- Creating a Blog: From Simple to Sophisticated
- Posting Almost Anything from Anywhere
- Syndicating Your Content on the Web
- Creating a Private Online Group or Community
- Publishing a Super-Simple Podcast
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Posting Almost Anything from Anywhere
Posterous' claim to fame is posting and sharing anything. But what does this really mean? With Posterous, you can post text, documents, presentations, PDFs, videos, audio files, photos, and so on quickly and simply. You can post from email, from the Posterous bookmarklet, from your mobile phone, or directly on Posterous itself, just like a regular blog.
To post by email, send your text or attached file to post@posterous.com from the email address you registered when you signed up. If you created more than one Posterous site with your account, specify that account name in your email, such as post@patricerutledge.posterous.com.
If you email an image, Posterous resizes it for the Web. If you send multiple photos, Posterous creates an image gallery from your photos (see Figure 2).
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Figure 2 Create an instant image gallery by posting multiple photos.
If you email an audio file, Posterous inserts it into a web MP3 player (see Figure 3). To learn how to create a podcast with Posterous, see the later section "Publishing a Super-Simple Podcast."
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Figure 3 Posterous creates an MP3 web player for you.
If you email a video, Posterous hosts the video and displays it in a Flash player on the Web (or on an iPhone without Flash).
The Posterous bookmarklet offers an easy way to share existing web content on your Posterous site. Installing the bookmarklet couldn't be easier. Go to the Posterous Bookmarklet page and drag the Share on Posterous button to your browser's Bookmarks toolbar. Then, when you come across any content that you'd like to share on Posterous, you can quickly share it. To share text, select it and click the Share on Posterous button. To share photos, audio, or video, click the Share on Posterous button and then select exactly what you want to share from the resulting pop-up box (see Figure 4). In this box, you can also customize your post title, select your content, and add any comments.
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Figure 4 Use the bookmarklet to share web content quickly on Posterous.
If you have some knowledge of HTML, you can click in the content you want to share and modify it. For example, when I'm sharing content from my own website, such as the first paragraph of a blog post, I like to customize the linked text that appears in Posterous. By default, Posterous includes a link to the original site when you share content, such as "via patricerutledge.com." I change this to an anchor text link with more descriptive content such as "Continue reading Five Ways Posterous Can Make Your Online Life Easier."
Clicking the Advanced Options link gives you access to more specialized options:
- Adding tags
- Specifying the Posterous site to which you want to post (if you have more than one)
- Scheduling your post for the future
- Indicating where you want to autopost (see the next section for more on autoposting)