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So you would like to add a video to your blog entry? Yes, you surely can, but before we jump ahead of ourselves, please note, that ExplorOz does not host video files. Therefore, you would need to create an account with either YouTube or Vimeo and upload it there before you can link it to your blog. If you already have a YouTube or Vimeo account with videos uploaded and ready to go - please read on.

First off you need to know the code ID for your video. For YouTube, this ID is found after the v= part (I.e. after clicking into a YouTube video look in the address bar and copy the ID at the end of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= ). For Vimeo, this ID is found after the forward slash (I.e. after clicking into a Vimeo video look in the address bar and copy the ID at the end of http://www.vimeo.com/ ).

Now that you have your video code ID for either a YouTube or Vimeo video, you can embed this into a new blog entry. Assuming you now have a new blog underway, place your mouse cursor and click somewhere within the text or text line where you want the video to appear. Then click the 'Embed Video' button and this will launch the video embedding function. You will now see there are two fields to choose from. Select the appropriate video hosting website, being either YouTube or Vimeo where you obtained the video code ID earlier. Now enter this ID into the text box and then click the 'Embed' button. The video code will now be automatically created and added to your blog text.

The ‘By Date’ drop down list box is a nifty feature for searching all the live blogs in our database via a month and year combination. These dates are only shown in the drop down list when there is a blog that corresponds to that date. This can be very handy as a secondary search function, especially after say searching via the tag or member search, and therefore allowing further refinement by date.

The first text box titled ‘Search For’ provides a textual search and allows a blog search via a word or phrase. Clicking the Go button will return all the results with the word or phrase, and for all occurrences, this will be highlighted in orange. There is also a Clear button, which resets the page with an empty text box, allowing you to do a new search.

The ExplorOz Blog facility has been developed for Personal Members and Business Members only. Blogs is where EO Members can write about their travels, upload photos, attachments, and share their stories and experiences with others. Blogs isn’t just about travel, in fact we have over 60 tags for you to choose from. Using a tag (or multiple tags) for each of your blog entries assist other people searching via the tag method. Besides searching via tags, we also provide other ways to search for a blog, and this includes via: word or phrase search, by date, and by Member.

There are three distinct blog pages and these are: the Blog Index page (also known as the blog home or default page), Tag Blog page (which is basically blogs by tag), and My Blog page (or blogs by ExplorOz Members). The Blog Index page is landed when you hit Blogs from the blue menu bar, whilst the other two views are accessible by using related search functions (i.e. search By Tag or By Member).

Our blog system was designed to be easy to use; easy to create new blogs, and easy to search for existing blogs. We have provided an upload facility for your photos (and file attachments such as PDFs and Word documents), and the system will automatically align your photos throughout your blog for you. We have provided a function for easily inserting YouTube and Vimeo video links - see FAQ instructions on how to use this facility.

At the bottom of a blog entry, we allow others to post feedback comments, and you have control to delete or reply to these comments. When you post a blog, you have the choice of deciding whether it is open for comment. You can elect to allow only EO Members to comment on your post, or both EO Members and Registered Visitors.To further promote your blog, all new blogs appear in the blogs list in the forum, therefore giving your blog additional publicity with the forum audience. We hope you enjoy using the new look blog system.

The ExplorOz Blog facility has been developed for Personal Members and Business Members only. To create a new blog, you first must be logged into ExplorOz with your Personal or Business Membership number. After clicking into the Blogs Index page from the main menu, you will see a button called ‘Create New Blog’. Pressing this gives you the Add/Edit Blog Entries page, and you should see fields in respective order: Entry Date, Title, Entry, Tags, Comments and Attachments.

The first text box is the Entry Date, which is automatically populated with the current date and time. You can keep this defaulted to the current date and time or change this date back in history, but you cannot forward date your entry. The next field is the Title and is where you can give your entry a good descriptive title using no more than 100 characters. The entry field however can be as long as you desire, and is where you type your blog. The buttons located under this large text box are tools to help you perform certain functions such as: checking your spelling (Spell Check button), inserting a link to an internal ExplorOz page or external web page (Insert Link), inserting photos or graphic images (Insert Image/File), inserting PDF and Word documents, and Excel spreadsheets (Insert Image/File), and embedding a YouTube or Vimeo video link (Embed Video). For more information see the FAQ that corresponds to these functions.

