you already keep a blog hosted by Blogger or any of the other providers, you can get your Ning page to display your most recent blog items on your page.



When you first set up your page you will see this:

To set up your blog to show on the page, click on the edit button opposite RSS. You can then set the number of blog posts, whether it shows a full or partial view of the blog post. You can also change the title of the… Continue

What is a header? It's the strip of graphic one usually finds across the top of a web page. The header is a way of branding your page and clearly marking out what your web page wants to do. You can use it to promote yourself and your work. If you have recently published a book, it 's a good idea to put an image of your book in your header.



On the Ning, the header size is specified as 955 pixels. If you make it bigger it won't fit. Also, because this is the web and the resolution of… Continue

I just learned from Ben Scott that one can move elements around the page. Just click on the title bit - when you see the cross hairs, drag the item to wherever you want it! I dragged my activity feed to the sidebar so that my page now starts with my profile instead. Hmm. Maybe I should drag my blog up to the top ... oh dear. I could spend hours dragging things around.

If you already own your domain (that's your website url - as in 'yourname.co.uk') - you can forward it to your Ning page and use your Ning as your website until you're ready for a heavy duty one.



What is domain forwarding? Domain forwarding lets you point your domain name to another home page or web site location. Forwarding is handy when you have a web site built elsewhere and you want to give people an easy-to-remember domain name to reach your site.



Where do you set the… Continue

Well, this network comes with a quota of 10GB of storage and 100GB of bandwidth. This is a network with approximately 5,000 photos or 500 videos. At some point, we will reach the limit and I will send panicked emails out to everyone to delete their oldest albums! But not just yet ...

On the right hand side where the 'inbox' 'alerts' 'friends' are is the 'settings' icon.

This is where you can control the privacy of your page - that is, who can comment on your page, if you would prefer to approve comments before they appear, also, what activities are promoted on the main page. you might not want people to know everytime you comment on someone's page but you might want to let the homepage reflect when you've updated your blog.

Okay - on the right hand side of the page, you can see those little icons "inbox" "alerts" "friends-invite" and "settings"?



Here's the thing: please, please don't invite friends from your address book.



Our Ning is supposed to be SCBWI members only, so if you invite your friends, they will try to sign up, and then the administrators of our Ning (that's me and other volunteers) will get an email that so and so wants to sign up. And then we contact SCBWI in the USA to check… Continue

If you'd rather not have all your activities showing at the top of your profile page (I personally don't) then turn it off. Click edit to do so.

On 'My Page' click on 'Change my photo' to upload a profile picture.

Or click on 'Theme' to change the look of your page!

will notice that the description box does not have any facility for posting pictures. Here's how I did it:



1. You will need to use a facility like Flickr to put your pictures online.



2. Get the url of the photo (you can do this by right clicking on the picture and looking up the 'properties' of the picture.



3. You need to use this code in your description text to add an image. Code is usually sandwiched with these symbols:



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