Quick Start Guide
From PixyWiki
So you've got your account at Pixy and you're signed-up for a blog subscription. What's next?
Contents |
Creating your blog
First-up you need to create your blog. When you login to your Pixy account you will find a link to create new blog. Click it and follow the steps below to get your blog up-and-running in no-time at all.
Your blog name and description
You need to name your blog, but don't worry as this can be changed at any time. If you've got a specific name in mind, then great. If not, maybe start with something like Jane Murphy Photography. You can always change it later.
Give your new blog a description as well. Something simple to start with as you can always update this later. For example:
"Photos from my home town of Newquay, Cornwall"
Choosing your domain name
This is the URL address (aka domain name) which you will start to run your blog on. You may wish to run your site on your own personal domain name, which can be easily done later. But to start with you will need choose a domain at pixyblog.com. This is so we can get your blog running immediately.
You may want to choose the same domain as your blogs name. Something short and easy to remember is usually better. For example:
murphy.pixyblog.com
Or
janemurphy.pixyblog.com
Selecting your timezone and language
Blogs are chronologically ordered by design. They are intended to be easily updated and on a regular basis, so setting the right timezone is important. All the timezones in the world are available, just select the zone most suited to where you are.
PixyBlog supports multiple languages and, if you so desire, you can post your blog entries in more-than-one language. Currently there is a limited translation for languages other than English, but as more photographers sign-up, more languages will become available.
Choosing your blog design
Finally you need to choose the theme (or design) for your blog. Our designers at Pixy have come-up with dozens of sleek and elegant designs for you to get started with, so simply choose the one you like the look-of most and you are all set. You can change your theme any number of times and it's very simple to do, so don't worry too much about it right now.
That's it. Save your blog settings and now every time you login to your account you will see your blog ready for new entries or any changes you want to make.
Galleries
Galleries are used to group a collection of blog entries together. A gallery has a title, description and a cover photo. The gallery is displayed on your blog when there is at least one entry in that gallery.
Defining your galleries
When you start a photoblog there will be the following default galleries already created for you:
- General
- Landscapes
- Portraits
- Nature
- Sports
- Miscellaneous
- Architecture
These are to help get you started, but feel free to rename, remove and add any galleries you like. You can organize your galleries by logging-in to your account, going to your blog and choosing the tabs Photos > Galleries.
Gallery hierarchy
When you start your photoblog there is only a single level of galleries, but this doesn't have to be the case. You can set-up your galleries to have any number of galleries inside other galleries, for example:
- Travels
- India
- Mumbai
- Kerala
- Delhi
- South America
- Brazil
- Rio De Janeiro
- Venezuela
- Brazil
- India
You can always re-organize your galleries at a later time, but it's worth the effort to get the basic structure right for your needs first.
Posting your first entry
With your blog set-up and your galleries defined you are now ready to post the first entry on your blog. An entry consists of the following:
To create a new entry, make sure you are logged-in to your account and go to the Blog > New Entry tab.
Title
Quite simply a short title for the entry. Be creative.
Publish Time
You can leave this if you want your entry to be immediately posted to your blog. You can set a time/date in the future to have the entry displayed on your blog sometime in the future. Alternatively, you may wish to have the entry displayed at some past date. As blogging is chronological in it's ordering, the date/time is important for the way the entries are displayed and ordered.
Gallery
Choose none, one or more galleries to be associated with this entry. You can use the CTRL key (Option key on the Mac) when clicking the mouse to select multiple galleries. Your entry will then be displayed in those galleries on your blog.
Tags
You can tag your entries with an array of keyword tags. This helps categorize your photos and also makes them easier for visitors to find. In general, the more tags the better.
For example the you might want to tag the following photo with these tags:
wheel sky fair fun_fair ride big_wheel
Photos
Each entry must have one or more photos. Currently photos must be JPEG's. We recommend a filesize of around 500kb for images of around 1600 pixels in size. If you want to upload smaller images, no problem. An image of 800 pixels in size should be around 100 - 200kb.
Click the Browse... button to locate the JPEG file on your hard drive. To add more-than-one image, click the Upload additional photos link.
Content
Optionally add a description for your entry. Here you can format the text layout and add any additional information (maybe links to related information, embed a video etc).
That's it. Your first entry is now ready to be published on your blog... just click the Post to Blog button. Visit your blog and you should now see your entry online.
Editing your blog settings
You've created your blog, defined your galleries and posted your first entry. Now it's time to look at the preferences for your blog.
From your account login page go to the Preferences > Settings tab. Here you can see all the custom preferences for your blog. The first two should be familiar to you, the title and description. Other settings which you may want to change are:
- I publish my blog in multiple languages
- Allow Comments for your blog?
- Moderate comments
- Email comments
Change any of the settings as you desire and click the Update Blog Settings button to save your changes.
Changing your blog design
When you created your blog you chose a theme to get started with. Now you have some content up on your blog it's a good time to have a look at the other themes available to you. Login to your account and go to the Preferences > Themes tab. Here you will be able to preview all the themes. Try them all if you like, and when you settle on the one-for-you just save your changes.
Note: When changing themes your browsers cache may cause some display issues. This can be normally fixed by force refreshing your browser by pressing CTRL + F5 or clearing your browsers cache manually from the preferences.
Custom themes
PixyBlog provides a number of themes for your blog, but you may want to create your own theme or customize an existing one. If you have a PRO or PREMIUM subscription then you will see a button to customize your theme. This gives you access to all the pages and layout options which make-up the theme, these are called templates in PixyBlog.
Templates
Templates are the pages containing the HTML and code that make your blog work. Almost all aspects of your blog are customizable with a little knowledge of HTML, CSS and basic coding. There is extensive material available on how to customize your site on both our wiki and our discussion forum. So if you are interested in taking you blog further, then these are good places to start.