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Blogging On MyCopper
Tips and Helps for blogging on the MyCopper portal.

Customizing your MyCopper Feed Panel

1) While logged-in, select Profile next to your login status display.

Profile

Note: If you are not a logged-in portal user, you will not be able to customize the Feed Panels on the home page.

2) Select the Feed Panel Settings tab.

Feed Panel Settings Tab

3) Enter a new Panel Title and click the Add Button.

Add New Feed Panel

4) Make sure the newly added panel is selected. The selected panel will be highlighted.

Select Panel

5) Under the RSS Feeds section, enter the URL for the RSS Feed you want to add.

Click “add” next to the URL line to make it stick and to open a new line.

Note: Adding more than one feed will add Tab Controls to the feed panel with each feed under a separate tab. In this case, you will want to have a Name for the feed. “Name” is what will show in the tab.

When finished adding feeds, click the Save Panel button in the footer of the Edit Panel.

Feed Panel Options

Warning: If you forget to Save the Panel, your newly added feeds and setting changes will be lost.

When you Save your Panel, you will see a Panel Preview towards the bottom of the page. This is how it will appear on the Portal Home Page. Adjust the panel settings as needed and Save Panel to view your changes.

Panel Preview

6) Reposition your feed panels by dragging and dropping the panel icon.  This determines the order the panels appear on the Portal Home page.

Move Feed Panel

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Getting Started – Setting Up Your Blog

Step by step instructions on getting your blog activated.

1) Log in to portal.

Note: Only portal members can create a blog.

2) Click on the My Blog link in the Site Navigation Bar.

Unless you already activated the blog for your account, you will see a textbox requesting a URL-friendly name for your blog.  Some blog services such as WordPress call this URL-friendly name a “Slug”. This URL-fiendly name is used as part of the URL address for your blog. 

URL-Friendly

Note: The URL-friendly name cannot have any spaces. Spaces will be replaced with a hyphen if submitted.

Example: The name “Copper Blog” (with a space) will result in the URL-friendly name “Copper-Blog” and the URL for this blog would be http://www.mycopper.net/blogs/Copper-Blog

The URL-friendly name can be changed on the following screen or any time after your blog has been created.

Warning: changing your URL-friendly name at a later time once your blog has been established may result in broken links  to your blog and will compromise any search engine rankings for your posts.

3) You should now be at the Blog Settings tab of your account profile.

Note: This can be accessed any time by selecting Profile. When you hover over your account name in the Site Navigation Bar, select the Blog Settings tab.

Blog Settings

Default values for your blog’s details have already been filled in for you. To begin blogging right away, you can click the Save Settings button or make any needed changes and then click the Save Settings button.

The following is a description of the settings that can be modified:

Blog Name:

By default this is the same as your Slug or URL-friendly name. This will appear in the header of your blog as the Blog Title. Changing this will not effect the blog’s URL address.

URL:

This is your blog’s URL-friendly name or “Slug” and is used as part of your blog’s URL address.

Description:

This is your blog’s subtitle and usually appears in the blog header under the title. By default this will not be shown. Check the “Show description in header” checkbox to enable it to be seen.

Current Theme:

This is the theme for your blog that determines how the blog looks. The blog theme can be changed on the blog admin page accessible from your blog’s admin panel.

Contact Email:

By default, this is the email address associated with your MyCopper portal login. You can change this to direct blog email, to another email account.

Comments:

By default Comments are Disabled. If you wish to allow your blog viewers to post comments to your entries, select either Registered Users Only or Anyone.

For instance, “CopperBlog” is targeted for the MyCopper community of registered users so Comments are set to Registered User Only. Only those logged in will be allowed to make comments.

As the name implies, “Anyone” will allow comments from anybody that reads your blog even if they are not logged in to the MyCopper portal.

Moderated:

By default, the Moderated box is checked which means you will have to moderate or review all comments made to your postings before the comments are made public. This is also useful to filter out “Comment Spam”.

Pingbacks:

These are automated comments sent from one blog to another to indicate when a link to or from your blog has been made.

Send will deliver a pingback comment to another blog you reference in your blog. Receive will allow your blog to receive a pingback comment from another blog that references your blog.

4) That's it! View your blog and begin blogging.

Once your settings are saved, you can view your blog by selecting the hyperlink of your blog. This is shown after the Save Settings button or at the top of the settings fields labeled Blog: [URL-friendly name].