Using Smilebox

Smilebox is a great site that allows you to make free slideshows to post on your blog. You can choose to upgrade (aka pay) and get more music choices and such, but I have found the free variety to work just fine. Smilebox is very user friendly, but you may need some help posting it to your blog.

The first thing you will need to do is go to the Smilebox website. You can get there by clicking HERE. You will need to create a free account. To make it simple you may want to use your same email and passwords as you use for your blog.

I found the Smilebox site very easy to navigate and I hope you will do. If you do not, let me know and I can help you with that. As with the Cutest Blog on the Block site, you could spend a long time finding great slideshows for your pictures. The one thing you will want to notice is how many pictures each slideshow allows. Some allow hundreds, while others may only allow 10, so be aware of that if it does not let you add any more pictures to your slideshow.

Once you choose a slideshow to use, it will allow you to personalize it. The three boxes I have circled above allow you to do just that. To change the title of the slideshow, you will click on the box on the left. The box on the far right is for adding more pictures to your slideshow and the box in the middle allows you to personalize the individual slides (if you would like to rotate a picture or add text). A quick tip- "Get" all your photos first so they show up in the bar at the left, then when you add slides it will automatically add them with your pictures. This saves a TON of time!
You can preview your slideshow at any time which is a good idea because unfortunately, there is no spell check... (grrr...). When you have it the way you want it you will need to save it and then you will go to the fourth and final step which is to share it. Smilebox may ask you to log back into your account at this time. Sometimes it does this, sometimes it does not. Follow everything it asks you to do.
Remember, when it asks you to share you are always going to choose the big white and orange B which stands for blogger. You could also email these slideshows or post them on facebook, but since this is for blogging, we'll stick to Blogger for now.
When you click on the choice to add it to blogger, it will take you to a new page which has a bunch of code (much like what you saw when you changed your background for your blog). You need to copy that code. You can do this by highlighting it and holding down control c (if you are on a PC) or command c (if you are on a mac).
You will then need to go to your blog post to paste it in. I usually put slide shows at the bottom of my weekly posts for my classroom blog. You can do that, or you could create a post just for your extra slideshow. The key is how to paste in the code and this is important...

YOU MUST MAKE SURE YOU ARE IN THE EDIT HTML TAB AND NOT THE COMPOSE TAB!

(I have circled above to show you exactly where I am talking about). Paste the code into your blog under the HTML tab. You paste the code by moving your mouse to where you want the code to be pasted and holding down control V (command v if you are on a mac).

You can check to see if it worked by then viewing the window above using the command tab (and not the html tab). If you did it correctly, you should be able to see a picture of your slideshow. If all looks well, simply click the orange publish post button at the bottom!

Good luck. I hope this works (and makes sense).