Blogs

  - What is a blog? Blogs are online writing where bloggers (community member writers) share a variety of personal experiences and insights — including theories, strategies,  and thoughts pertaining to multiple blog categories all related to SAP subjects.
A very important feature of a blog is that it allows readers' comments. Today's technology not only offers traditional written blogging but also oral blogging (podcasting) and even "shown" blogging (video blogging):

- What is Podcasting and Video Blogging?

Podcast is the term used to describe an audio version of a blog, the thoughts, ideas, theories, strategy or otherwise conversation of a person/s done in audio format (typically MP3). Video Blog is the term used to describe a visual diary or log of a person/s using a webcam or other video camera equipment. Both are then made available for playback on a webpage or for download.

Through the use of a third party service we at SCN are able to offer two channels:  BPX Channel and SDN Channel.

- When should I blog?

On BPX and SDN, blogs can be used for short, unofficial announcements, to share experiences, thoughts and opinions about the different SAP products and solutions, SAP communities, SAP projects etc.

Here's an online tutorial about what blogs are and when to use them, as opposed to Wiki.

- How to get started?

- First you'll need to become an SCN blogger. Once you receive the confirmation email, you're ready to go!

- Go to "Blogger Home" or to "Expert Blogger Home" [1], in case you're an experienced blogger, on your left hand navigation. From there you can manage your blogger account:

View your published blogs [3], your pending blogs [4] or your draft blogs [5]. You can of course start a new blog [6] and to upload images [7] you would like to embed. (Please note that this option is meant ONLY for pictures to be featured in your blog. If you would like to attach a picture of yourself to your blog profile, please follow the instructions here).

- In your Blogger Home you also have an overview of all your posted blogs and your author's page [2] - the page a reader sees when he clicks on your name; it includes your bio and picture if exists and a list of your last blogs.

- Valuable tips and more info is available here.

Here's an online tutorialhow to update your blogger profile and how to create a new blog.

 
 How to Blog(1): A few tips to help you get started
 Blogs by Date(2): All the blogs from the last 5 days and recent blog discussions. You can also search the archive for previous blogs from a specific month, starting May 2003.
 Blogs by Category(3): Blogs sorted by more than 100 topics.
 Top Blog Posts(4): The 25 most readable posts over the past month.
 Active Bloggers(5): Learn more about the active bloggers over the last 2 months.
 Podcasts(6): A complete list of the podcasts produced by SCN bloggers, in a chronological order. If you want to submit your own podcast to SDN, read our submission guidelines. Subscribe to our podcast feed to get all notified of the latest podcasts.
 Create/Update Author Page(7): Update your blogger page.
 Blogger Home(8): See "How to get started?" above.
 Expert Blogger Home(9): See "How to get started?" above.
 Contributors Corner(10): Contains useful links to FAQ, community projects and events.

- Creating Your Post 

Click on the "Create New Weblog Post" link. A new window will open:
# Title: Title your blog.

1. Language: Select the blog's language (English is the default language. Additional languages available: German, Spanish and Portuguese).
2. Categories: Select the blog's category. You can choose as many categories as you'd like but please keep in mind that too many categories may anger your audience.
3. Development Area: Select the points development area, the area where the points you would get for your blog will go to.
4. External URL: Insert an external URL, if your blog is about another web page/site or if you would like to refer readers to it.
5. Video/Podcast URL: If your blog includes a video or a podcast, insert its link and its size in bytes (into two different boxes).
6. Status: You should keep your blog as a "draft" as long as you're editing it and making changes (it will not be visible to other people). When your blogs is ready to go live, mark it as "ready for approval" (if you're a junior blogger) - it will go straight to the pending blogs queue for the moderators to review. If you're an expert blogger or a moderator, you can skip this stage and mark it as "Final" - and it will be automatically released.
7. Description: Short blurb that appears in lists of weblogs and in RSS feeds.
8. Main Text: This box should contain your blog's content. See a detailed explanation below.
9. Comment/talkback section: Write a short closing sentence, inviting your readers to discuss what you have said.
   

-  Main Text - WSYWIG toolbar

A: Style your text: bold, italics, underline or strikethrough.

B: Make an automatic list: you can choose between bullets and numbers.

C: Insert/Edit Image: Embed pictures in your blog. Enter the Image URL generated before by the "Upload Image" function in your Blogger Home. Enter a short description and then choose its alignment and dimensions. You can change these definitions even after inserted, just make sure to click on the image before re-clicking the button.

D: Insert/Edit Embedded Media/Dashboards: Enter the file's type (Flash, Windows Media Player, Quicktime etc.), its URL and its dimensions. You can change these definitions even after inserted.

E: Insert/Edit link: Enter a hyperlink (option available only if text is highlighted) and choose whether to open it in the same or in a new window. In order to unlink, highlight the word and click on the right button.

F: Insert/Edit anchor: An anchor allows you to jump to a specific place in your blog.

G: Choose your text format: Use Heading 1-6 (1=largest, 6=smallest) for your headlines and "Paragraph" for your text.

H: Edit toolbar (icons respectively): Cut, copy, paste text, paste as plain text, paste from Word (if you'll paste from MS word without using this special paste - you'll have superfluous HTML tags in your blog and will have to manually clean them up!), select all (text and images), undo, redo, cleanup messy code and edit HTML source (useful when you include an HTML code in your blog or can't get rid of superfluous tags the usual way).

Here's an online tutorial on how to copy your blog from Word and how to embed a podcast/video in your blog.

I: Table toolbar (available only when a table is inserted; icons respectively): Insert a new table, row properties, cell properties, insert row before, insert row after, delete row, insert column before, insert column after, remove columns, split merged table cells and merge table cells.