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Getting Started
How to get your own Blog or Website?
The first thing to do is to Register (Click Here). Once you are on the registration page you find a form with two input-fields.
One for the username which doesn’t have to be your real name rather than the name you wish to have for your blog domain. Giving it the user name “yourname” results in the blog domain www.yourname.dragonboatnet.com/PaddleSace.
In the second field please provide your valid e-mail address. Then make a choice whether you want to have a blog or if you simply want to be a user who can give comments only to posts and blogs. Click on “Next” and a new page opens showing you the blog domain and asking you to give your blog a name, which can be anything of your choice. Under “Privacy” Â your choice is to make your blog searchable at Google,Yahoo & Co or not. The default setting is “Yes”, since it is assumed that you want people to find your blog. Click “Signup”.
Now check your e-mail for a message and follow the instructions to activate your blog. I thank you for your understanding on this procedure which is only to keep automated spam out.
How to change your Password?
After logging in you will be automatically landing on the “Dashboard” of your blog’s administration. The yellow written menu is the Main- and underneath is the Sub-Menu. In the Sub-Menu go to “Your Profile”, scroll down the page and find the form for changing the password. Don’t forget to save it by clicking on “Update Profile”.
How to choose your Blog Design?
In the Main-Menu go to “Presentation”. Automatically you should come to “Themes”. Click on the picture of any available Theme and your Blog will switch to it. Above the Main-Menu, beside your Blog’s title you find the link (view site >). Click it and take a look if you like it. If not, just hit your browser’s “Back-Button” and choose another Theme just like you have done it before. You can change the Theme of your Blog or Site at any time without being afraid of your content to disappear.
Customizing Themes
There are Themes customizable to a certain degree by yourself directly from the administration. Go to “Presentation”/ “Themes” and activate either Theme “marketplace”. “nineo” or “wpseo”. Look at the Sub-Menu for “Current Theme Options”. Simply take a look and play around to learn what you can do. Understanding i.e. a team or club would like to have its logo in the header, depending on my time I would be willing to make a new header picture for you, if you send me your picture or logo by e-mail. For the more advanced in web design, you also can create your own header, upload it as a picture in the relevant dimension and link it up. The Theme “WordPress mu Default” lets you change the header colors.The other Themes available only can be changed by me.
With all Themes you can change the background. Go under “Presentation” to “Background Image” and mark your choice and scroll to bottom of the page to save it. The reset to the original Theme’s background choose “default” below / left on the page.
The changes you make refer only to your Blog and will not affect others. So again, don’t hesitate to explore all the features.
Please note that all Themes are carrying some advertising. For the Hackers beyond you please don’t change it. This site is a free service to the community from private person. However, there are some cost, much time and effort involved maintaining Dragon Boat Net as whole. The Ads are helping to keep this site running and I keep the right of also changing them but not exceeding their size and not changing the positioning. I thank you for the understanding.
Writing Content to your Blog
In the administration go to: “Write” / “Write Post” to come to the text editor. Give your post a title and then look at the big white field where you can type in a few sentences with paragraphs, same like you would do it on your computer when i.e. writing a letter. Click on “Save and Continue Editing” and then view your page via the “View”-link.
Well, depending on your browser you are coming from, you might be disappointed with the result you find on your article’s look. All the formatting with paragraphs is gone and everything is just one big block of text, difficult to read.
If this happens to you please go back to re-edit your post. You can go back to edit the post or page either by simply scrolling down your page and click on “Edit”. If you don’t find that link go to “Admin” in your page’s navigation menu. Find “Manage” in the Main-Menu and then in the Sub-Menu either “Posts” or “Pages”, whatever is relevant. Find your post or page listed in the table shown and click “edit”.
Being back in the editor, on top of the text-field’s menu there are two Click-Buttons, “Visual” and “Code”. Click on “Code”! Now you will see your totally unformatted text with no paragraphs. The text-field’s menu has changed too. Format your text into paragraphs by using the “b-quote” menu-button once at the beginning of your paragraph and once at the end but now with a slash. It should look like:
<blockquote> text of paragraph one</blockquote> <blockquote> text of paragraph two</blockquote>
For making bigger headlines within your text you can insert so called “h” tags, which usually come together with a number like “h1″, “h2″ and so on but rarely more than “h6″. Which of those to use will depend on each Theme’s style definitions when it was made. You simply will need to try it out unless you are a web designer who knows how to read the source code. You will need to key it in manually and it should look like:
<blockquote><h2>your headline 1</h2></blockquote> <blockquote>text of paragraph 1</blockquote> <blockquote><h2>your headline 2</h2></blochquote> <blockquote>text of paragraph 2</blockquote> <blockquote><h2>your headline 3</h2></blockquote> and so on…
Further Help
This concludes the start up help. There would be much more to describe, but I’m also sure much of it you will figure out by yourself. Please feel free to ask your questions as a comment to this post, so that others can learn from it too. There is also plenty of original WordPress documentation available to which you will the link at the very bottom of each page within the administration area. With the hope of having given the paddlers and Dragon Boat Community a useful tool and platform, I remain with a “Enjoy It”.