The word "blog" is the "slang" term for "Weblog", generally meaning an online diary of sorts.

Dictionary.com defines blog as: "a personal Web site that provides updated headlines and news articles of other sites that are of interest to the user, also may include journal entries, commentaries and recommendations compiled by the user"

More or less anything you want. (within reason)

Many of our users are using their blogs to keep their friends and families updated on what's going on in their lives.

Others have used their blog as a publicity tool, to promote their book, band, or cd.

To create a blog, you must first be logged into your Angelfire account.

If you are, click on the "Blog Builder" link. (This page.)

If you do not have a blog already, you'll be prompted to create one.
All you need to do, is enter the information where asked to, and our system will do the rest.

The question we usually get concerning this, is that people get confused in the "Blog URL" section. What this is, is simply you're choosing the URL of where your blog will be available online (this will be the address you give to people to get to your blog.) It's very important that the address you put in there, does not already exist in your Angelfire account. If you use an existing address, whatever is in that folder may be overwritten with your new blog.

Yes. However, Free members of Angelfire are limited to 3 blogs at any given time.

Premium subscribers can have as many blogs as they'd like.

A Community blog is more or less exactly what it sounds like. It's a blog set up for multiple people to post to.

Generally it resides on one person's Angelfire account, but they can invite users to post to their blog.

Some good working examples are our Angelfire and Tripod Clubs (http://club.angelfire.com and http://club.tripod.com). These are working examples of our community blogs, where members help other members with Angelfire and Tripod related issues.

While your blog is not limited in size, your Angelfire account is. While a blog is generally only text, this should remain fairly moderate in size.

However, if you're the type that posts thousands of times a month, with very long postings, your blog size may start to add up.

If your blog grows to the point of where you run out of disk space, you'll need to upgrade your membership.

To post an entry, you'll need to make sure that you a) have an Angelfire account, and b) have a blog.

If you do have a blog on Angelfire, you'll need to login to your Angelfire account, and select the "Blog Builder" link.

Once loaded, click the image for "Create A New Entry".

Angelfire does not limit the amount of entries you can put into your blog.

However, you are limited to the size that your blog can be, depending on the type of account you have.

The largest blog you'd be able to have, on a free account, would be 20MB.

Yes. Your blog's appearance is completely customizable.

You can change the color scheme of pretty much anything on your blog. To do so, you'd just want to click on the "Change Appearance" link, from the Blog Builder tool.

This will allow any HTML formatted text that you've put into your entry, to appear correctly on your blog.

For example, if you wanted to put a link, an image, bold text, underlined text, etc, that you've done with HTML, you'll need to check off the checkbox to enable the post as HTML.

Otherwise, your HTML code will be displayed, and not work properly.

Yes, absolutely.

To use an image in your blog, you'd need to know where the image is hosted. Generally, this will be in your Angelfire account.

If you know the URL (web address) of the image you want to put in your blog, you'd just need to enter a bit of HTML into your blog. It would look something like this:

<img src="../my/website/image.jpg">

You'd obviously replace the my/website/image.jpg, with the actual information for your image. The my/website would be replaced by your Angelfire membername, and the image.jpg would be replaced by your image's name, and extention.

When logged into your Angelfire account, select the "Blog Builder" link.

When loaded, select the "Moderate Comments" link.

This will open a new page with all of your existing comments on it, to be changed or deleted.

When posting (or editing) the entry you want to hide, you have a few options.

Under the "Make This Post:" section, you have options for:
Public
Share with friends (All buddies, or custom list) and
Make Private.

If you make the entry private, the only person who'll be able to see it, will be you, when logged into your Angelfire account.

If you select "Share with Friends", the only people who can see the entry, will be those that you designate to see it.

To remove the "Control Panel" links from your blog, you'll need to go to the "Advanced Customization" section, from the Blog Builder.

Once the "Advanced Customization" page loads, select the "Main Page layout" option, and click the "Edit" button.

On this page, you'll see several bits of HTML coding, and blog variables (the variables generally contain BLOG in capitol letters).

You want to look for the BLOG variable that says

<BLOG_CMP STANDARD_LINKS>

This STANDARD_LINKS block will remove the entire "Control Panel" from your blog, when viewing it. (You'll still be able to control your blog from the Blog Builder)

Once you remove that code, click the "Save" button at the bottom of the "Advanced Customization" page.

You may need to unpublish, and republish your blog for the changes to take effect.

Q-Ads are incorporated into the the Qumana Blog publishing tool. They allow you to generate income from your blog, by adding ads to it. Please see http://lycos.qumana.com/qads.htm for more detailed information on Q-Ads.

Bloggers insert ads into their posts with just one click - they enter one or more ad keywords, confirm the ad and they're done. The ads are based entirely on the keywords bloggers enter and are not otherwise contextual.

Q-Ads requires free registration. Once registered, bloggers enter their username into the Qumana software in order to be credited for their ads. It is available to both paid and free Tripod members.

A blogger's share is 50% of the ad revenue.

Once a blogger's revenue share reaches $20 he or she will receive a monthly payment via either check or PayPal. Bloggers will not be paid in months where they do not reach $20, but their earnings will carry over month-to-month until they reach $20.

Q-Ads are by default optimized for most blogs, but users can if they choose edit the size and color of their ads. Users can also determine where in their post the ad appears.

Q-Ads can be used alone or alongside ads from other services, such as Google or 24/7.

An RSS feed is a way for people to receive notification when a site is updated and to read the content of a site without having to visit it.

An RSS file (or feed) is a simple XML file designed to be viewed by an application called a newsreader or news aggregator. There are loads of good newsreaders out there, including NetNewsWire for OS X and FeedDemon for Windows. There are also online newsreaders such as Bloglines.

The Topic List for your blog is simply a list of topics that you often write about.

If you opt to use the Topic list, when viewing your blog, you will see those topics displayed under "Entries By Topic". This will make your blog postings easier to find, for your visitors.

If a visitor wants to only read about a certain subject, they can click on that subject, and only read entries pertaining to it.

You can download a copy of the Lycos-Qumana Desktop Blog Editor from http://lycos.qumana.com

If your blog was created before April 4 2006 or has not been republished since before April 4 2006, you will need to republish your blog before using the Qumana editor.
To republish your blog, log into your Angelfire account and on the Blog Manager page, select your blog and click "Hide." Your blog is now hidden. Now click "Show." You will be prompted to confirm that you wish to republish your blog. Click "Publish."
Now you're ready to post with Qumana!

The first time you start up Qumana, it will ask for the URL (or address) of your blog along with your username and password. You'll also need to select "Lycos Blog Builder" from the pull-down menu labelled "Platform."

Qumana should now automatically detect the name and "end point" of your blog. If Qumana does not detect the end point, Angelfire bloggers should enter "http://blog.angelfire.lycos.com/bin/blog/control.rpc" in this box.

Check to make sure that the Time Zone field is displaying your Time Zone - if the Time Zone of your Blog (generally your local time zone) and the Time Zone in Qumana do not match, your posts could be delayed.

If you have additional questions about the Lycos-Qumana Desktop Blog Editor please see our help pages here: http://lycos.qumana.com/support_blog_editor.htm