TUTORIAL on Using and Commenting on your Blogs!!

At the time of this post, I can only speak of how this works with the current settings we have on our blogs.  We may change the security settings in the future.  Hopefully, this will answer your questions about adding your thoughts here, but please contact either Lisa, Kathy or Angelle if you have any questions.

Remember that even though we have three pages for our different  areas of OLG, they are actually three different blogs.  Therefore, just because you are signed in on one of them, doesn't mean you are signed in on all of them. 

Anyone can see these blogs, but we may change that in the future.  We haven't done so yet, because it would require everyone to get a google account and be invited individually to our pages (every member times three! lots of extra work).  However, to make a comment, you do have to have a google account, which will be covered in a sec.  We are trying to avoid having anonymous users leave comments on our pages, so give us some time to tweak our settings. 

We encourage everyone to make comments so we'd like for you to create a google account.  Many of you already have one, since programs like Flickr and Picassa require a google account.  Remember, if you don't want to make an account, you can still go to these pages and read and follow anything there, you just won't be able to comment and join in the conversation, at least not with the current settings.

Making a google account takes about a minute.  First, click your Google tab above if you have one or go to Google.com and click "create new account" or sign in to your already made account.  You can use your regular email address and a password.  You can even upload a picture to use when communicating.

Once you have an account, you can sign in to any of the OLG pages and it knows who you are, so when you go to make a comment, it should let your comment go through.  If you scroll back up on this page, and look in the upper right corner, you will see the sign in/sign out option.  I will tell you that on my personal blog page, when someone makes a comment and selects to post the comment, it comes back and makes them hit the publish button again.  Just play with it, until you figure it out, or let us know and we'll check out the settings.  There's more about this, keep reading.

To make a comment, go to the very bottom of the post where you want to comment, and look for comments.  It will say the number of comments so far.  If it hasn't had any, it will say 0 comments.  Click on it and then, you should be able to write whatever you want.  Secondly, it will ask for word verification, which are those funny, morphed words, which is a spam protection we have.  Third, you choose your identity.  For google, select "google account".  It may not do this if you're already signed in.  If it lets you select something else, we ask that you put your name in the body of your comment, so we'll know who left the comment.  Finally, hit "post comment".  As I said, the page may reload and you may have to do the word verification on the second trial and then select "publish post".  I'm still trying to figure this stuff out along with you!

Another option, once you've made a google account, is to "follow" us or "subscribe" to us.  This will let you get emails or prompts through your google account when a new post has been made or a new comment.  Look in the sidebar on this page for these preferences.  If you upload a picture, you'll see yourself along with other members under the "Follow" icon.  Remember, we have three different blogs, so you'll have to sign in on every one of the three pages, but that may not be the case if you are "following" them.

Finally, for you veteran bloggers, you know that you can subscribe to the full feed of these blogs and even have them posted on your facebook pages.  We ask that you do not have them imported to places like Facebook, because it will advertise the blogs to people who are not in OLG.  We realize with the current settings that anyone can stumble across our blogs, but no one should really be interested enough to come back.  I have found that some people will make ugly comments, anonymously, just to give you grief, so we are trying to avoid problems.

We hope you'll enjoy this new resource for OLG members and will use it responsibly so we can use it as intended, as a means of support for our members.  It can't be repeated enough that our official secured school website is where we do all of our school communications and you can still pose the same questions about anything you did before at our school site.  Nothing has changed with that.  Anyone who'd like to post a story or something here, can certainly do so, by getting in touch with one of us, so we can get your words up here.  This is your site!  Just remember, this is not a soapbox, but a support box.  Encouraging words please!
Happy blogging!