Now that the club has its own blog, we can post things which might require a few more words than just a Facebook post and reach people who don’t use Facebook.

Although you can send your blog contributions to the club to be posted on your behalf, if you are comfortable using a computer you can request permission to post directly by emailing pandaniblog@gmail.com to have your name added to the list of authors. The process isn’t difficult for anyone with some word processing experience and, with tutorials on the site, you can soon be up and running.

First you have to register with WordPress, which is pretty simple and something we’re all used to these days for just about everything we do on computers. Once you get into the site, it’s not particularly difficult to navigate. There’s a pop-up tutorial which appears on the left hand side to walk you through the basics when you begin and the interface is fairly intuitive once you’ve seen where the various controls are located.

Almost immediately you will be able to choose a title and then just start typing below it, in which case the software assumes that you’re doing a paragraph and formats it accordingly. To add photos, select the “+” and either drag the photo you want to the space or select it, using the dialog box. A box will appear below it for you to insert a caption if you wish. If you want to keep typing above it, the cursor will continue where you left off.

However, if you want to type below the picture, a “+” will have appeared below it and you can click on this and select “paragraph” to continue your typing below. It’s all fairly simple.

Altering your text is as easy as selecting the text you want to change and a pop-up menu will appear with basic options. Extra possibilities are available under the “settings” icon.

Save your draft, preview it and then you can publish it directly to the blogsite.

So have a go. It’s really not that hard and once we’re all using it, it will be a great way to tell stories about our walks across the island, and beyond. And if you want help, there are always people in the club, as in all our activities, there to assist you.