Opening Title and Contents

Before You Start
A free Google blog can be set up and used to display your own collection of any nature, from Autographs to Zebras, without any cost.

For new bloggers, the start point is go to the Google search page, then More, then Blogger, and follow the steps there to create a blog for Your Collection. After that, follow the steps below.

Nature of Your Collection
In this Opening Title and Contents post to Your Collection, you can give one or two sentences about the nature of Your Collection and list the contents. To Create a post go to the Postings tab, also to Edit Posts.

Contents
To neatly display Your Collection, you do need to decide beforehand what headings you wish to use for each post and create posts in reverse order under the Posting tab. Thus in the list below, Bibliography was the first post loaded and Opening Title and Contents was the last post loaded.

After you have posted the various headings you wish to use, the Contents can be added. This is achieved by copying the section under Blog Archive on the right of this page and pasting it to this post via the Edit Posts tab for Your Collection.

• Opening Title and Contents
• About the Collection
• Recent Additions
• Highlights of the Collection
• Copies, Fakes, and Frauds
• History of the Collection
• American Galleries
• British Galleries
• European Galleries
• Other collecting links
• Bibliography

The above hyperlinks give the opportunity for visitors to move directly to the posts that interest them, e.g. History of the Collection. This is useful if Your Collection tends to become long.

Live Example
This Your Collection example is kept simple for illustrative purposes. To see how you could develop Your Collection, see a live collection at Artists and Ancestors - A Miniature Portrait Collection

Setting up Galleries
A simple Your Collection can be set up without separate Galleries and if so, this section can be ignored. However, if you have a large number of items to display, it is better to set up separate Galleries for the different parts of Your Collection. Thus in this example, three Galleries have been set up; American, British, and European.

Each Gallery is set up by going to the Dashboard, which appears when you sign onto Google Blogger and Your Collection. There you need to create a separate new blog for each Gallery you wish to add. The Galleries are then interconnected by creating hyperlinks to/from Your Collection and each Gallery.

To create the hyperlink between Your Collection and a Gallery, go to the Template tab for Your Collection. There you will see a tab called Page Elements with an option "Add a Page Element". Under this select the heading "Link Lists" and name the new Page Element "Galleries".

For each Gallery you have created, fill in the boxes, showing the Internet address of that Gallery. (Make sure you use the full address ending in .blogspot.com). Click on "Add the Link", then "Save Changes", then "View the Blog". As you do this, you will see hyperlinks at the top right created under Galleries. They provide a short cut to each Gallery.

After setting up each Gallery, also use the "Page Elements/Add a Page Element" on the Template for each Gallery to create a Home hyperlink back to Your Collection. When complete, click on all the hyperlinks you have added, to make sure they work.

Number of Posts
It is recommended that Your Collection and every Gallery each be limited to 100 posts, so they do not take too long to download or to refresh. Decide the number of posts you want to display. Then go to Settings/Formatting/Posts and enter that number next to "on the main page" for Your Collection and for each Gallery.

General and Comments
There are other tabs that can be modified under Posting, Settings, or Template, but it is suggested you ignore these until you are confident about using them. For example, once you have set up Your Collection, you can allow Comments to be made by visitors via Settings/Comments.

About the Collection

Here you can give a much fuller description of the nature of Your Collection.

Recent Additions

Here you can talk in general terms about recent additions to Your Collection. If you wish, you can set up a separate Gallery to display the items.

Highlights of the Collection

Here you can display and talk about the best items in Your Collection.

Copies, Fakes, and Frauds

Here you can talk about copies, fakes, and frauds that collectors should be aware of.

History of the Collection

Here you can talk about the history of Your Collection.

American Galleries

In this post you can show the items in Your Collection that come from America. For example, here is a miniature portrait of a young lady in a green dress by John Wood Dodge.

Alternatively, if you prefer, you can create a hyperlink to a separate American Gallery where you have a lot of items and want a separate post for each one.

To do this copy and paste the blue hyperlink that appears under Galleries at the top right of the page.

However, you will first need to create a new Gallery blog before you can do that.

Then for American items in Your Collection, visitors can go to American

British Galleries

In this post you can show the items in Your Collection that come from Britain. For example, here is a miniature portrait of a bride by the artist Elizabeth MacVicar.

Alternatively, if you prefer, you can create a hyperlink to a separate British Gallery where you have a lot of items and want a separate post for each one.

To do this copy and paste the blue hyperlink that appears under Galleries at the top right of the page.

However, you will first need to create a new Gallery blog before you can do that.

Then for British items in Your Collection, visitors can go to British

European Galleries

In this post you can show the items in Your Collection that come from Europe. For example, here is a miniature portrait of a lady in a white dress by the Italian artist Alberto Prosdocimi.

Alternatively, if you prefer, you can create a hyperlink to a separate European Gallery where you have a lot of items and want a separate post for each one.

To do this copy and paste the blue hyperlink that appears under Galleries at the top right of the page.

However, you will first need to create a new Gallery blog before you can do that.

Then for European items in Your Collection, visitors can go to European

Other Collecting Links

Here you can show other hyperlinks, for example to on-line collections or dealers who sell this type of item.

Bibliography

List of reference books