How-to

start an alumnae class or club webpage

Make your Alumnae Class and Club web pages faster and with ease! Once you are signed up, pick the theme or look of your site and start posting your content.

This step-by-step guide is designed to help you through the sign-up process and to familiarize you with some of the features of the WordPress blog environment. For additional help, please go to http://wordpress.org/ and refer to the documentation they have there. Also, feel free to email Andrea Kaldrovics at akaldrovic@brynmawr.edu for additional support.

Please note that plug-ins and themes need to be approved and added by the college. Feel free to submit your suggestions at the main blogs.brynmawr.edu site for review.

Enjoy your new web page!

step-by-step guide

If you don’t have a college ID and password, request one now!

To Activate your account for use in WordPress:

1) goto password.brynmawr.edu
2)fill in your College username and password
3) click enter
4) on that next page, please fill in your email address
5)click enter - this successfully logs you into the system

To start a blog on the Bryn Mawr College blog server:

  1. First, visit the login page at http://blogs.brynmawr.edu/wp-login.php and log in to the site with your college id and password (what you use for email and everything else). This will register you for the site.
  2. then, go to: http://blogs.brynmawr.edu/wp-signup.php
  3. Enter a domain(aka. the website address). The domain you choose will be a part of the url of the website, for example, if you were to choose “history547”, then the url of the blog would be “history547.blogs.brynmawr.edu” .blogs.brynmawr.edu is automatically added, so there is no need for you to add it here.
  4. Enter a blog title - this is the name of your blog. There are no limitations to the characters that can be in this title.
  5. Select if you want your blog to be indexed(and searchable) by sites such as Google and Technorati, and to be listed on blogs.brynmawr.edu.

  6. Click on “Create Blog >>”. You should now see a confirmation message that the blog is now yours.
  7. Click on the site address for your blog. This is what your blog looks like - it’s the default theme - but don’t worry, you can change it.
  8. Click on “site admin” - it’s on the lower right corner under “meta.”

Use your new blog!

Dashboard

The dashboard is where you can customize all aspects of your blog.

  1. To write a new post or page,
  2. click on write in the top left, and
  3. then once you have clicked write, you are given the option of what you would like to write. A post is just what you think it is - a post that will appear on the front page of your blog. A page is a static post - it will not be pushed back behind posts and has its own separate link on the main page.
  4. To publish your page or post, Click on publish (next to save) - it’s off to the left - to post this blog entry.
  5. After you type your post into the text box, you need to publish if you want it to be viewable. Make sure the publish status is set published - if it’s not, no one else can see what you just wrote. You can add tags to your post or place your post into a category. This enables other people to quickly find what they need to on your blog.
  6. Click the manage tab to manage entries that already exist. Let’s say that you want to delete the “hello world” post that’s on your blog.
  7. Click on manage, and then posts.
  8. Select the checkbox next to the post entitled “hello world” and click on delete.

It’s that simple!

  1. If you’d like to edit the content of a page - say, the about page - click on ‘about.’
  2. Change whatever you’d like to here and then remember to
  3. click on ’save’ or your changes will not be remembered. The links tab is where you would enter your “blog roll.” A blog roll is a listing of favorite blogs and websites usually in the sidebar of a blog. Also referred to as link lists or bookmarks.
  4. The categories and tags tabs also allow you to manage and delete tags and categories that you may have created when you posted a blog entry. You can add tags and categories here, too. If you delete a tag or category, it does not delete the posts associated with those categories. The basic difference between categories and tags is that categories are structured and tags are unstructured. Please refer to this great reference to read about categories and tags in detail: http://dougal.gunters.org/blog/2007/09/22/tags-and-categories-in-wordpress

Design

Under the design tab, you can change the theme associated with your blog. Wordpress uses themes (a specific site layout that’s predesigned) that you can select to customize your blog. We have two great Alumnae themes that you can choose from, if you’d like something that says “Bryn Mawr”, otherwise feel free to use any theme we have available.

  1. To select a new theme, click on its picture. A preview will pop up, showing you what your blog will look like.
  2. If you like this look, click on “activate” in the top right corner.

Widgets

A widget is a small add-on to your blog site. A widget will be viewed no matter what page is currently displaying on your blog.

To add a widget, click “add” next to its name. You will see the widget appear under “current widgets.” You can drag and drop widgets to reorder their placement on the page.

Some common widgets are:

  • Pages which show what static pages you’ve created. Be careful - some themes automatically show what pages you have created, so adding this widget might be unnecessary.
  • Calendar shows what dates you have made posts to your blog.
  • Archives shows a monthly archive of the titles of posts.
  • Links is your blogroll.
  • Meta contains important links for blog users - logging in, logging out, and RSS feeds.
    Search is a search box for your blog. Be careful - some themes already have a search box and having another search box would be redundant.
  • Recent Posts shows the most recent posts.
  • Tag Cloud shows your tags in such a way that the most commonly used tags are in a larger text size.
  • Categories shows the categories.
  • Text is a place to add static text. This is a good place to add contact information.
    RSS stands for really simple syndication - here, you can add snippets from another blog or site.
  • Recent Comments is a widget that shows the most recent comments on your blog.
  • Akismet is a spam-filtering software.

Blog settings - Under settings, in the top right corner of the dashboard, you can change the general settings of your blog. Under General, you can change your blog title and tagline (subtitle).

  • Plugins - A plugin is like a large widget that adds greater functionality to your blog. Activate and view which plugins are active underneath the plugins tab.
  • Users - Here, you can manage users on your blog.
    • To add a user to your blog, they must first have a blog account.
    • To add a user, enter their email address and select their role. An administrator has full power to change many things on your site - it’s best to only have one or two administrators, and add users as subscribers.

For General Help - Please refer to the documentation in WordPress; and if that isn’t helpful, please contact Andrea from the Alumnae Association to assist you: akaldrovic@brynmawr.edu

September 12 2008 03:11 pm

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