How To

Welcome to our tips and tricks page for those wanting to learn how to write a blog, use a gravatar (picture), post music clips, provide links, use quotations or just about any other thing we can think of.  If we miss something, ask us here and we’ll find an answer for you.

121 comments on “How To”

  1. Feedback at the Cafe indicates that we have lots of visitors who are happy just to read the quality comments that are posted, in preference to posting comments themselves. That’s great that you find Cafe Whispers a blog site worth returning to, and we are delighted to have you among our readership.

    Some people, I have discovered, don’t know what’s involved in becoming a blogger. Especially bewildering is when they see a photo (called a gravatar) attached to the blogger’s name.

    ‘How did they do that?’ I hear them ask.

    Well, it’s easy. As easy as 1-2-3.

    The first step is to sign set up an account at WordPress.com, which is free and only takes a few minutes. All you need to do is register an account name (with password) and a name you want to have shown when you post a blog. You can then upload a photo you want to use as your gravatar, which appears next to the blog you post on Cafe Whispers.

    Follow this link to WordPress: http://wordpress.com/

    Cafe Whispers was created from a WordPress template, as where 10.2 million other blog sites around the world. Any WordPress blog where you post a comment in the future will remember your gravatar when you enter your user name. You can post a blog from any computer; work, home, or at an internet cafe for example.

    You don’t have to have a WordPress account in order to post a blog. Some people are just as content to post comments by supplying their blogging name each time and not bothering with a gravatar. To add a comment, by the way, you do so in the Leave a Reply box which you will find at the bottom of the page of the thread (blog topic) you are reading.

    The next thing you might want to know is how to make those smiley faces that you see bloggers use from time to time. This link will show you how to create smilies on WordPress blogs from keyboard actions.

    If regular contributors have any further tips they’d like to share with us please don’t hesitate to enlighten the rest of us.

  2. Compliments of Bacchus:

    Another way to get a gravatar is to sign-up on http://en.gravatar.com/
    Your gravatar is associated with your email address, so it will appear when you post on many different gravatar enabled blogs, not just WordPress based blogs.

  3. Put a link in your post

    * Click in the Address field (usually starts with http://) of the page you wish to link to. This should highlight the URL
    * Copy the highlighted text (Right click, Copy or Ctrl C )
    * Paste the URL into your post (Right click, Paste or Ctrl V )

    eg. post this page:

    How To

  5. Post a Video
    Compliments of nasking:

    “So how do you get the vid to play in the blog?”

    Ya just put the link in and don’t add anything afterwards.
    ya can add smiley face, wink & writing above the music link…but anything put afterwards means ya don’t get the VID up…only the link.

    eg.

    🙂

  9. Quote text

    <blockquote>The text between the opening and closing blockquote tags will appear as a quote in your post.</blockquote>

    Posting the above gives:

    The text between the opening and closing blockquote tags will appear as a quote in your post.

  11. Define an abbreviation

    <abbr title=”Wild Turkey”>WT</abbr>

    gives:
    WT

    If you “hover” your mouse over the abbreviation, it will show the full text.

  17. What Text Do I Type to Make Smileys?
    More important, what text do I type to appreciate Ian Hall and Neil?.

  19. Moderator – help! Carried away on Voodo Politics. Left out an all important question mark in my title. Is Action Man for Real? I was carried away by the heat of the moment! But my grammarian alter ego cannot bear to look at it without the ‘?’. Can you put it in for me?

  21. Courtesy of Bacchus:

    I think Mobius is pretty good at the special character stuff Patricia & Migs. I found a couple of ways you could try:

    touché – the é was typed by holding down the Alt key while keying 0233 – more info here.

    Alternatively, you could get a list of HTML Escape Characters and insert them in your text.

    touché uses the & # 2 3 3 ; (without the spaces) escape character.

  22. Migs that Alt number characters only works with the numeric keypad not with the numbers across the top of a standard keyboard.

