Basic Lesson 8: Adjusting Your Blog Settings

The settings section of your blog is very important as it controls a lot of the functionality by which your readers interface with your blog. As you can see from the image below, the Settings tab is divided into 8 sub-tabs. The default settings on most options will suffice but we will point out a few you should consider changing.



The Basic Sub-Tab
Filling in the Description section on this sub-tab gives you a sub-title for your blog that falls right below the title. This is a great place to give a description of what your blog is about as readers will see this immediately.



E-mail post links are turned off by default. When turned on, a little envelope icon appears beneath each of the posts on your blog. Readers can click this icon to easily e-mail another person a link to your post. Since you want readers to spread the word about your blog, turning this tool on is a great idea.



The Formatting Sub-Tab
The default number of posts displayed on the front page of your blog is seven. You can change this to a higher or lower number or even change the option to displaying a certain number of days worth of posts. We find 7 posts is a reasonable number, but feel free to change it to suit your taste.



The Comments Sub-Tab
If you want readers to be able to leave comments on your posts, make sure the Show Comments option is on. You have three choices regarding who can leave comments on your blog. The most restrictive is "Only Members of This Blog". You can assign membership to a blog, but that kind of defeats the purpose of a free and open exchange of ideas. "Only Registered Users" is a good choice as only people who have signed up for a Blogger account can post comments. This will help cut down (but not eliminate) spam comments. The most risky option is allowing "Anyone" to comment. This can lead to bad spam problems if moderation is not enabled.



If you decide to show comments (and thereby allow people to leave comments), you should enable moderation. This requires you to enter an e-mail address. Whenever a non-member leaves a comment, you will receive an e-mail. You will need to check the comments frequently to ensure they are valid (not spam) or are not offensive to you or your readers. You can delete comments you don't like. Showing word verification for comments is a great way to cut down on spam. To leave a comment, a person has to key in the letters shown on screen in a small box. This foils automated software agents that are often used to leave spam comments.



The Permissions Sub-Tab
On this sub-tab, you can assign other people the ability to create posts on your blog. This is especially useful for student group blog projects or for maintaining a blog with fellow faculty members. To assign more authors, just click the blue Add Authors button.



The dialog box below is now displayed. Just enter the e-mail addresses (separated by commas) of the people you wish to invite. Then click the orange Invite button. When they receive your e-mail invitation, they will be able to register on Blogger (if they don't already have an account) and become an author on your blog.