Blogging is one of the primary ways to share information and ideas on YourBrookline.  You can share updates about a program or event, discuss a community issue or anything else about Brookline that you'd like to write about.  You can upload photos to your blog post too, and add attachments.

To blog on this site, follow these simple steps:

1. You must first be logged-in. Click here for information on how to set-up your free account .

2. Once logged in, you'll have a series of options (i.e. ways you can add content) under "Create content" in the left-hand sidebar. Click on "Blog entry" to begin submitting a blog post.

3.  Add a title for your blog post (i.e. your article headline), then add "Tags" for your post.   Tags are categories that people might use to find the information you are sharing in your post.  Separate your tags with commas.

4.  Enter the main content of your article in the "Body" section.  This field defaults to a "rich text editor" which gives you a set of intuitive buttons for adding formatting to your blog post.  If you are familiar with html coding and would prefer a plain text editor, click "Switch to plain text editor" underneath the body field.

5.  You can add a photo to your post by clicking the photo icon.  We recommend reviewing the separate "adding photos" help post for more information, the photo editor for this site is slightly different than other sites you may have used.

6.  "Groups" comes after the body field, with the option to choose an "Audience" from a list of groups on the site. Simply ignore this for something you want to make available to the general public. But if you'd like to target the event for one or more groups on the site, select those groups here. If the public box is checked, it will go to the public calendar as well as the group(s) you've chosen. If you want to make the event available only to members of your group, be sure to uncheck the "public" box under the group selection

7. Click "file attachments" if you would like to make a file, such as an event flier or registration form, available for download with your event listing. Click "browse" to find the file on your computer, then "attach" when you have selected that file. 

8.  Click "Save" to post your article live on the site.  Or you can click "Preview" first, then Save when you are satisfied your blog article is ready to go live.

A few other handy tips for blogging on YourBrookline.org:

• All of your blog posts on the site are organized together, most recent post to less recent, at one unique web address (url) associated with your site user ID.   You can share or link to this address so people can read your blog posts.  For instance, you can read Gwen Ossenfort's posts here:  http://www.yourbrookline.org/blog/4.
• We don't recommend cutting & pasting from Microsoft Word documents, as it negatively impacts formatting.  You can type a short post into the body and upload a Word document or other file as an attachment for more details, or link to another website.
• When logged in, you can always go back and edit your blog posts by clicking on the post to call up the article.  Then click the "edit" button at the top of the post, make your edits, and click "Save" once again to publish the updated post.