The next section is titled Tags, and is divided into ExplorOz Categories and General Categories. There are a total of 63 tags - 34 ExplorOz categories and 29 general categories to choose from. This is where you can place a tick in the tag checkbox that BEST describes your blog. You can choose multiple tag categories for your blog, but keep this to a minimum in order to uphold its category credibility, as this will help others to search for your blog by tag more accurately.

The Comments field allows or prohibits others from making comments to your blog entry. Placing a tick allows others to make a comment, while leaving the checkbox blank prevents the comments textbox from being shown, therefore stopping others from typing in a comment. You have total control to delete and reply to comments, and you can edit your blog at any time, including turning off comments if you no longer want any more to appear (although leaving the existing ones there).

All attachments are shown (comma delimited) in the Attachments field. Although this field looks like it cannot be edited - it actually can! What this means for you is that if you no longer want a file attachment shown in your blog, simply delete the file name from this text field.

The buttons shown at the bottom of the page are where you can preview your blog before submitting it (Preview button), submit your blog where it will now be live (Submit button), delete the entire blog from the system (Delete button), and go back to your own MyBlog index page (Back to MyBlog).

Have you ever wanted to view a gallery of all those sensational photos that are uploaded to blogs - well you can with Photo View! When you click into any of the blog pages (i.e. Index, By Tag, or MyBlog), you will see some buttons under the ‘Display Options’ title. The Index View button is the default view and represents the standard blog list view in rows (similar to the forum). You can adjust the ‘Number of Blogs per Page’ by clicking on the drop down list. The default number is 25, but this can be decreased to 10, and increased to 50 and 100 respectfully. Keeping the ‘Open blogs in new window/tab’ checkbox allows blogs to be opened in either a new tab for the newer browsers or a new window for the older browsers.

Now for the cool button - the Photo View. This view provides a gallery of all the photos and graphic images in our blogs system. The default view is 24 images as shown in the ‘Number of Images per Page’ drop down list. This provides a 4 image wide, 6 image deep gallery, but this value can be decreased to 12 images (4 x 3), or increased to 48 images (4 x 12), and 96 images (12 x 24). Each gallery image gives you the image title/description and the link to the blog the image is featured in - just click the Open Blog link to get there. Clicking an image opens it in a popular gallery control viewer called Lightbox. This allows images to be easily slide-showed by hovering on the left or right of the image and clicking the word Prev or Next that appears in the middle of the left or right hand side respectively. For convenience, you can also click your keyboard left and right arrow keys. Click away (or outside) of the image or click the Close X button to exit out of Lightbox.

If for some reason you make a mistake, want to make some changes, realign an image or video, or just run out of time to finish an entry, you can go into your blog and edit it at any time. Simply click in your blog that you wish to edit, and scroll down the page until you see the Edit Blog button. Clicking this button will open the Add/Edit Blog Entries page where you can now make the changes.

If you want to delete a photo, go into normal blog view (or press the Preview button at the bottom of the page) and take notice of its position (left or right) and see where it lies within the text. Go back into edit mode by clicking the Edit Blog button and look for the code tag that says [bi] with a text link and a closing [/bi]. To remove a photo from your blog, you would need to remove this whole code phrase - in other words the [bi] through to the closing [/bi]. Please ensure both [bi] and [/bi] tags are removed too. YouTube and Vimeo video codes can also be removed by searching for the code [youtube] or [vimeo], and in the same way as for the image tags above, make sure the whole code phrase is removed, including the closing tags.

We have a handy spell checker tool to automatically look for spelling errors. This function has a manual override so you have full control if for example it picks up some American words instead of Australian. To use this function, click the Spell Check button.

You can change your tag categories by clicking the currently ticked checkbox. This will remove the tick, and you can now select another category, or even select more than one category. The Comments field allows or prohibits others from making comments to your blog entry. Placing a tick allows others to make a comment, while leaving the checkbox blank prevents the comments textbox from being shown, therefore stopping others from typing in a comment. You have total control to delete and reply to comments, and you can edit your blog at any time, including turning off comments if you no longer want any more to appear (although leaving the existing ones there).

