How to blog without punching your computer.

I know I'm not alone when I say that I get extremely annoyed when Blogger won't format my posts the way I want them to. It also never inserts my pictures where I want them to but rather posts them at the top. It seems that I have to go edit the blogger code after every post to have it post the way I want it to be. Luckily I have some coding background; although not much, but enough to do some decent damage (ask anyone at ils.cefutenmai.com).

I have this thing inside me that all my call center experiences has plagued me with: it's called "being efficient." Although I'm typically the last guy to be efficient, I've still been brainwashed enough to have it constantly bouncing around in my head.

Anyway, enough prefacing.. here's my tips on how you can live a long, sane life of blogging on blogger.com.

1- Spellcheck. Get a real-time spellchecker!! I'm putting this first because it requires work outside of your blog. I use ie7 despite all the security holes. I know Mozilla Firefox is more secure, but it bugs me for some reason. If you use ie7 as well, please download ie7pro. It's simple, it's lightweight, the find feature is very non-intrusive and the spellcheck will check as you type (p.s. "spellcheck" is not a word, apparently.. doesn't matter because I just added it to my dictionary!!). You really can skip this step, but I haven't been able to get blogger.com's spellcheck feature working in months... I dunno why.

2- Beginning. Before you write your blog, clear your mind of how you want it to look. Forget font style, size, color, line-spacing, pictures... everything. Now that that's done, start writting your blog using the Edit Html tab. Ignore the Compose button.. this will hurt you in so many emotional ways. It's so very much easier to finish your blog content, then go back and make everything look fine and fancy and -- most important of all -- consistent!!

So, now we're typing in Edit Html mode .. well, I am, actually. You're just reading at the moment... should I have told you to envision these steps or follow along at the beginning of this entry?

So, now I'm typing in Edit Html mode, you're envisioning or following along in another window, or just reading because you don't care to do that. You do have a few options to use for on the fly formatting: bold, italics, links, quotes, pics and videos. You should obviously use these as you create you entry so you don't have to go back and find where you wanted to bold or add a link. You can even add pictures as you go, but don't worry about positioning yet (they'll be at the top again.. more on adding pictures later).

3- Apparently, later is now: Pictures. Blogger hates putting pictures where you want them. Instead, it will always post them at the beginning of your blog while also making it difficult for you to place them where they need positioned. While I can't confirm this, I also believe it is the leading cause of changing your line spacing from nice, evenly spaced lines to having them run right on top of each other... "Not, very, pretty." (What Disney movie was that from?)

I've found the easiest way to place pictures where you want them to be is to type placeholder text where you want the picture to be placed. ie. I usually type something like PIC_armedbox or some cryptic word where I can search for it later. If I have only one picture to post, I upload it right away, however if I have several, I just leave the uploading for when I'm finished with my text. When I do this, I can just ctrl+F (find) and search for "PIC_" if I need to remember what pictures I had planned to upload and place.

Now, you have your pictures uploaded, scroll to the top of your blog. You'll find code such as this:

{a href="http:blahblahblah"}{img style="blah" src="http:blah" /}{/a} with carets instead of brackets.

Highlight all of the code from the beginning "<" to the ending "/a>", cut (ctrl-x), search for your placeholder text (ie. "PIC_"), then paste (ctrl+v)!

Vundubar Results!

4- Finish. Ok, so you've finished your picture placement as well as typing your blog. NOW you get you use the Compose tab and make everything look pretty (well, mine will look pretty, yours will look the way you want it to look). In Compose view, make sure your cursor is flashing in the body of your text, perform a Select All (ctrl+A), and use the formatting toolbar to choose your font type, size, alignment... go add pretty bullets if you want to.

Viola! Pretty blog, less headaches. I may have described the process more complex than it really is, but once you have a good foundation of starting as simple as possible, you can finish without the hour or two editing your blog to look the way you want it to.

Edit: Also, the quote feature will ruin your spacing as well.. don't use it if you can.