Password-protecting Posts:If you are writing on a public blog, but you want your post to be password protected, click on the “Visibility” link in the “Publish” menu on the top right side of your post editor. Click “Password Protected” and give your post a password.
Be sure that whomever you want to read your post has the password!
Publishing Under an Alias: Once you’re in the Dashboard/Admin Panel, click on “Your Profile”
Then add a nickname:
Then select the nickname from the “Display name publicly as” dropdown menu:
Now, your alias will appear appended to all of your post. But if your blog has the default permalink structure, your username will STILL show up in the URL of the author archives. If this is a concern for you, request that your faculty member or whomever administers your blog change the permalink structure of the site. If they need to, they can submit a help request through here for assistance.
Write a post: After logging in, click on “Add New” underneath “Posts” on the left hand side of the screen. In the text box at the top, give your post a title. In the second text box, write your post. Above the box, you will see a visual editor, which provides an easy way to format and add a range of material to your post. Here is an image of the editor:
Using the visual editor, you can format the font and paragraph attributes and insert pull quotes. You can also add links and media, which will be addressed below.
If you prefer to write a post using the HTML interface, make sure that the HTML tab in the upper righthand corner is selected.
Insert images into your post:
To insert an image in the post, click the “Add Image” icon (immediately to the right of “Add media” in the upper-left hand corner of the visual editor. This will open a window that looks like this:
It is recommended that you select “From URL,” as this will link directly to the image file at the source location. When you select this, option at the top of the window, you should see this:
Fill in the “Image URL” (which you can get for most images on the Web by right-clicking and selecting “Copy Link Location” and then pasting into the “Image URL” field), give the image a title, and then “Insert into Post.”
If you prefer to upload an image from your computer, select “From Computer” in the add media dialogue box. Click “Select File,” identify the file on your computer, and fill in the information in the screen that looks like this:
Lower down in the dialogue box, select the alignment and size of the image as shown below (I recommend choosing “Medium” so that it fits properly on the blog). Finally, make sure to click “Insert into Post,” which will insert the image and bring you back to the composition window. 
Preparing Images for Gallery Display
To post a photo gallery to your course blog, you will first need to make sure that your images are digitized and optimized for display on the web.
To display properly using the blog’s gallery feature, your images should be no wider or taller than 800 pixels. You can use Photoshop, if you have access to it, to create a version of your image file that is no wider or taller than 800 px, and then use the “Save For Web” option to create an optimized version. Or, if you use iPhoto, you can export a copy of your image file set to a maximum size of 800 pixels.
- Click “Choose files to upload” or “Choose File” (which option you see will depend on the browser you are using)
- Upload images— some browsers will allow you to upload all of your images at once, while others will force you to upload one at a time
- To add captions: after images have uploaded, click “Show” next to each image thumbnail to add a caption; be sure to click “Save all changes” after you’re done
- After images have uploaded, click “Save all changes”
- Choose options for how you want your gallery to display, then click “Insert gallery”
- You will see a graphic in the body of your post, or perhaps the text “gallery”
- Add categories for your post, and, when you’re ready to post your work to the blog, click “publish.”
- You can always edit your post and the information in the gallery by clicking on the Manage tab in the Administrative Area of the blog, and then the Post’s title.
Inserting links: Highlight the text you wish to covert into a link. Click the 10th button from the left in the visual editor in the top row (looks like this: A dialogue window will pop up, in which you can enter the URL that you are linking to, as well as the name of the link as you wish for it to appear in your post.
Inserting video files: This works best in Firefox or Safari, not in Internet Explorer. Copy the link of a video on YouTube or a similar service. Paste it into your visual editor on a new line. For example, I will paste a URL to a YouTube video here:
When you preview or publish your post, the video will appear embedded in your post. In some cases, YouTube has disable embedding on a particular video, so it will just appear as a link. If you are using Internet Explorer, you are likely to just see a link rather than an embedded video.