All attachments are shown (comma delimited) in the Attachments field. Although this field looks like it cannot be edited - it actually can! What this means for you is that if you no longer want a file attachment shown in your blog, simply delete the file name from this text field.

The ExplorOz Key is a new tool which allows you to "lock" information that you have submitted to the ExplorOz Blogs system, so that only those that have the password can read your blog entries.



To set up an ExplorOz Key, click on the "My Profile" tab, and enter a password into the ExplorOz Key field. This can be anything you like (no character requirements). Once you have entered the password, click update.




There are two options available for "locking" blogs with the ExplorOz Key. The first is to selectively lock blogs when you create them. There is a check box at the bottom of the blog edit page, tick this to lock the blog entry you are submitting only.

If you want all of your future blogs to be locked, there is a checkbox on the "My Profile" tab, check this and click update, all future blogs you submit will be locked.

To access a locked blog, the ExplorOz Key must be entered. The easiest way for you to direct your friends and family to your Blog is to go to your Public Profile page and click on the email function. Enter the appropriate email addresses, and compose a message stating that this is where they can find all of your blog entries, and include the password.

You can of course communicate this via your own email account, or other means, just ensure that you supply them with the URL of your Public Profile (copy and paste out of the address bar) and ExplorOz Key, alternatively you could instruct them to search for you from the "Find a Person" page, found in the Members Section.

Overview

ExplorOz Mobile Updates is a facility allowing ExplorOz Members to update the ExplorOz website using their GPS enabled phone. Users have the ability to create Blogs, as well as create and update the ExplorOz Places system. It is as simple as sending your photos and text to our new Mobile Updates email service.

How does it work?

Simply take a photo of your location/activity and email it to one of two email addresses (either Blogs@ExplorOz.com or Places@ExplorOz.com), along with a textual description relating to the photos. Once your photo(s) and description have been received by the Mobile Updates system, they will appear as either a new or updated ExplorOz Place, or as a Blog. This is a fully automated service and requires no intervention from you. All you need to do is email the photo and text and Mobile Updates will do the rest!

Creating a Blog

To create a new ExplorOz Blog using your phone, you need to take a photo(s) of your location/activity and email it along with your text to Blogs@ExplorOz.com . The subject of your email will be used as the title of your Blog. Once your photo(s) and description have been received by the Mobile Updates system, they will appear as a new Blog entry.

Adding/Updating Places

To create a new ExplorOz Place using your phone, you need to take a photo(s) of your location and email it along with your description to Places@ExplorOz.com . The subject of your email will be used as the name of your Place. Once your photo(s) and description have been received by the Mobile Updates system, they will appear as a new Place entry. If the Place already exists within the ExplorOz systems, your pictures and text will be added to the existing Place page.

Supported Devices

Any GPS enabled phone with a camera is able to create new Blogs and Places. However, this is providing the user/phone has an email account and data plan attached to it. The most commonly used phones have step by step tutorials below -

Mobile Place Update for the iPhone - Click HERE

Mobile Blog Update for the iPhone - Click HERE

If you still have further questions - please now read the FAQ and Tips page.

Our blogs system allows you to quickly find blogs by ExplorOz Members. Under the Find Blogs title, you will see a drop down list function allowing you to find blogs By Member. Click the drop down list box to see a full list of all ExplorOz members who currently have blogs. After clicking on a Member, you are then taken to their MyBlog Page, where you will also see their screen name. A great feature is the By Date function, which is shown under My Blog Search. Clicking this drop down list, you will see one or more dates showing month and year. Think of it like a month view of all the blogs created by that Member. It is a good tool to use especially if a Member has many blogs. In some cases, you can get a feel for when big trips were undertaken, because the months and year may be grouped together.

In a Member’s MyBlog Page, you will see their rig picture, along with a button titled My Profile that will take you to their My Profile Page. Click this and you can learn more about the Member such as: the State they live in; how long they have been an ExplorOz Member for; the vehicle they drive; Callsign; and an About Me description. You can also click the Send Message link to send the Member an instant message if they are online. (Please note - most functionality such as Member Message, creating and editing blogs, commenting on blogs etc, is only available to ExplorOz Members).

