1. First, make your songsheets and upload them to the internet (see relevant section of “Chordie Hijack” described here):

http://ukestuff.amplify.com/2010/08/21/chordie-hijack-how-to-use-the-chordie-renderer-to-format-and-print-your-songs/

2. Next, register with Chordie if you have not already done – “It’s free and gives you a personal songbook” – http://www.chordie.com/register.php

The “personal songbook” is the key part here. You can create as many “personal songbooks” as you like. You can make a songbook “public” in order to “publish” your songs with chord names and chord diagrams.

3. Log in to your Chordie account.

4. Go to “My Songbook” (blue navigation tab just under the Chordie logo).

5. Select “add book” at the top of the left-hand menu, next to “Songbooks”

6. Give your songbook a name. ***Do NOT leave this blank or you will not be able to edit or manage your songbook***

5. Use the “Chordie Hijack” to submit a song to the Chordie Renderer:

http://ukestuff.amplify.com/2010/08/21/chordie-hijack-how-to-use-the-chordie-renderer-to-format-and-print-your-songs/

6. Look down the menu on the right for “Songbook: ADD”. Change to the correct songbook if necessary, then select “ADD”.

7. Do this for at least two more songs as you need to have at least three songs in your songbook before you can “publish” it.

8. When you have finished, go back to “My Songbook”, select the songbook you want to publish and customise the settings. These settings will apply to the whole songbook. For example, specify the sort order and instrument. (If you change the instrument you need to select “Change” after you have specified the instrument).

9. Select the “publish” button next to, “Make songbook available to everybody”

10. Use the dialogue box that you see next to: rename your songbook if you want to; specify the “collection” for listing in “Public Songbooks”, eg. “Blues”, “Uke collections”; write some notes to be displayed about your songbook.

This works – I have tried it.

You need to create simple text files but use “chopro” (ChordPro) formatting – not as difficult as it sounds.

For information about Chopro (ChordPro) formatting see:

http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/ChordPro
http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/ChordPro-Markup

Chordie recommends that for the best results you should use the filename extension “.chopro” or “.chordpro” rather than “.txt”. Just rename your file from “songname.txt” to “songname.chopro” or “songname.chordpro”.

The info on Chordie mentions a “Google service” where you can host your files for free. If you use the filename extension “.txt” you can upload your files to Google Docs. You need to make them “public” to let the Chordie Renderer access them (I have not tried this but it should work).

If you use the filename extensions “.chopro” or “.chordpro” you CANNOT upload your file to Google Docs. However, you CAN upload them to a free Google Site:

http://www.google.com/sites/help/intl/en/overview.html

http://sites.google.com/support/

I have tried this using Google Sites and it does work. Here is an example:
http://www.chordie.com/chord.pere/sites.google.com/site/ukesforfun/songsheets/BornToBeWild.chopro

Note: This does NOT mean that your song has been indexed by Chordie, ie. if you use the Chordie Search function you will not immediately find your song in the Chordie database. Eventually, Chordie will find your song and it will be indexed.

Next tip: How to “publish” your songs via Chordie, even if they have not been indexed by Chordie.