Blogivists HQ

…it’s just a (somewhat) tedious process.

If you use Internet Explorer, you are probably aware that video does not show up properly on your blog. Even if you don’t use it though, your readers using IE still can’t see the embedded video.

After weeks and weeks of intensive troubleshooting, The Blogivists Team has figured out how to make video appear on the Internet Explorer browser. Finally!

So let’s begin…

On step 5 of the original tutorial, I mention that one can revert back to the “Visual” viewer after embedding in “HTML”. While, of course, you have the ability to do so, you should not. Not if you want your readers using Internet Explorer to be able to see your video.

For some reason, Internet Explorer will not display video properly if, after embedding video, you switch back to the “Visual” viewer. The very act, that of switching viewers, corrupts the code for Internet Explorer. So instead of seeing video, anyone using Internet Explorer sees a blank, white box. Strange, I know.

Note: this is not a problem for anyone using Firefox (or any other browser, besides IE). These people will see video properly no matter how the author embeds code. However, given that a large percentage of the population still uses IE, it’s probably smart to always make adding-video your last step.

Here’s the step by step:

• Complete all work on your post.
• Embed the video and then click “Save” or “Publish”.
  
• If for any reason you need to go back and edit features of an old post, copy first and then cut the video code, re-pasting it into its previous position after all editing work is complete.

There you go! Here’s a video tutorial to demonstrate getting past the IE conundrum:

As you can tell by the large graphic on the front page, we’ve (finally) decided to announce October’s Blogivist of the Month! About time, right?

Well, frankly, we wanted to wait till after the election. Pre-election? The media is preoccupied with the election. Post-election? We have a better chance of making the news cycle. But moreover, it’s movement-oriented. On a large scale, post-election is when blogging dips. (Blogging comes natural during election season. Post? Yeah… not so much.) So what better way to keep the content flowing than by officially starting our BOTM program. Alright!

So, without further ado, October’s Blogivist of the Month is… E!! The True Conservative Story! Hailing from the city of sin, E!! keeps national and Nevadan politicians in check on a daily basis. If you haven’t already, check her out now! She’s a blogging machine, evident by her credentials:

In addition to blogging here on E!!, I am Director of Policy at All American Blogger and managing editor of our (new!!) state blog Nevada Edition. I also blog at Culture 11’s LadyBlog twice a week (and am a huge fan our managing editor, Joe Carter).

Congrats E!!. We’re thrilled that you’re here!

So who’s going to be next?

So you’ve been missing lunches, neglecting your children, and ignoring your spouse all in a desperate drive to throw up one more post a day to win October’s Blogivist of the Month.

Due to a generous grant from our sugar-daddy’s at the Sam Adams Alliance, blogivists.com is proud to announce the Blogivist of the Month Award.

Every month, on the first of the month, we’ll be giving away $250 to a blogivist with consistent and exceptional content.

What specifically are we looking for? Pretty much the same criteria we use for editor’s choice…with a few additions.

• Message: blogivists is a blogging community for individuals who love liberty, freedom, individualism, etc. If your blog doesn’t reflect those values, yeah…it’s not going to get picked.
• Personality: this isn’t some wonky policy paper; it’s a blog. Be punchy, witty, sarcastic and personable. Use humor and irony.
• Structure: posts written in a reader-friendly format (as opposed to the ominous block of text) sit well with us. Pictures and video a bonus.
• Readership: we got your Firestats, and yes, will be checking them. Of course, this isn’t just a simple traffic race; other factors weigh heavily. For example, we’ll see if your blog is generating buzz by looking at the number of comments and incoming links.
• SEO Practices: we want you guys to become popular so hopefully you’re blogging in a way that boosts your search-engine optimization. Tagging. Linking. These things give you google juice.
• Consistency: …is key. So regardless of whether you post 3x a day or 3x a week, keep it consistent. Your readers will thank you.
• Timely: nobody wants to read last week’s news. Or even yesterday’s news for that matter. Try to keep your blog as up-to-date as possible.
• Content: original content beats recycled; substantiated content beats unverified; original substantiated content takes the cake.
• Avatar: perhaps, most importantly…you need an avatar! I mean, how are we going to showcase your blog on the homepage if we don’t have an avatar to do it with? Learn how here!

True to its title, only bloggers on blogivists are eligible for the award and employees of the Sam Adams Alliance are not. All blogivists are automatically entered.

The first Blogivist of the Month will be announced November 1st for the month of October.

So…what are you waiting for? Go blog!

A blogroll is a list of blogs, typically located on a blog’s sidebar, that reads as a list of recommendations to outside readers. The list of links demonstrates a blogger’s interests, affiliations, and - moreover - connections.

