creating a blog

[shelbyro]

Hi group--
I am trying to start a blog for myself at www.diaryland.com, and am wondering if anyone's had any experience with them?

I am fairly technically oriented, but am new to having any kind of website, blog, etc. I signed up for the gold membership (I should have done that after asking for recommendations--that's what I get for multitasking!).:rolleyes

Does anyone have great recommendations or advice for me?

thanks!
Michelle

[jennmwalsh]

Oooh...I used to post on diaryland. Do you know anything about html? If you do, there are lots of places where you can choose templates to change the look of your journal. I used to use diaryland, but didn't want to upgrade to a gold membership, so I went to blogger. Anyway, the site I'm using now, FindingHer (http://findingher.blogspot.com), I used a Diaryland template, and just made the customizations to make it fit into the blogger format.

I use this site to find templates: jennithepirate (http://www.jennithepirate.com/templates/content.php?content=links) to find links to designers.

To save room on your site (considering you should have LOTS of crochet pictures to keep us all happy, LOL) you can use an outside image hosting site, such as Photobucket (http://photobucket.com) and pnavy.com (http://pnavy.com) to host your pictures for free.

Hope this isn't confusing :) Ask any questions, I'll try to help if I can.

[shelbyro]

Thanks for the reply jen--

I actually have much better knowledge (if you can call it that) of XML coding, because I code things all day at work, but it's similar.

This is as far as I have gotten so far:
shelbyro.diaryland.com/ (http://shelbyro.diaryland.com/)

so far, only a picture of one of my kids, but crochet will be forthcoming!

I am having trouble getting it to be blog style, and the previous and next links don't work. I must have deleted a tag somewhere in the template.

Next week (at work) I will explore for better templates.

thanks again! michelle

[Julie]

Shelby, and everyone else -

I host my pictures through <a href="http://snapfish.com" target="_new">snapfish.com</a>. They seem to have unlimited albums and I can link jpgs all day long. Quick and easy to use, too.

Off to check out photobucket. :o)

[shelbyro]

thanks again for all the help. I should be able to work more on my site tomorrow!

another 2 questions: How do I get my actual photo to appear on these messages (not a link)--like others' in the Projects forum, for example. when I upload my photo to a free image host (Imageshack.us), I get 3 html lines back, but don't know what to use, the seem to just be links?

sample:
Post your image on message boards!
[img]www.imageshack.us/img1/11...1.jpg[/img (http://www.imageshack.us/img1/112/easter1.jpg[/img)]

Hotlink your image on your personal website or eBay Auction!
<img src="www.imageshack.us/img1/112/easter1.jpg" (http://www.imageshack.us/img1/112/easter1.jpg") alt="Image Hosted by ImageShack.us" />

Link your image to your friends or see it here yourself!
www.imageshack.us/my.php?...aster1.jpg (http://www.imageshack.us/my.php?loc=img1&image=easter1.jpg)


What is a Hotlink?

sorry so long, but tia!

[MommaChelle]

To place a photo in your blog, using the URL from your photo host, use this html:

< img src="" > without the spaces after and before the < > and place the URL inside the quotes
http://www.imageshack.us/img1/112/easter1.jpg


Hope this helps :) I've been designing websites for 5 years, writing html by hand. I use blogger.com for my blogs, so I dont know anything about diaryland, sorry.


Chelle

[shelbyro]

cool! thanks--next time I have a picture to post i will try that--

:clap Michelle