Blogspot Tutorial: How to Write a Post in Blogger Compose Mode

When you're logged in to Blogger and you already have created a blog, you'll see a NEW POST icon under every blog, click on that icon and you'll be taken to an other page where you can create a post. This area is your Post Editor. and it has two modes i.e. Edit HTML and Compose. Our topic is all about Compose mode.

This is an overall look of the Blogger post editor (Compose mode).

What to do if you can't see a Compose mode option in the post editor!

If you're unable to see a Compose mode option in the post editor then you need to see a setting. Go to your Blogger Dashboard | Settings | Basic and scroll down to second last option which is Show Compose Mode for all your blogs?. Make sure this option is seleted Yes and then click on SAVE SETTINGS at the bottom of the page.

The Title field in Compose mode!

When you're creating a post, the first thing you'll work with is your post title. Please be careful and enter a relevant title in this field because this is a critical component to search engines. I'm writing this tutorial on Compose mode, so, my title is "A Dummies Guide to Compose Mode" which is pretty relevant.

The toolbar with a lot of icons!

Toolbar is really our biggest help in Blogger Compose mode. It contains a lot of tools that will make our life easier. Move your cursor on any of these icons to see what they do. Let's start discussing these tools one by one...

1- Font

Blogger offers 8 different fonts which can be added to beautify our post. You just need to select the text which font you want to change and then select the font from the drop down menu. This fonts are:

1- Arial
2- Courier
3- Georgia
4- Lucida Grande
5- Times
6- Trebuchet
7- Verdana
8- Webdings

2- Font size

Second tool in our toolbar is about font size. We can select a text to and select it's size from this tool.

1- Smallest
2- Small
3- Normal
4- Large
5- Largest

3- Bold & Italic

These tool will simply make your selected text bold or italic.

4- Text Color

You can change your text to any color through this tool, it's really amazing and easy. Make sure you don't do any stupid things with this tool like your post background color is black and you're making your post text dark.

5- Link

This is maybe the most important tool and is used extensively. You might want to link to someone else' blog or some other site in your post then you can simple type in the name of that blog or site and click this tool, it will prompt you to enter a URL and you need to enter the URL (address) of that blog or site which you want to link.

For example, I want to link "Blogger" to "http://www.blogger.com/", so I'll type Blogger and press the Link tool and enter the URL (http://www.blogger.com/) and this is the result, click to see: Blogger

I would recommend you to read "Creating and Using Links in Blogger" for further information.

6- Align Left, Align Center, Align Right & Justify Full

When writing poems, these tools are really helpful to align your text like I'm writing some lines of a poem here with different alignments.

Be glad your nose is on your face,
not pasted on some other place,
for if it were where it is not,
you might dislike your nose a lot.
(Align Left)

Be glad your nose is on your face,
not pasted on some other place,
for if it were where it is not,
you might dislike your nose a lot.
(Align Center)

Be glad your nose is on your face,
not pasted on some other place,
for if it were where it is not,
you might dislike your nose a lot.
(Align Right)

Be glad your nose is on your face,
not pasted on some other place,
for if it were where it is not,
you might dislike your nose a lot.
(Justify Full)

7- Numbered List, Bulleted List & Blockquote

These tools are helpful to create lists. Numbered List will, of course, create lists with numbers like 1, 2, 3, 4 and so on. Bulleted List will not create numbers and it will only use some bullets to create lists.

Blockquote is a very rarely used tool. Select some text and click on Blockquote tool, your text alignment will change and it will be more distinguishable (easily recognizable) than the remaining text. This tool inserts a space before and after the selected text and also creates margin between selected and unselected text.

8- Check Spelling

It will check spelling mistakes in your post.

9- Add Image

This tool will help you to add images in your post from your computer or from the internet. Clicking this tool will cause a pop-up window to appear like this..

You can click Browse button to upload an image from your computer or you can directly enter an image URL (http://www.sample.com/sample.jpg) from the internet to include images in post. You can also select alignment of your image (None, Left, Center, Right) and upload size (Small, Medium, Large). If you check the Use this layout every time? option then you don't need to adjust the size and alignment of your images again and again.

I would recommend you to always chose Large as your image upload size and don't use image URLs from the internet to upload instead you can always upload image from your own computer. Blogger gives every one 1 GB free space for images, use it. See these articles on images:

How to Use Blogger for Uploading or Hosting Images

and

How to Post Large Images

10- Add Video

This tool will upload a video from your computer with maximum upload size of 100 MB.

11- Remove Formatting from selection

This is an awesome tool, it's like Undo tool we found in many many applications. Imagine you've selected a text and changed it's color but after some time you want to remove that color then simply selected the color text and click Remove Formatting from selection tool and see what happens.

Preview link

This link will show you a preview of your post i.e. how it will look like when you'll publish it online.

Post body

Post body is the central part of our discussion. Whatever we do, appears here, in a big white box under our toolbar. In the picture, the post body is highlighted in orange color.

Post Options Link

You need to click this link at the bottom to see what it contains. You can manage Reader Comments, Backlinks and Post date and time of every post through this link.

Labels for this post: & Show all link

You can also set categories for each post, in terms of Blogger categories are labels. For example I'm writing about this article about Blogger basics, so, my labels could be "Blogger Basics", "Basics", "Blogger Compose Mode" and so on.

PUBLISH POST & SAVE NOW buttons

The PUBLISH POST button will simple publish your post to the world of internet and SAVE NOW can save your post progress specially when you're writing long posts. However, Blogger automatically saves the post after regular intervals.