Stash Bee Tutorial - How to Post on the Stash Bee Blog

So you're all excited that you've joined Stash Bee but you've never blogged before or you used a different blogging platform and you're not sure how to post on blogger.  Well, this blog post is for you then. I'm going to walk you through, step by step on how to write a blog post in Blogger.

Please note: As you read through this tutorial, you can click on each photo to make it larger to see the detail.

STEP 1
When you first open up Blogger, you will see the main dashboard with a listing of all posts. There will be an orange box at the top that says "New Post." Click on that to begin.

STEP 2
Now you will be in the Post Form. There is a lot of information in the photo below. Some important things to note --

1. Be sure to give your post a title. Including your hive is always helpful. A good example is "Hive 1 Block for Diana"

2. To add a photo of your block, click on the photo icon and choose the appropriate method (upload from URL, from computer, etc.)

3. Label your post. Correctly labeling your post allows others to easily find it throughout the year. 90% of all posts will only have 3 labels - the year, the month, and the hive. In continuing my example from above, I would label that post - 2017, January, Hive1. Please note: all of the labels are already in place so you just need to select them from the drop-down menu.

4. Sign Your Name. This may sound obvious, but with 100 people posting on the blog, it's not always easy to know who is writing a particular post. If you didn't set up a specific name in your google account it might show something like Quiltr248 -- which, let's be honest, could be any one of us -- so please sign your name at the end of the post, please!

STEP 3
Publish Your Blog Post. The only thing left to do now is to publish your blog post for everyone to see. You'll notice in the photo above that there are a few options in the upper right-hand side. You have Publish -- Save -- Preview -- Close.  Let's take a look at all of those.

PUBLISH - This does exactly what it says. When you click on this button, your post will go live on the blog for everyone to see. If that's what you want to do, then click on it and you are done.

SAVE - Blogger has a built-in autosave feature but, if you're like me, I tend to be a little OCD especially when I'm working on a long post, specifically tutorials, and I prefer to click on it every so often just to back up my work.

PREVIEW - This is a way to check your work to double check to see if you like your spacing or the sizing of a photo. When you click on preview, it will open up a new window to see how it will look with all of the Stash Bee formating. You will not be able to make any edits within that preview.

CLOSE - Clicking close will save your post as a draft and allow you to come back later and edit it. It will not publish it.

A SPECIAL NOTE FOR WRITING AND POSTING TUTORIALS

The same rules apply when it's your turn to be queen and it comes time for you to write your tutorial on how to make your block. There is one VERY IMPORTANT THING that I want to point out, though, and that is how to SCHEDULE A POST TO PUBLISH AT A SPECIFIC DATE AND TIME. Tutorials are supposed to be scheduled for the first of the month. On the right side of the blog post form, just underneath the labels, you will see a Schedule setting. See below.

When you click on the Schedule tab you have the option to set the date and time for your post to publish. After you've selected your date and time, click on the done button at the bottom. Now here is the important thing here -- CLICK PUBLISH!!!!  Yes, you read that correctly. You must click PUBLISH. Here, let me write that one more time in capital letters -- PUBLISH! If you click close, it will save your tutorial as a draft. Your tutorial date will come and go, and your tutorial will still be a draft. Once you hit publish, you will be taken back to the main blogger dashboard page and you will see that your blog post is listed as SCHEDULED.

I hope that this tutorial has been helpful to new and returning members alike. It can easily be found in the Resources & Tips tab at the top of the page.