Preparing to brand Stardock Blog Navigator.

Contact sales@stardock.com to obtain your redistributable kit that you will be able to brand. //ToCustomize//Get your affiliate ID which you will be able to put in the purchase link for BlogNavigator Pro and profit from the users buying the Pro version from your branded build //ToCustomize//. Unzip the kit to a folder of your choice.

Branding Blog Navigator splash image.

Replace the "splash.bmp" image with the branded one. The image must a bitmap of the same size and color depth as the original image.
Namely 480 pixels wide, 309 pixels high 24-bit bitmap.

Customizing the application appearance and branding.

Open the "branding.xml" file in any text editor (Notepad will do). This is the key to your own personalized Blog Navigator. Let's have a quick tour by the settings you can personalize in this file.

• productName and fullProductName - pretty self explanatory that is the name of the application used in various places.
• fullProductURL, fullProductPurchaseURL - links to product website and the link to order page when your site user can purchase the full version of the product.
• helpMenu - this is the place where you can customize (add more options to the Help menu). Each menu item consists of two elements:
  • name - the name visible in the menu
  • url - the command called on menu click. This can be a url, a program or any system command.
• messages - the messages displayed in situations where BlogNavigator encounters a limited functionality
  • expired - not currently used since BlogNavigator is no longer time limited
  • unregisteredSingleton - message displayed when user tries to add more than one basket, web search or search folder.
  • unregisteredNoPosting - this message is not currently displayed.
• services - this is the place to add your own service to. Service is a blog site (like JoeUser) which supports one of the following APIs: Blogger 1.0, Blogger 2.0, MetaWeblog, MovableType or MetaWeblog with Joeuser extensions.
  • service - is an instance of such site that will be displayed in the combobox of the available services. Service specificatrion consists of:
    • name - the name displayed in the combo box.
    • id - unique service identificator
    • url - the url that will be launched ehn user clicks the "Create your own blog here" link that is placed under the combo box.
    • endPoint - the url under which your XML-RPC API resides.
    • apiClass the api type your site supports. Select only one exact value to enter there:
      • TBlogger10BlogApi - if your site supports Blogger API 1.0 only
      • TBlogger20BlogApi - if your site supports Blogger API 2.0
      • TMetaWeblogApi - if your site supports MetaWeblog API
      • TMovableTypeApi - if your site supports MovableType API
      • TJoeUserApi - if your site supports the advanced functions of MovableType API

Define the default blog set for your site.

• Add and arrange the blogs to your preference.
• From the main menu select "Options" from the "Tools" menu. In the "Advanced" tab press the "Make this blog set default" and press the "Yes" button in the MessageBox.
• Your blog setup will be written to the application folder. Now every new user will automatically use those blogs as a startup blog set.

Build an installer to put on your website.

http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php- a free toolkit for building your installation files.