How To: Upload a video to Vimeo and Blogger

After you have logged into Vimeo click on the blue button on the right that says Upload a video. Click the blue Choose file to upload button at the top of the page. Choose your video and click open. While the video is uploading you can fill in all the details and settings you want for it. So, fill in the title and if you want add a description and tags. Next click on the privacy tab on the left of the page and choose the privacy settings you want for your video; I recommend you leave your video to be viewable by anyone and that you un-tick the “what people can do with your video” options. You won’t need to worry about the other tabs on the left unless you specifically want to add them in. Once your video has uploaded and you have filled in all the information you want/ need, click Save all changes.

To put your uploaded video onto your blog, go to the videos page and hover your curser over the video. You will see three or four boxes appear on the right of the video window. Click on the box that says Embed that has the </> symbol on it. Another box will pop up with the embed code and a preview of the embedded video. Highlight all of the code and copy it by using right click and copy or the shortcut cmd & C. Now go to the post on your blog that you want to put the video on to and paste the code into the Edit HTML tab. Then click on the Compose tab where you can add text around the video. Remember you won’t be able to see the video in either of these tabs, but you will be able to see the video’s outline in the Compose tab. Once you have completed your post click PUBLISH POST or click SAVE NOW to save it so you can go back and edit it later.

How To: Set up Vimeo

Because the music you are using in your music videos is copyrighted, YouTube has been removing the audio from some of your videos. To get around this, any videos you want on your blog that use copyrighted music upload to Vimeo instead.

To set up a Vimeo account go to www.vimeo.com and click on the green Join Vimeo button at the top of the page. Now click on the green button on the left that says Sign up for Basic >. Type in your first & last name, email address and password in the boxes provided. I recommend you use the same details you used for your Gmail and Blogger accounts. Click the box next to ‘I understand and agree with terms of service’ then click Join Vimeo. You get taken to your account home page, if an advert to upgrade your account pops up; click the red cross in the top right to close it.

Now go to your Gmail inbox and open the email you received from Vimeo. Click on the registration link in the email. This will verify your account and take you to your account home page. You will not have two windows open showing your homepage, so close one of the windows.

How To: Upload a video to your blog

There are going to be 2 different types of video you will want to upload to your blog: a video you made yourself or a video you found online made by someone else.

To upload a video you made to your blog, the first thing you need to do is turn your iMovie project into a movie file. To do this, while in iMovie go to File > Export. A box will appear in iMovie. The Quicktime tab should be selected, but if it isn’t, click it. Next, choose the compression you want to use for your movie. Because you’re going to be uploading to a website, choose ‘Web’ from the dropdown menu. Then click ‘Share’. Next, type in the box what you want your video to be called and where you want it to be saved. I would recommend the Movies folder. Now click ‘Save’. This will save a .mov version of your film. Remember all videos are saved to the computer you are using, not your school account. This is the same with iMovie projects, so try and remember what computer you’re using so you know where all your files are being saved.

Now you have a movie file, go to www.youtube.com, where your video is going to be hosted. This means, where your video will be kept online. Log into your YouTube account (see the YouTube How To if you’ve forgotten how) and click on Upload. When the page loads, click on the yellow box that says ‘Upload video’. Find your video then click Choose. Once your video has uploaded you can add a description and tags if you want to. If you don’t want to, just click ‘Skip for now’. This will take you to your videos page.

To use a video that you have found online made by someone else, go to the website you found the video on. If you found the video on Blogger, you should see the YouTube logo in the bottom right corner of the video. If you click on this logo it will take you to the page it is hosted on, on YouTube.

This next step is the same whether the video is your own or someone else’s. On the video’s YouTube page, click on the <Embed> button under the video. It’s in the bottom row of buttons on the right, next to the ‘flag’ button. When you click this, a box will appear with a HTML code highlighted in it. Copy the text in the box. If your mouse doesn’t have right click enabled, hold down the ‘ctrl’ button as you click. Or you could use the shortcut, which is ‘cmd’ and ‘C’. Now go to your Blogger dashboard.

