Simtropolis Blogs

Welcome!  The Simtropolis Blogs feature is finally up.  Well, what are you waiting for?  Go create your blog!  The Simtropolis Blognet is a way for users to express themselves with their art, writings, or anything they wish to talk about.  Unwind your day with the Simtropolis Blog Network.

Tabls Of Contents

Browser Support
Titles
How To Edit Your Blog
Refreshing Blog Cache
Blog SlideShows

Useful Information

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Browser Support:

So far, there is NO support for Internet Explorer 7 in the "Edit Blog Settings" panel..  If you need a different internet browser, try Firefox.
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Titles:

The titles of your blogs may only use regular characters, and only a-z letters. (Uppercase or lowercase.)  If/When you submit a new blog, any 'extra characters' will be pulled out.
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How to edit your blog:

Your blog administration panel is located under a path to your blog URL.  So, by navigating to your blog, say, http://blogs.simtropolis.com/yourblog/admin/.  This is where you will have full control over blog entries, blog pages, photo albums, even the look and feel of your personal blog.

Here is your admin panel links menu.  Highlighted in red is the "Add entry" button.  This is how you add blog entries.  Shown with the arrow, is the "Edit Blog Settings" link.  This is how one edits the colors, and graphics of his/her blog.  Your Banner Image is the image on the top of your blog.  The image should be 995 pixels long and 100 pixels high, for best quality.  Any extra pixels will be cut off and not shown.

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Refreshing Blog Cache

Your blog is hosted on a virtual server.  When you make changes, the server caches the information stored.  Sometimes, whe you make a change, this information is not re-cached and does not appear live.  You must then do this manually, with the Refresh Blog Cache button located on the menu bar in your blog administration panel.

Blog SlideShows

This Simtropolis Blognet offers a slide show utility.  This utility allows you to upload images and share them in an organized manner.  The slideshow will show one image at a time, with a caption at the bottom (If you entered one) and a Last | Next link under that.  When you finish creating your slide show, you must link it with a new blog entry.  Follow the steps above to create a new blog entry, then find the slide show utility again.  Find the slideshow you just made, then click the "View" link to the right.  The URL to your slide show should be similar:
(The red text is what will be different.)

http://blogs.simtropolis.com/BLOGUSER/slideshow.cfm/SLIDE_SHOW_NAME


Here is a description for the numbers below:
(Note, this is a picture of my administration panel, yours may differ slightly.)

1.  If you wish to cancel editing your slideshow or you are finished uploading pictures, click this button.
2.  If you have finished choosing an image to upload, and are done captioning it (Optional) the click this button. The imag you chose will now be live in your slide show.
3.  Cick the browse button when choosing an image.  The image must be stored on your computer.
4.  If you made a mistake in uploading an image, you can click "Delete" button.





When you are finished linking your slide show, it is good to start a new category.  Name the category however you like, but I chose "Photo Albums".  If you would like to attatch anything to the blog post, use the "Enclosure feature".  Browse for your attatchment, and click save. Sometimes it is useful to click preview before posting your blog, just to be sure the formatting gets to be correct.
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If you have any other questions, please ask them here.  I will do my best to answer them!