You can also change the Display Options to Photo View if you want to see all the photos the Member has loaded into blogs. Each gallery image gives you the image title/description and the link to the blog the image is featured in - just click the Open Blog link to get there.

After reading a Member's blog, why not give them a comment. It’s easy to do, just scroll down at the end of the blog where it says ‘Submit Your Comment’. Type your comment in the text box, use the spell checker if you wish, and then press the Submit button. It’s always nice to receive comments and feedback as blogs can sometimes take a fair bit of time to create, especially if there are photos and videos added. In a lot of cases, the Member will read your comments and may also reply back.

With 63 tags to choose from, we have your blog category covered. You can select multiple tags if you prefer, where you can choose from 34 ExplorOz categories and 29 general categories. Choose ExplorOz tags when your Blog entry is related to 4WDriving, Caravanning, Camping, Boating, etc, but for all the other interesting things in your life - use the General tags. Tags are used to categorise blog entries, which in turn enhances blog searching, providing a means to search a blog by tag or subject. To use this feature, left click (single click for Macs) anywhere in the drop down list in the Find Blogs by Tag search box, and then click on any one of the tags. After clicking, you are then taken to the Tag Blog page, where you will see the tag title and image, and a list of all the blogs that has this tag enabled.

To upload an image into a Blog entry, click on the "Add Images and Files Button".




An "Open" box will appear so that you can navigate to the location of the image file on your computer. Only jpg, png, and gif files are compatible. Select the file(s) you wish to upload and then click "Open".

The ExplorOz "Load Gallery Image" box will then open. You can now give the image a name (and Description if relevant) and this will appear as the caption for the image in your Blog Entry.

If your image is of a Place/location you should also "Tag" it there. This will add your photo to the matching page in the Places database on ExplorOz for that location. To do this, start typing the name of the place in the "Tag" field, and select the correct place from the drop down list. If you make the wrong selection, just click on the X that appears to the right on the tag that has been created. Once the correct tags are displaying, click "Save".

Tagging Existing Images

On the relevant image, click the "edit" button. Start typing the name of a relevant Place in the "Tag" field. Select the Place Name from the drop down list, then click "Save"
* NOTE Do not delete any existing tags unless they are incorrect.

RSS feeds have been around for many years as a convenient way for web users to receive content 'feeds' from web pages where you know new information will interest you.

On ExplorOz we offer RSS feeds within Blogs, Articles, Treks, Classifieds, and Forum.

The feeds are available for the categories/sub-categories within these sections so you can actually drill right down to select just the "DIY" blogs, or just the "Power & Electrics" articles, or just the "NSW Free/Swap" category of the Classifieds! (There are no sub-categories to the Forum so the feeds are for all new threads). To subscribe to an RSS feed you simply need to find and click on the RSS icon and follow the prompts.

To find the available feeds in Articles, firstly go to the Articles Index page and you'll see a list of sections. You can select the RSS icon alongside any of these sections, or click to open a section to find the list of sub-categories - each with their own RSS feeds.

Finding the RSS icon for Classified feeds is much the same as for articles. Go to the Classifieds Index page and you'll see immediately that you can subscribe to RSS feeds from any of the product categories - such as Vehicles, Accessories, Part/Spares, Boats, Caravans etc. But you can refine your feed to just those receive listings from a particular state if you prefer (open category, open state, the click icon).

To find the available feeds in Blogs, firstly go to the Blogs Index page and you'll see that you can find blogs by TAG. Use the pulldown list of Tags to select what interests you. When you browse through the blogs that appear on that page, these will all be from that selected tag. At the bottom of the page you'll see the RSS icon if you wish to subscribe to feeds from that Blog tag.

RSS feeds work by sending the content you've subscribed to to a simple location. When you click the RSS icon, you'll be given options to where you want to send the feeds (Bookmarks, Google, Yahoo, Outlook etc). Bookmarks is the typical option chosen by most people. The bookmark folder will automatically appear and add the new pages (via the feed). Give it a try and see what works best for you!