How To Capture Screenshots In Windows Without Any Special Software

In my last post you will notice that I had quite a few screenshots showing what Blogger looks like when you are creating your first blog and writing your first post.  I wanted to write a quick post that shows you how to capture images in Windows without any special screen capture software.  It's very easy to do.  If you want to capture the entire screen being displayed at any given moment just click the control key and the "Print Screen" key.  So press <ctrl><Print Screen> and it will copy the current screen to the Windows clipboard for you to paste.

Once you have copied the screenshot into memory (the clipboard) you will now need to paste it into something where you can save it.  If you have an image editing program you can open it up and paste your screen shot there.  I use Corel Paint Shop Pro for my image editing, so I will paste it there so that I can then edit and save it.  If you don't have any image editing software then do not worry.  Windows comes with a simple utility called "Paint" which most everyone has seen before.  To open "Paint" just click your Start button and go to Accessories and then click Paint.

Once the paint program has opened then click the Edit menu and Paste or you can just click CTRL-V and your screen shot will be pasted into the paint window.  Once saved you can then save your image to a file.  You can click File->Save As to save the image.  Make sure the file format is JPEG or PNG since both of these can be used with Blogger.  Save the screen image and remember where you saved it.

Now when you are in your Blogger blog account and writing a post you can click the image button as shown here circled in red:

After clicking the image button you can choose to upload images from your local machine.  Click the choose files button and then select the image that you saved on your computer.  Your image will then be uploaded and you can choose to add it to your post.  After the image has been added to your post you can click on the image and you will get additional options where you can change the size of the image, change alignment, etc.  

Another tip that you might find handy is when you are saving a screen shot in Windows you might not always want to save the entire screen.  Sometimes you might just want to save a single window being displayed.  It's easy to do this as well.  If you want to capture a screen shot of a single window then click the window you want to make it active.  Now instead of clicking CTRL-PRINTSCREEN you will want to click CTRL-ALT-PRINTSCREEN.  So that means click the CTRL key and while holding it down click the ALT key and while holding both of those down click the PRINTSCREEN key on your keyboard.  After doing that the image of the active window will be saved to the clipboard and you can go paste it into your favorite program to edit and/or save.

I hope this will be of benefit to you when saving screen shots in Windows.  If you have any questions or comments please leave them in the comments below. In my next post I will begin discussing how to make money from your blogger blog.

Creating A Blogger Blog And Writing Your First Post

Okay, so as I said in my first post I am not on a set timeline here.  As you can see I originally started this blog back in January.  It's almost twelve months later and I've just now gotten back to writing my second post.  That either indicates I've been extremely busy, or else I'm just not dedicated to the task.  In reality, it's been some of both, but now I've got a renewed focus and working to get on a regular schedule for turning out content.

So my first step in this endeavor was creating a blog on blogger.com.  To do this is quite easy.  Simply open your favorite web browser and go to http://www.blogger.com.  You should arrive at a page that looks similar to the following:

Blogger is owned by Google.  If you already have a Google account then you are all set..  Just use your Google account to login  If you do not yet have a Google account then click the red sign up button which will take you to a screen where you can sign up with Google. 

After you have successfully logged into your Blogger account you will come to the main dashboard. The Blogger dashboard should look something like this:

The dashboard will list each blog that you have created in your Blogger account.  Since I only have this blog created that is the only one you see listed.  When you start for the first time you will not have any blogs listed.  Therefore you will want to click the "New Blog" button to create a new blog. 

When you create a new blog you will get a popup window that looks similar to the following:

Type in the title of your blog and an address name for your blog. The title will be the title displayed when you login to blogger to identify your blog and will also display on your blog itself when some views it. The address or URL will be what a person types into their browser to get to your blog. All blogger blogs are in the format <blogaddress>.blogspot.com. As you type in your address name it will tell you if that address name is available or not. If it is not available then continue to modify your name until you find something unique that has not already been used by someone else. After the title and address are set it's time to pick a template for your blog.  The template will determine the layout and look of your blog. Note that whatever you choose now can be changed later. Once your blog is created you have greater customization of your blog and can change its template.

Now that your blog is created its time to write your first post. Just click the "New Post" button or the pencil icon from any page.  These may show up in different spots depending on what page your are on. The following screenshot sows the overview page for my blog:

I've marked the screenshot with arrows to show both the "New Post" button and the pencil icon. You can click either of these to start a new post on your blog. After starting a new post you will be taken to a screen like this to compose your new post:

You can click in the big white text area and start writing your post immediately. The toolbar above it has various items that let you change the font, font size, add links, add images, etc. If you need specific help on any of these you can consult the blogger help website here http://support.google.com/blogger.  

Your post will be saved automatically as you type or you can always click the save button. If you know HTML and want to really have control of your blog details you can click the HTML button at the top-left and you can see the actual HTML code being used for your post. Most people will just want to leave it in "Compose" mode since this will be easiest.  

If you have started a post but are not yet ready to make it visible to everyone else then you can save it and it will be saved in "draft" mode. You can then leave blogger and come back later to finish writing your post. It will show up under your posts as a draft post and you can click edit to finish the post.  

Once you have finalized your post you can click the "Publish" button to make the post live and available on your blog for everyone to see. Until you click publish the post will be a draft post and will now show up on your blog when people view it.

Okay, I hope this has given you the basics of how to create a blogger blog and write your first post. Give it a try and if you have any questions or issues leave me a comment and I'll try to get back to you as soon as I can.  

Since this blog is about making $500 then I'll jump right into one way to start making money from your blog almost from the very beginning.  So stay tuned for my next post and I'll begin to describe the steps you need to take for that.