    If you have a laptop you normally have to engage the numeric keyboard by pressing the Function button (Fn). The numbers are embedded on the right hand set of alpha keys.

    Alt 0189 is one I use a lot; Howard 11½ years.

  23. Compliments of Mobius:

    You don’t type the e, holding down the Alt key whilst typing 0233 on the numeric keypad gives you an e-acute é.

  27. for ignoramuses like me:

    how do you write a post?

    how do you upload photos onto a post?

    how go you upload photos onto a thread, eg from photoshop?

  28. Hi jane.

    To write a post/thread you need to be an author. When writing a post/thread an author is able to upload photos from their computer.

    I’m not sure how to put photos into the comments section, but I’ll look into it.

    Do you want a go at writing a post/thread?

  29. Hi Migs, I don’t really want to write a post, I just want to put some photos on patricia’s thread, as I promised. However, it seems that uploading photos in the comments section is pretty complicated.

    Would a link to a webshots album do the trick, perhaps?

  35. Migs & ME, if this is going to be a right royal pain in the buttocks, it’s not worth driving you mad to do it. I don’t think anyone will feel their life has been rooned of they don’t see half a dozen or so of my photos.

    Nas’ wrote his post because he said he didn’t know how to put photos on a thread, but knows how to attach them to a post. I have no idea how to write a post and upload photos to it, nor to just upload photos and text to a thread.

    I do know how to put photos on webshots, or I can find other web album sites and should be able to provide a link for anyone who wants to look at the photos in the album.

    Then we can maybe gang up on joni and get him to teach someone competent (stares hard at Migs, ME, Min and Nas’ for starters) how to upload photos to a thread.

    I don’t think I should derail the blog for photographic purposes.

  36. It’s not hard uploading them to a media host like Photobucket, Mediafire etc. and then linking to them from here.

  38. Thanks, ME & Migs. I reckon I’ll upload to webshots and provide a link. I know I can do that and it will justify my membership fee. I haven’t uploaded a single photo for ages, so it’ll get me off my bum instead of talking about it.

    BTW, have you been able to get some pain relief, ME?

  43. Any tips on how to insert that horrible picture of Tony Abbott into my blog copy of ‘A picture speaks a thouand words’ I spent ages last night trying to follow WordPress instructions for inserting an image using the original lead from the OO http://www.theaustralian.com.au/…/story-fn59niix-1226029346958. and WordPress pro forma for inserting URL etc. which required further input for three more superfluous entries for title, caption etc. Nowhere was there a final place to click for closure.

  44. Hi Patricia, try right-clicking on the photo and then select ‘save picture as’ into your Pictures folder, and give it a name. You then upload it into your post from there.

  49. Courtesy of Min – Insert a pic into Comments

    <img src=”INSERT HTTP address HERE”/>

    So posting:
    <img src=”http://images.brisbanetimes.com.au/2012/01/12/2889776/ipad-art-wide-car-420×0.jpg”/>

    Gives you:

  61. And stubbornness wins 😀

    Could it possibly be that I might have missed out a little tiny bit of code? Perhaps that alt= thingy at the end might have been important…as below only with < brackets.

    [img src="insert http address here" alt="" /]

  67. Bacchus, there you have it..it seems that you are correct and that it’s only admin and (presumably) authors who can post pics.

  78. Thanks Min, was trying out a green vomiting smiley and a whistling smiley, but not working here, they would have been useful for El Gordo or Iain posts. 😆

  81. Mobius, unfortunately a WordPress thingy..pics can only be put up by Admin (all topics) or by Authors on their own topics.

  82. Thanks to Mobius, for those who use Mozilla Firefox.

    Firefox with BBCodeXtra is your best friend in blogs.

    I’ve downloaded it and now when I’m posting a comment I only need to right click on the selected text and nominate it as a quote, bold it, underline it etc, as well as change the colour of the text.

    It’s awesome.

