One of the things that are unofficial requirements for blogging at GIO is a working knowledge of how the blog editor works. If you can't figure out how to post a blog, it's a bit difficult for people to see it.

Then there's the formatting problem. Good blogs are easy on the eyes. That means no walls of text, but no collages of pictures either. You have to strike a happy medium. This topic has been covered before in a previous guide I did.

So new people, listen up. Experienced users, you too. Even if you know your way around the blog editor, you might not know a couple of these tricks. Here's how to make the blogging process a bit smoother here at GIO.

Don't upload images, use Imgur

I can't provide a link to this, but a while back somebody working for Game Informer mentioned that the number one thing that slows down the site is people uploading images. When you post a picture from your hard drive to GIO, that requires servers for storage, and that slows down the site.

So how do you get images into blogs? Easy. Those of you who use Reddit have probably heard of Imgur. Simply put, Imgur is the best image-hosting site on the internet. Uploading an image there is simple. Select the file, upload it from your computer, copy the direct link, and insert the picture from a web location into your blog.

You can even do the same thing with pictures on the internet (and not on your hard drive). Just right click the image and select "Copy Image Address" or something along those lines. Then use the "Upload from Web" option on Imgur.

Imgur really is the best way to do pictures. It's free, uncomplicated, and reliable. And it will hopefully speed up GIO a little bit.

Edit advanced options for pictures

Once you've inserted a picture from Imgur into your blog, try some formatting. Right click on the picture and select "Insert/edit image." A small box should pop up with all sorts of cool features. You can make the image right, left, and center justified or put some space between the image and the text. That's how I start every blog with a left justified image.

Try the advanced options menu, it's got some cool stuff. Just don't go too crazy with all those weird justifications. Just because you can tile the background with images of Brucie Kibbutz doesn't mean you should.

Advanced blog editor

At the bottom of the blog editing page there is a link that says "Advanced editor." This is the super duper blog editing menu where you can customize all sorts of neat stuff. There are so many options here it's hard to know where to start.

The timed blog post option is pretty neat. You can write up an entire post and set it to automatically publish itself at a certain time. You can block comments on that post or have them published only after your review. Someone spam comment the page? Edit or delete their comment.

By far my favorite option, though, is the ability to change the preview text for a post. Normally when you look at the user blogs page, you see the first few lines of a blog. Put something else in the preview box, though, and it can say whatever you'd like.

A word of warning- again, don't go crazy with the advanced editor tools. Just because you can delete somebody's comment or edit it to make them look silly does not mean that it's a good idea. If you start abusing those powers, don't be surprised when people stop commenting.

That's about it for my tips... What are some of your hidden secrets for posting blogs on GIO?