Blogging is fun and easy to do! With just a few simple steps you can create your own web pages, upload photos and much more. Here is how to get started:

After you’ve registered and activated your free Learn Share Act account you are ready to start blogging. (For questions about registration please visit Quick Start Guide to Getting Started.)

After logging in, from the green upper Navigation Bar at the very top of your browser window select the “My Blogs” button and then “Your Blog Name (Admin)” and then “New Post.” 

What you will see next is what we call the Blog Dashboard. 

Before we dive in how to write a blog post, let’s explain what a Blog is.  A blog is kind of like your own personal newspaper that you publish to the Internet, creating your own personal web site. While you can have more than one blog at Learn Share Act for most people one blog is all they will ever need.

Posts are like individual articles published within your blog. Posts do not even have to related. You can write posts about ideas for improving the world, personal improvement, thoughts, concerns, political rants, you name it.

Learn Share Act’s member blogs are all powered by WordPress, so you have free access to the most powerful blogging software on the planet.  Write Blog Posts, upload photos, invite your friends so you can dialog, brainstorm and have good spirited fun with them.

You can do this all through your Blog’s “Admin Dashboard” which you can see pictured below:

To make it easy for readers to read all your posts for a particular subject area, most people like to create different Categories (I used Personal, Sustainability and Political Ramblings) to assign their posts to.  You can create Categories by selecting the Categories sub-menu below Posts on the left side of the Dashboard.

You can simply create a title for the post, write your post content and then you can select Preview to see what it looks like and then Publish to make your post visible to the world.  Now you can email the link to your post to friends and family members and please be sure to invite them to join Learn Share Act as well. 

To enhance the appearance, from the Add New Post or Add New Page sections you can add photos to your posts and pages by clicking on the little photo icon by where it says “Add Media” above the fonts toolbar on the Add New Post Page. You will see you can also bold text, add bullet points and add web links. The “Visual” tab must be selected in order to see these menus. The HTML tab can be used to insert raw HTML code into your post if you wish, but you don’t have to bother with that if you don’t want to.   

Want to write an “About You” page to go onto your blog. Simply click on the “Add New” button below the “Pages” menu on the left to create a new page.

Want to change the Sidebar that people see when reading your blog posts and pages? From your Admin Dashboard from the left hand menu, select the little arrow to expand the “Appearance” menu and then select “Widgets” from below “Appearance.” Then under “Current Widgets” select “Blog-Sidebar” and then click on the “Show” button and your screen will look like the picture below:

Next, from the left hand side find the “Text” button and Add it and then select “Save Changes.” Then select the “Edit” button from the Text Widget and add the words Welcome to the header section and type your message below that. Don’t forget to select “Save Changes” again. If you want to change the order of the widgets drag them into a different order and hit “Save Changes” each time. Now when people view your blog they will see your custom Welcome message. For even more info on the power of Widgets check out the Support Video on Widgets.

Visit Support Videos to see short videos demonstrating how to write a new blog post, adding a page or a widget. If you have questions about anything else please visit our Help page.

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