Installation

Blogoommer comes bundled as either a zip file or a Windows setup executable. On a windows platform, the latter os preferable as it has an executable launcher and creates links to the executable in your programs menu. However, on Unix, Linux or Mac you will need to use the zip file which, once extracted, contained a blogoomer.sh script that launches the application.

In all cases, as specified in the requirements page, Java needs to be installed on your computer before Blogoommer can be used.

Usage

The following is a step by step instruction manual for creating your weblog and adding blogs to it.

Note: in Blogoommer, a weblog is a collection of blog entries. Hence the use of both terms in the documentation and the application menus, because they mean different things.

1. Enter your site's meta-information

a. Site title

Enter a title that reflects what your site stands (or sleeps) for. Keep it curt and to the point: this is the information that will head each webpage in big, bold letters.

b. Site summary

A concise summary of what your site is going to provide meaning-wise. This information will map to each site page sub-header.

2. Configure your remote server.

Configuring a remote server is the next big step. All weblogs must be associated to a remote server, since there's no use writing blogs if there's nowhere to blog to. You enter the following information:

address: the internet FTP address of the remote site. It should be given to you by the web host with whom you have an account (e.g. ftp.somewhere.com).

Login: your login to the remote FTP server.

Password: your password to the remote FTP server.

Remote directory: the base path where to blog to following the FTP connection. Choose the root / if you want to blog directly to the home of your web site.

3. Write blogs

From the blog pane, click the "New" option. From there, the application will open the blog editor. You type in a title, a summary and some content. The summary will be available to rss subscribers, whereas the content will go directly into the site pages. Once finished, You either save the blog, or update it if it's an exising blog. The difference between save and update concerns the blog date: the blog's date is only updated when using the update action.

5. Publish

You need to manually synchronize with the server to get your site up and running. That is to say, you have to tell the application to send the locally generated website modifications to the remote site by FTP. To do this, select the Actions -> Publish menu item. A pop-up will come up showing you the progress of the file transfer. Be patient! As the files are going over the network, this can take a certain time.

6. Archive your blogs

This is done for you. Blogommer organizes blogs per month. Each month corresponds to an archive.

7. Trash your blogs.

Nothing needs to be final.

If you remove a blog, it will disappear from the site next time you publish.