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This page describes how to create a new "blog" on an existing account at Blogger and publish the finished entries to a Spaceports
site.
Signing up for a free account is quick and simple (it only involves you entering a username and
password of your choice, along with a valid email address), so I'm sure you don't need my help for
that part.
If you have an existing blog that you wish to setup for publishing at Spaceports, you can also
use this as a guide.
Create a new blog
Once you have logged into your Blogger account, follow the link to create a new blog.
You will then find yourself on the first page of a series of four, which determine the details
for that particular blog (you can have more than one).
Don't worry about messing things up, you can always change these details later.
Page 1 of 4
Set the "Title" and "Description" fields however you prefer. I suggest that you make them
meaningful though.
Set "Public Blog" to "No" for now. You can always change it later, but at this stage it's
a little pointless to list an empty blog in their directory, and you may end up deleting your first
effort and starting over.
Page 2 of 4
Select the "FTP it to your own server" option.
Page 3 of 4
Using the following examples as a guide, enter your server info:-
Entries in a separate directory.-
FTP server: galileo.spaceports.com
FTP path: public_html/blog/
Blog Filename: index.htm
Blog URL: http://galileo.spaceports.com/~USERNAME/blog/
(or http://galileo.spaceports.com/~USERNAME/blog/index.htm)
Entries that share your root directory.-
FTP server: galileo.spaceports.com
FTP path: public_html/
Blog Filename: blog.html
Blog URL: http://galileo.spaceports.com/~USERNAME/blog.html
Please note:
- You must change "USERNAME" to your username
- .htm or .html are valid file extensions, but you must be consistent
- If your blog entries share a directory with other files, use filenames that will not
conflict
Page 4 of 4
Choose one of the templates from the selection shown. Once your blog is created, you will
have the opportunity to choose from a wider selection, or create you own.
Further settings
You're not quite done yet. There is a little more info that you will need to enter before
you will be able to publish your blog.
From the main page of your blog, select "Settings" from the top menu, then use the following as
a guide for adjusting the essential settings:-
FTP Username: USERNAME
FTP Password: ????????
FTP Archive Path: Same as FTP path
FTP Archive Filename: arc.htm (or arc.html)
Fairly obviously, you should replace "USERNAME" with your username and "????????" with your
password.
The "FTP Archive Path" can be different to your "FTP path" if you wish, but it must start with
"public_html/" if you wish your archives to be available to your visitors.
The "FTP Archive Filename" can be any valid HTML document filename, but I suggest that you keep
it short as archives for each month or week are named by adding the date in front of that
filename.
For example, if "arc.htm" was the archive index, then "2003_02_28_arc.htm" would be the archive
file for 28th February, 2003
Don't forget to save the changes when you're done.
Final steps
As archive index file will not be created if you don't have any entries old enough to be
archived, you are likely to get nasty 404 (file not found) errors before then.
The easiest way around this problem is to create your own "arc.htm" file that says something
along the lines of "there are no archives yet", and upload it to your blog directory. Blogger
will then overwrite the page when that statement is no longer true.
Here's some example code:-
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Archives unavailable</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<P>I'm sorry, but there are no archived entries available yet.</P>
<P>Please check back later.</P>
</BODY>
</HTML>
Copy and paste that to your favourite HTML editor and save it as "arc.htm" (or whatever filename
you chose earlier). Start your FTP program, create any necessary directories, and then upload
the file.
Even if you are not going to bother creating this file, or don't intend to use the archive
options, the directory you intend to use for your blog must already exist, so create that
now (if you need to) before you forget.
You should then be ready to post and publish your blog entries.
Happy blogging!
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