Having a blogroll effectively tells your readers, “Hey! Here are some blogs that I like. Maybe you will too.” Furthermore, it communicates to those bloggers you put on your blogroll, “I really dig your site and think it’s worth mentioning to my readers.”

Found yourself on someone else’s blogroll? It’s definitely not something to take lightly; in fact, consider it a sign of respect and think about adding them to yours.

First Things First: Displaying Your Blogroll

In order to make your blogroll functional, you have to first add the “Links” widget. To do that:

1. Go to “Design”.
2. Click on the “Widgits” tab.
3. “Add ” the “Links” widgit (located on the left-hand side of the page underneath “Available Widgets”).

Good. Now the links you add will actually show up on your blogroll…

Adding Links

…so let’s do just that:

1. Go to “Write”.
2. Click on the “Links” tab.
3. Under “Name”, type the name of the blog or site.
4. Under “Web Address”, type the URL of the blog or site.
5. Click on “Save”.

Check out the video below if you’re still having trouble:

Adding Categories

Eventually your links may become too varied in scope. Say, for instance, you have a wiki (i.e. Ballotpedia) or a news sites (i.e. Drudge) on your blogroll. Those don’t exactly constitute blogs; so, you may want to separate them with categories.

1. While adding a new link, click on “Add New Category” (located underneath “Categories”).
2. Type in your new category. Your new link will be automatically be checked (and thereby, added to the category).
3. Save the link.

You can also categorize old links.

1. Go to “Manage”.
2. Go to the “Links” tab.
3. Go to the link you want to categorize and click on it.
4. Follow the same process as above, remembering to “Save”.

To see the last two processes, click on the video below:

…or at least to your blog anyway.

One of the things we pride ourselves in doing at Blogivists.com is providing our bloggers with an audience. By now, you’ve noticed that every time you write a post, it appears on the right-hand side of the main page under “livefeed”. And - along with the title of your post, user name and number of comments - lies an avatar.

Ava-what!? Avatar!

An avatar, for those of you unaware, is simply a visual representation of your blog that accompanies your posts and - if you allow them - your comments. It’s a great way to shape your online identity and attract blog traffic in the process.

Now every blogger at blogivists has a default avatar (see left), but - as you can see - it’s quite boring, and thereby, quite lame. So the ball is in your court. Get yourself a personalized avatar right now!

1. Once in admin, click on “Users” (located on the right-hand side of the page next to “Plug-ins”.
2. Go to the “Your Avatar” option.
3. Click on the “Browse” button and find an image saved on your computer.
4. Click on “Upload Photo”.
   • If no image appears, there is a problem with the file type or size. Choose another image.
5. Using the preview box, select the area you want to use as your avatar. (Notice that you can expand (or decrease) the size of the preview box.
6. Click “Continue & Crop” and do another step 5 for your “Alternate Avatar”.

Ava-awesome!

A video tutorial of the process follows:

UPDATE: I know, I know: “I’ve already tried to put up an avatar…multiple times! It didn’t work.”

Fair enough.

Here’s the problem. Your image must be larger than 500px x 500px. Anything smaller than that will simply not work. I know - the admin says “75px x 75px”. That’s wrong (and as soon as we figure out how to change it we will). For the time being though, make sure the image you use for your avatar is greater than 500px x 500px.

Want to make your blog posts more exciting? Want your readers to see - to experience - what you’re writing about? Of course you do! Appeal to the A.D.D. inside all of us by having video on your blog.

How did you do it? Here’s how to do it:

1. When writing a post, on the right-hand corner of the text box, switch over from the “Visual” viewer to the “HTML” viewer.
2. Find the video you want on YouTube (or the video website of your choice).
3. Copy the “Embed” code of the particular video. On YouTube, it is found within the video-information box (directly to the right of the video).
4. Paste the “Embed” code in your post (making sure you still are in “HTML” viewer).
5. Switch back to the “Visual” viewer. A yellow box will represent the video’s location within your post.
6. Finish writing your post.
7. Publish and bask in the adoration of a job well done!

As always, here’s some video to visually take you through the process:

UPDATE: On step 5, I mention that one can revert back to the “Visual” viewer after embedding in “HTML”. While, of course, you have the ability to do so, you should not. Not if you want your readers using Internet Explorer to be able to see your video.

For some reason, Internet Explorer will not display video properly if, after embedding video, you switch back to the “Visual” viewer. The very act, that of switching viewers, corrupts the code for Internet Explorer. So instead of seeing video, anyone using Internet Explorer sees a blank, white box. Strange, I know.