On your Dashboard, click on NEW POST. When the New Post box appears, click on the ‘Edit HTML’ tab. Paste the HTML code into this box. Now click back on the ‘Compose’ tab. You won’t be able to see your video on this page, but you will be able to see an outline of where your video will be. Now you can add a title to your post and any text you also want to have in your post. Move the cursor either side of the video, depending on where you want your text, and continue posting as normal.

You now have a video embedded in your blog that can be viewed either on your blog, or on YouTube.

How To: Add photos to a post

To add photos to your post, when in the New Post tab click on the ‘Insert Image’ button on the tool bar. It looks like a little photo, between Link and the little clapperboard. A blue box will appear giving you the choice where to get your images from. Make sure Upload is highlighted. Now click ‘Choose File’, now find the photo you want to add and click ‘Choose’. Then in the blue box click the ‘Add selected’ button at the bottom. This will add photo to your blog. You can add text around the photo just like you can with a video.

How To: Add pages

Pages are different tabs on your blog. They are known as ‘static pages,’ which means you can only have one post per page. It would be a good idea to use pages to create a Welcome or About Us section for your blog. You could use this page to introduce your group and the people in it.

To add pages to your blog click Edit Posts on the Dashboard. Then click the Edit Pages tab; it’s next to the Edit Posts tab that’s already highlighted. Now click the blue button that says NEW PAGE.  Name your page whatever you want to call it, for example ‘About Us’, and write a post as you normally would.  You can edit your pages after you have published them, just like the posts on your blog. You can also have a separate layout for each page if you want.

You can also add a gadget to help you navigate between pages on your blog, similar to the labels gadget. To do this, go to the Design tab and go to Add and Arrange Page Elements. Click Add a Gadget where you would like to add your pages gadget. I would suggest adding this gadget either near your archive and labels gadget or at the top of your blog under your heading. Remember you can rearrange your gadgets on the layout tab so if you change your mind about where you want this gadget, you can move it later. When the gadget page opens click on the blue plus next to the Pages gadget. Here you can change the settings for your pages; such as the order your pages appear on your blog and what you call your main page where your posts are. This page, by default, is called ‘Home’ but you can change this if you want to something like ‘Posts’ or ‘Work Log’ etc. When you’re finished editing the settings, click the orange SAVE button. Also click the SAVE button on the Add and Arrange Elements page too so you save any changes you made to your layout.

How To: Use labels

Labels are a useful way of organizing your posts. When you’re adding a post, at the bottom of the text box you’ll see a box that says ‘Labels:’ and also has Show All next to it. Click in this box to add your label, a label can be anything you want and you can have as many different ones as you want (the limit is about 5000, but are you really going to use that many?!) You can add more than one label to each post. I would recommend each member of your group have their own label; then each member can “label” the posts they did within your blog. This will help you keep track of who wrote what. You can also create labels for the different sections of your work, for example planning or research. Then even if you have multiple posts for each section, you will be able to group them all together under labels. This will also make it easier for moderators marking your work.

When you have added labels to your posts, you need to have them viewable on your blog so you can navigate using them. This will enable you to group all posts with the same label together. To do this, go to the design tab on your dashboard. You should see the ‘Add and Arrange Page Elements’ page. On one of the empty boxes, click Add a Gadget. I suggest using one of the boxes near your Blog Archive. When you click Add a Gadget, a window will pop up with all the gadgets you can choose from. Scroll down, to near the bottom of the list and you should see the Labels gadget. Click on the blue + button. You will be given options on how you want this gadget to look, choose these for yourself. Then click the orange SAVE button. This will add the Labels gadget to your blog. Now click on the orange SAVE button on the ‘Add and Arrange Elements Page’.

How To: Edit a post

Here's how to edit a post, whether you have already published it or not. On your Blogger dashboard click Edit Posts, next to the blue NEW POST button. This will take you to a list of all your posts. Find the post you want to edit and click 'Edit' next to it. This will take you to the same text box you saw when you created the post. Now you can edit the post and either save it or publish it, just like you would when creating one.