This is Your Blog
Blogging has become very popular in the last few years and it’s not surprising. Blogging offers the amazing ability to communicate on a global scale with other people in your industry. You can get feed back from your Website and touch lives like never before.
APNA invites you to take advantage of this exciting opportunity to make your views, suggestions, or rants, heard by voicing them on the APNA Website blog. Parents and nannies alike can benefit from your knowledge and expertise. Make your APNA blog a resource for your industry by supplying articles and news items effecting nannies, parents and nanny agencies alike.
Find out how you can participate and become a valuable asset to your APNA Website and the nanny agency community.
Comment on a post or write your own!
To Comment –
Navigate to the bottom of any post and fill in your name and email address and comment. Then click submit. Your comment should instantly appear.
To Register -
Simply click the “Register” link under “Register/Login”. Select a username and input your email address. Click the “Register” button. It’s that simple. You will be emailed a password to use along with the username you selected to login to the blog.
To Login –
Navigate to the blog ( www.theapna.org/blog ) . Select the “Login” link under “Register/Login”. Input your user name and password you were assigned via email. Click the “Login” button and you’re in! You can change your password and personal information by clicking the “Site Admin” link under “Register/Login” then navigating to the Profile tab. The other areas of the Site Admin are not available unless you become an author.
Want to be an Author? –
We know many of you out there are great writers and have a lot to contribute to the nanny industry. We want to hear from you. Share your nanny knowledge with the world. That’s what this blog is all about.
To Become an Author –
Register as indicated above. Then send your president, Annie Davis, a request to be an author by emailing her at annied@drizzle.com . If approved, Annie will change your status from Subscriber to Author. She will email you once you are approved. At that point you will be able to login as normal, however you will be given additional access to the “Site Admin” where you can write and manage your blog posts.
To Write a Post –
Login as normal and navigate to the “Site Admin” under “Register/Login”. Once in the control panel of your blog, select the “Write” tab or “Write a post” link.
Once you’re on the “Write Post” page, look on the right hand side - the only thing you need to change is the Category your post will appear under. The default is News. You can select another category (or two) by selecting a radio button. Now you’re ready to write your post. Decide on a title (the shorter the better) and type it in to the Title field. Now you’re ready to type or paste in your article. Do not paste from Word. If you write your article in Word to use the spell check and grammar check, copy it in to Notepad or Wordpad, then paste it in to the blog from there.
Split your post –
Once your article is typed or copied in to the editor, you’ll need to split it so the whole article doesn’t appear all at once. To split your article so you have a teaser paragraph and a “Read the rest of this entry” link, put your curser where you want the split to be. It is best to split your post between paragraphs. Now, select the split icon in the editor. It’s right next to the Image upload editor (which is a picture of a tree). The Split a post icon looks like two white boxes on top of each other and when you hover over it, it says “Split post with More tag”. Click the Split post icon while your curser is where you want the split to be. It will then produce a line with the word “more” at the end. Your post is now split and the top part will appear on the blog home page and the rest of your post will appear after the link is clicked.
Adding images –
Adding images to a Website or blog can be tricky. Basic image optimizing knowledge is very helpful and highly recommended if you plan of uploading images to the APNA blog.
Sizing your images –
It is highly recommended that you size your images before you upload them. Images from a digital camera are extremely large in file size and can bog down a blog making the page take a long time to load. If you’d like a good tool to size down your digital images, this website offers a great option to expensive software. http://www.resize2mail.com/index.php Once your images are sized properly, you can upload them to your post.
To upload an image –
On the Write Post page in the control panel under the text editor, you’ll see an image upload tool. It offers the ability to upload images and then add them to your post. To upload an image, select the “Browse” option on the tool. Navigate to the image you’d like to upload. Select it and click the “open” button. Type in the title and brief description of the image (this is optional). Then click the “Upload” button. The image is now in your file for adding to the post. To add the image you just uploaded, to the post, place your curser where you want the image to go. Now, click the image you just uploaded and select the “Send to editor” link. Your image should now show up in your post. Now, change the alignment of your image, select the image and then click the Image icon (tree picture) in the editor and select your preferences then hit the “update” button. This will force your image to its’ original size and align it as you’ve indicated.
To create a link –
You can also make your image a link by selecting the image and clicking the link icon (looks like a chain) on the editor, filling out the preferences, then clicking “insert”.
Or you can make a text link by selecting the text in the editor and clicking the link icon (chain) in the editor and filling out the preferences.
To Publish -
Once you are done with your post, click the “Publish” button. It will then be published on the Website.
As an author, you are also able to manage your own posts, but not posts made by others.
This is your blog. It offers you the abilty to communicate on a global scale and allow the APNA Website to become a resource to the nanny agency community.
Your participation is greatly needed and appreciated. We hope to hear from you soon!
March 17th, 2007 at 11:32 am
We’ve now made it easier than ever to comment on the APNA blog. Simply navigate to the article you wish to comment on, and Leave a Reply. The only requirement is your name and email address, which we won’t share with anyone.
Happy Blogging!
October 15th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
Hi Annie and Vera! Kelly and I just wanted to thank you again for the incredible conference in Seattle. All the APNA members that participated made it a most memorable experience. We appreciate the effort and hard work that went into all the planning. Vera, your presentation was soooo helpful. Thank you, thank you, thank you!