Using a Blogger Blog for your Club Newsletter

glamaramaWe like Blogger.com as a free place to make a website.  We teach Blogger to travelers as an easy way to keep a travel journal, but we also recommend Blogger to clubs and small businesses who need a  website.  We’ve written about this before:  Use a Blogger Blog for a Club Website

We’re excited to see that the next rally we’re going to is using Blogger for their rally website.  Check it out at http://glamaramarally.blogspot.com/.  You’ll notice that there are several pages listed in the right sidebar, including a link to their newsletter, and links to forms to submit for registration.  They are using Dropbox.com to store their linked documents.  A great system, and super simple.  Here’s how it’s done:

Using Dropbox

  • Sign up for a free Dropbox account.  This will set up a dropbox folder on your computer.
  • Create your newsletter and save as a .pdf file in your dropbox folder.  Dropbox will automatically make a copy of that file online in your dropbox.com account.
  • Locate that file and right-click on it and choose “Share Dropbox Link.”  You have just copied a link that will take anyone to the online copy of the .pdf file

Using Blogger

  • With the link from Dropbox freshly copied, and a Blogger blog already open and logged in as an administrator
  • To add a link on an existing post or page: Just type “Here is our current newsletter.”  Select the words, “Current Newsletter” then click the tool for Link, paste in the dropbox link and click OK.
  • To create a ‘Page’ that goes to the newsletter: From you Blogger dashboard, use the dropdown list and select the option for Layout, then Add a Gadget in the location you want it to appear (tabs under header or list of links in sidebar) choose the “Pages” gadget, then “Add External Link” and fill in the field like the image below.
    pages
  • page link

Show the Newsletter on a Blog Post or Page.

If you wanted to embed the actual newsletter, you could use Google Drive to store the .pdf file.  Then open that .pdf in Google Drive Viewer.  Now you have a menu including “File.”  On the file menu is “Embed this .PDF File.”  If you choose that, you will see a box with the code you need:
image

Copy that code and use Blogger’s HTML view to paste it into the post or page where you want it to appear.  You will probably need to adjust the height and width settings in the code snippet.  You can see an example of this on a sample page I made using the Fulltime RVers newsletter as a sample.

If you are a Geeks on Tour member, you can check out the Blogger Videos to learn the basics.  If you are interested in viewing tutorial videos specifically on how to do what is in this article, please comment below.  If I get enough comments, I’ll do the videos.

MrsGeek

2 replies on “Using a Blogger Blog for your Club Newsletter”

  1. […] We’re excited to see that the next rally we’re going to is using Blogger for their rally website.  Check it out at http://glamaramarally.blogspot.com/.  You’ll notice that there are several pages listed in the right sidebar, including a link to their newsletter, and links to forms to submit for registration.  They are using Dropbox.com to store their linked documents.  A great system, and super simple.  Here’s how it’s done: … […]

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