  88. yeah I just figured that [color=#FF0000]out[/color] can you delete those test posts..I was trying to insert pictures from [b]photo bucket[/b]

  90. Another note..there is a space between ” and alt. Unusual for a WordPress code, this space is actually meant to be there.

  94. “That was sooooo fake. There is absolutely no depth or sincerity with this wretched person.

    A shallow, hollow, empty, disconnected fake who milks anything she can to extract sympathy and support.
    Even using her own father’s death to align herself with the families of the sons and daughters who have died in active duty. She is reprehensible.

    There’s something really sickening about Gillard and I just can’t put my finger on it but she leaves you feeling cold and repulsed and you just know she doesn’t really mean a word she says.

    It’s all lip service.

    How is it that in the message to her ALP stooges, she uses the term “happy holidays” but to the public it’s “happy Christmas”?

    What an insult and what a phoney she is. She would do away with Christmas or any acknowledgement of Christianity if she could and we all know it.

    Posted by: Julie H | Wednesday, 26 December 2012 at 06:46 PM http://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2012/12/julia-gillard-baking-the-pudding.html?cid=6a0177444b0c2e970d017c34f740ef970b

  98. Don’t know how long it’s been there but after all this time of either wheel scrolling to the top, using the slider or hitting the Home key I just found the over lined ▲ on the WordPress toolbar.

  99. How is it that in the message to her ALP stooges, she uses the term “happy holidays” but to the public it’s “happy Christmas”?

    OMG. Not only is Treemonkey a religious nutter, he’s actually playing Bill O’Reilly War on Xmas game.

  100. Tony is dangerous,he will increase the GST to 17.5% to replace the taxes he wants to abolish!!

  102. Noticed an interesting article in the DAILY TELEGRAPH on a poor barber shop owner in Orange NSW who did not open over the Easter long weekend due to penalty rates .http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/everyone-is-paying-the-wage-penalties/story-e6freuy9-1226621096991. the main complaint was “A staggering 87 out of 140 restaurants were closed on Good Friday according to local website Taste Orange” and how much a hairdresser would have to be paid for working on Good Friday, there were no corresponding complaints from the local butchers….

  103. Deepsea, OMG how will the good folk of Orange cope..what happens if they need a haircut and *urgently* and it’s Easter! Heaven help us, they might have to wait until after Easter. Probably triple time or double time and a half for working Good Friday, but I should imagine that unless it’s a big job such as a modelling show or a wedding party that no hairdresser would bother sitting around Good Friday hoping that a fringe trim or a No. 4 might walk in through the door.

  104. Is there anything the admins can do about the large amount of spam coming through lately in old topics?

  106. I say,I say,I SAY … How come in the widget in my sidebar that’s headed “I like these posts” and reflects without my help the last few sites I said rude things on (well, only about the guvmint), Café Whispers’ gravatar won’t show?

  107. How does an author delete comments on their own thread without the commenters knowing it was that author practising self-censorship on the How To thread as an aforehand refresher? And, once again, how does an author justify doing so for a comment that was neither rude nor necessarily off topic? Perhaps said author, given she an extensive history of school-marmish overreaction and a penchant for disapearing stuff down memoryholes, might consider her sacrosanct spaces are better left to her own blog archives. Just a thought, and probably a chat that’s been had previously, too.

  108. No, Meta, not a chat I recall having had previously in my several years of writing for the Cafe. I’m happy to be corrected on that. I simply did not want that post to become the site for an exchange of obscenities and insults completely irrelevant to to the topic.

  109. Right you are, as ever, in an (ir)relevance world completely of one, and only of one, expectationary value, patriciawa; it’s the topic, and others happening by must abide by your wants and wont to write and unwrite the chalk-and-talk for them.

  117. Help! I’ve forgotten how to link to a particular post here at the Cafe!

    In this case “Tony Abbott’s Policy Making Machine!” i.e. the polliepedal!

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