Note: this is not a problem for anyone using Firefox (or any other browser, besides IE). These people will see video properly no matter how the author embeds code. However, given that a large percentage of the population still uses IE, it’s probably smart to always make adding-video your last step.

Here’s the step by step:

• Complete all work on your post.
• Embed the video and then click “Save” or “Publish”.
  
• If for any reason you need to go back and edit features of an old post, copy first and then cut the video code, re-pasting it into its previous position after all editing work is complete.

There you go! Here’s a video tutorial to demonstrate getting past the IE conundrum:

Want to add an image to your blog? You have two basic options.

1. Upload it from your computer.
   • If the image isn’t already on your computer but somewhere online, right-click on the image and select “Save Image As”. Save the image somewhere on your computer.
2. Grab the image’s URL online.

Personally, I always go with the former route. Why? There’s no guarantee the image will remain hosted at the site in question; the owner, after all, could decide to delete or move it.

In any case, I’ll show you both ways.

Adding an uploaded image

1. Once in your admin, go to the “Write” tab.
2. Click on “Post”.
3. Click on the sun icon (located directly to the right of the words “Add Media” on the upper-right hand side of the text box).
4. A pop-up box will appear. Click on “Choose files to upload”.
5. Another pop-up - this one your PC file manager - will appear. Choose the image you want in your post.
6. Once the file has uploaded, scroll down and choose the particular options you want. Click on “Insert into Post”.

Adding an image via URL

1. Find an image online and copy its URL.
2. Once in your admin, go to the “Write” tab.
3. Click on “Post”.
4. On your toolbar, click on the “Edit/Insert image” icon (represented by a tree).
5. Paste the URL in the “Image URL” section.
6. Hit “Insert”.

As always, here’s a video tutorial for those of you who learn better with visuals:

They tell me diversity of thought is good, an end in of itself. That it may foster critical thinking skills - and, thereby, work as a means towards ultimate truth - is both incidental and bordering on the irrelevant.

Now I don’t buy into the relativistic claim but, as it turns out, blogivists.com is ideologically diverse! I mean, don’t get me wrong - everyone here believes that government is, more often than not, the anti-solution but even so, there’s quite a bit of variety here when it comes down to the specifics.

To demonstrate, let’s look at the past couple months. I’ll name a few issues and give you a couple pro and con posts from within the Blogivists community. Hot dawg!

(Man-made) Global Warming

Pro:

• projectpetition is pure HORSESHIT! - The Midnight Rider (7/10)
• Breaking Down the Global Warming “Debate - The Midnight Rider (8/06)

Con:

• Man-made Global Warming Consensus Disintegrating - Principle Over Party (7/17)
• Change the Climate Change Debate: Reality is not a Democracy - Extremism in Defense of Liberty (8/08)

Open Borders

Pro:

• GET THEM OUT: Border Jumpers Ruining Our Economy - Liberty is for me (7/7)

Con:

• Hispanosupremacists Infiltrate Evangelical Movement - The Epistolizer (7/12)
• Libot Media, Always On The Side of Illegals - Malignant Liberal Idiocy (8/17)

English as the National Language

Pro:

• Does Anyone Speak English Anymore - In my right mind (7/9)

Con:

• On Liberty, Ideology, and some R-E-S-P-E-C-T - Pragmatically Political (7/10)

Bob Barr

Pro:

• Bob Barr is my homeboy - Nicky Cheese (5/26)
• “McCain fundraiser” - Standard of Living (6/27)

Con:

• Why Bob Barr is NOT your homeboy - Pragmatically Political (6/29)

The Republican Party

Pro:

• The Republican Brand is not Dead - Free Thought for Self-Restrained Minds (7/17)

Con:

• GOP collapse: Should we groan or cheer? - Eric O’Keefe (5/19)
• Limited government no more - The Silent Majority (6/18)
• More signs that Republicans still suck - Eric Odom (7/29)

There you go. And that’s just off the top of my head. Really! So, what I’m getting at here is: with a more thorough internal investigation, we could probably apply for some kind of government subsidy…

Haha. Just kidding! I think that’s one specific we’re unanimously against.

Cheers…to truth and liberty!

After signing up for a blog, you’ll receive a random, computer-generated password - something motley-looking like “b2d98ab19″.

Now acknowledging that, in all likelihood, you’re not going to remember “b2d9…” the next time you want to sign in, change it to something more memorable, more personal!

• From your admin page, click on “Users” (right-most tab).
• Select your “username”.
• Scroll down past all the requests for biographical information to the end of the page, where you’ll see “New Password”.
• There, type in your new password. Type it in again.
• Lastly, remember to click on “Update Profile”.

There you go. Memory-retrieval crisis averted!

For those of you who operate on a strictly visual basis, here’s video: