The following is a great read if you want to get involved with MidLife Gamer and start blogging.

You will find more details regarding content we are looking for in the About Us section.

Basic Blogging:

Click Create New Blog Post from the Control Panel

This is the blog post editor, begin with a snappy title.

Blog posts can contain a number of images to help drive home the story.  The initial image is a must for any post.

This is the Upload / Insert media section

Press Add An Image

We recommend that you upload new image from your local computer by broswing to the desired image.

Once the required image has been uploaded, the above options are available.  Give the image an appropriate Title before ensuring its LEFT alignment and medium size.

Press Insert into Post (See advanced section for image resizing)

Start body of text

As tempting as it might be to type this in Word and paste into the editor, this can cause formatting issues.  If this is a preferred method, it is wise to paste into an application like Notepad before copying into the editor.

It is recommended that you save your work on a regular basis.  Plus the Preview button gives you a chance to see how your post will look when published.

It is important that you check your blog is correct, once submitted for review the post can no longer be edited.  Simple formatting changes and domestics will be carried out by an Administrator, along with feedback to yourself to help any future blog posts.

So what happens next?

Once your post has been moderated by an Administrator you will find this online in the Blogroll.  On some occasions your post may even be featured on the front page of the web site.

You can review your posts any at time, this includes posts which are published, pending review or still in draft.  An Administrator may contact you regarding a submitted post and set it back to a Draft state, allowing you to make the required amendments before resubmitting.

Your posts can be viewed by clicking the View All Blog Posts

Here is an example

Here we can see the following posts and their current status

Post A has been moderated and published.  This will be listed in the Blogroll section of the web site

Post B is still in draft and can continue to be editing until submitted

Post C has been submitted and is awaiting moderation.  This will not currently be visible on the web site

The post submitted in this guide has been published to the blogroll and has also been promoted to the front page of the web site as follows.

Advanced blogging:

There are a number of further advanced techniques that can be applied when creating a blog post.

Working with Images

In the basic blogging guide, we introduced the concept of adding an image.  Here we will explore further options and advanced editing.

After previewing your post, you may decide the image is the wrong size.  If this is the case, clicking the image will allow you to select the Edit Image button

From here you are able to adjust the size of the image along with its current Alignment.  For images further within the blog post, you may wish to add an Image Caption, which shows as follows –

It is important that you do not add a caption to the first image created as this causes formatting issues.  Clicking Update will return you to the blog post editor screen after making the appropriate changes to the image.

Selecting an image in the editor will also allow you to delete the image if no longer required.

Working with Video

It is possible to embed video from YouTube if the post demands such content.

To embed video into your posts, paste your YouTube video URL directly into the post and add insert a “v” between the “P” and “:” of the URL.

For example,

<http://www.xxx> should be <httpv://www.xxx>

If you want to embed high quality video, paste your YouTube video URL directly into the post and add insert a “vh” between the “P” and “:” of the URL.

For example

<http://www.xxx> should be <httpvh://www.xxx>

You will be required to Preview the post to see the video in action.

In our example, the editor looks

Embedding a link

If you want to link to another site from your blog post (which is mandatory when quoting news from another source), highlight the text which you want to become the link and click the Insert/edit Link button

Clicking Insert will create the link from the highlighted work.  The other options are not needed.

The Kitchen Sink –

To get further formatting options available, such as additional colour for text, you can activate the kitchen sink with the following button

This will give you the following additional options