English 3621: Writing by Women I
Dr. Miriam Jones
Winter 2004

Now that you’re up and running...

Formatting text:

Practically any blog will allow you to use HTML (hypertext markup language) to implement special formatting. Just put the indicated code on either side of the word or phrase, and voila! Your web browser will add the formatting. Here are some of the most common:

Notice how you have to put a tag on either end, one which implements the formatting, and one which ends it (indicated by a forward slash: “/”).

Here is a useful HTML Cheatsheet from WebMonkey.

Links to web sites and other blogs:

In your blog entries: You can also use HTML tags to add links to other websites. This can be useful when you are referring to someone else’s blog, or when you find an interesting site:

Put <a href="http://fullwebaddress.ca" target="blank"> on one side of the word or phrase you want to turn into a link, and </a> on the other (of course, put in the appropriate URL. The <target=”blank”> tag means that if someone clicks on the link, the new page will come up in a separate window rather than taking the place of your page). To create a mailto link, use <a href="mailto:EMAIL"></a> (EMAIL is replaced by the full email address).

Special note: when referring to someone’s blog entry, you can refer to the specific entry rather than to the whole blog by linking to what is called the “permalink.” In most blogs, this link is the time or date in the by-line, as in “Posted by MJones at 1:23am.” In this example, you would click on “1:23am” and link to the page that comes up. That way, if someone wants to track down the post, they don’t have to scroll through a whole blog.

In your sidebar: Most blogs allow you to put your own links in the sidebars. These can be anything you like: a link to your course page, links to the other blogs and pages in the class, to UNB main, to WCL. Feel free to put up links that interest you; they don’t all have to directly concern the course. Follow the directions of your blogger software and link away!

Bells and whistles:

Blogrolling: Blogrolling is an excellent (and free) service that allows you to maintain as extensive a list of links to other blogs as you like, without the trouble of entering all those URLS. It can also be set up to indicate when sites have been updated.

Comments function: You will have noticed the handy comment function on the course blog. Readers could also send an email or post an entry on their own blogs, but the comment function is quick, handy, and good for briefer comments, in particular. You can add this function for free; here are some links (no doubt there are others):

• Enatation offers free and paid services
• Haloscan: free and easy to use
• SquawkBox commenting application
• And if you don’t like any of these, there are a gizillion Google links.

Graphics: If your blogging programme and your host both allow it, you can add graphics (as I have done in the course blog).