Blogger Tips & Tricks

I've been using the Blogger platform for almost a year now, and I've learned a few tricks along the way that have made my life easier...that have "worked for me". I thought I'd share:

1. SPACING - Every now and then, when I hit "Preview" to see what my post will look like, all the hard returns are missing. It looks like one giant run-on paragraph. Not nice to look at, and really not nice to read. Even more frustrating, when I go back and add more hard returns, the formatting is still messed up. Ugh. I've found that two things help. (1) To avoid this problem, add any pictures to your post *before* typing text. For some reason, adding pictures after text seems to mess my formatting up. (2)If you have the spacing problem and need to fix it, I've found that pressing the SHIFT key while pressing the ENTER key will make your spacing fixes stick. A wonderful reader opened my eyes to this trick. Don't know who she is, but if you're reading this, thank you!

2. POST PLANNING - Every now and then I know I'll be away and won't be able to blog. Since I just know that the very planet we live on would stop (maybe just slow) spinning if I didn't blog, I had to figure out a way to fix this horrible problem. I have two fixes (1) Get over myself, and just let a day or two pass without posting (gasp!) and (2) Use the "Post Options". See the tan box that you write your post in? In the bottom right corner, there's that blue text that says "Post Options". All you do is adjust your "Post date and time" to a *future* date and time. And here's the trick...when you're done with your post and have set the date and time you'd like to publish on, click the orange "Publish Post" button, NOT the "Save Now" button. After you click the Publish Post button, it will bring you back to your list of posts, and will say that you've "scheduled" a post for such and such a date. Pretty nifty!

3. Copying. Have you noticed how you can't highlight and copy your text to another program or "compose" window? Every now and then I want to do this...maybe Blogger won't let me save, and I don't want to lose everything I've written...or maybe I'm doing a cross-post and don't want to re-write everything all over again at the 2nd blog. Whatever the reason, it was always a pain when I couldn't just copy and paste my pictures and text. BUT YOU CAN COPY AND PASTE THE HTML CODE! It sounds fancy, but it's not at all. See that "Edit Html" tab up there next to the "Compose" tab? Click on it. Highlight everything, even stuff that looks like garbled words, right click, click copy, and then paste it wherever you want to put it. If you're pasting it to another post, you need to save it to the "Edit Html" page of the new post. When you click back over to "Compose"...there it is! Pictures and all!

Click on back to Rocks In My Dryer for more great tips. Thanks for stopping by!