Author: Craig Stone

The following instructions will walk you through creating your own blog, managing the appearance and layout, and adding content. Click on any of the links below to jump to a specific topic.

• Launching your site
  • Setting the privacy level
  • Enabling comments
  • Changing the site’s appearance
     
• Creating and editing posts
  • Adding images
  • Adding links to the top menu bar on your site
     
• Commenting on other students’ posts
   

Setting Up a Site on Blogs@Baruch

To create a new site on our system, go to blogs.baruch.cuny.edu and log in using the same Baruch username and password that you use to log in to Baruch campus computers and WiFi. (If you don’t know your password, you can reset it at mypassword.baruch.cuny.edu.)

Once you’re logged in, click the button underneath your name in the top right corner that says “Create a Whole New Site.”

You will land at a page that asks you to name your site, and to give it a title.

The “Site Name” is what will appear after the “https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/” in your web address, and cannot be changed after you create your site; it also must be in all lower-case letters. The “Site Title” is what will appear in the header of your site, and can be changed at any time. Finally, select whether you want your site to be indexed by search engines or not. (You can select from more specific privacy options once you’ve registered your site. Find out how in the Privacy Options section below.) Please also fill out the Metadata fields to tell us how you plan to use your new site.

Click “Create Site.”

Administering Your Site

Once you have set up your site, you will manage it through the “Dashboard.” When you are logged in to Blogs@Baruch, you can access the Dashboard for each of your sites via the WordPress navigation bar at the top of the screen.

From here you can navigate deeper to:

• configure settings and change the appearance of the blog
• create posts and pages
• upload images and other media.

Configuring Settings

From the Dashboard, clicking “Settings” from the menu on the left side of the screen allows you to change many of the overall options for your site. For example, you can use the General Settings section to change the site title, change the time zone, or add a brief description. The various sub-sections allow you to control the comments, reading, and writing options for your blog, among other things.

Settings also allow you to control the privacy settings, or even delete your site entirely.

Site Privacy Settings
To change who can view your site, click Settings in the left-side menu in the Dashboard, then click Reading from the expanded menu options that appear. This will bring you to the Reading Settings area, and if you scroll down you can select a “Site Visibility” option:

• Allow search engines to index this site
  Anyone can visit your blog without needing a password. Search engines will index all pages and posts, meaning your site will show up in search results on Google, Bing and others. Select this option for maximum public visibility.
• Ask search engines not to index this site
  Visitors do not need a password to see your site if they know the URL or are linked from elsewhere, but Google, Bing and other search engines will not index your posts and pages. Choose this option if you want to be able to show the blog to people who are not registered for Blogs@Baruch, but you don’t want people to stumble upon it via search engines.
• I would like my blog to be visible only to registered users of Blogs@Baruch
  Users will need to enter a password to see the site, but it is open to all Blogs@Baruch members. Select this option if you’d only like the Baruch community to be able to see the blog.
• You should not select one of the two most restrictive options — I would like my blog to be visible only to registered users I add to “My Blog” and I would like “My Blog” to be visible only to admins. — because they will not allow your professor or classmates to see your work.

Once you’ve selected the best option for you, click the blue Save Changes button.

Comment Settings
You can edit comment settings by going to Settings > Discussion from the left-side menu in the Dashboard. The Discussion Settings page offers many options, but for this project you should make sure the box for “Allow people to post comments on new articles” is checked.

Some other options that you may want to consider:

• Users must be registered and logged in to comment — select this if you want to limit comments to registered Blogs@Baruch users.
• Next to “E-mail me whenever”: Anyone posts a comment — select this if you’d like to receive a notification to your Baruch email address whenever someone comments on your blog.
• Next to “Before a comment appears”: Comment must be manually approved — select this if you want want to review all comments before they appear on your blog.

Changing Your Blog’s Appearance

The Appearance section is where you control the overall look and feel of your blog/website.

Themes
If you go to the Appearance section, you will see a number of images that highlight different themes you can use for your site.

To preview how your site will look with any of the 100+ themes available, click the theme’s thumbnail image and then click the “Live Preview” button. Note: When previewing a theme, make sure that “Navigation” is one of the items in the sidebar on the left, otherwise you will not be able to use the Custom Menu function required to complete your project.

If you like the theme you’re previewing, click the blue “Save & Activate” button in the upper left corner, or close the preview by clicking the X in the upper right corner and preview another. Once you’ve selected the new theme, click on your site’s title in the black menu bar that appears at the very top of the page to visit your site and see how you like the new look.

Widgets
If your theme allows Widgets, you will see a “Widgets” link in the menu under appearance. Widgets allow you to alter what appears in the sidebars and footers of your site.

WordPress widgets are content elements that can be added to the sidebar of your blog or website. For example, there are widgets that include Delicious bookmarks, Flickr photos, etc. Depending on the theme, you can also further customize the look and feel of your blog/website. Some themes allow you to add a custom image header and other features.

By default, your right side bar will have items such as Recent Posts, Recent Comments, Archives and Categories. These sections will automatically populate as people begin posting and commenting on your blog. However, you may also find it useful to add other widgets to the sidebar, which you can do simply by dragging items from the “Available Widgets” box over to the “Primary Widget Area” box on the right side. You can also change the order that the widgets appear by dragging and dropping within the “Primary Widget Area” box.

Some widgets that you might find especially useful:

• Links – Displays the items you’ve entered in the Links section.
• Tag Cloud – Shows the tags that have been attached to posts on the blog, with more frequently-used tags appearing larger. (See the Tags section below.)
• Text – This allows you to plug in any text or HTML code that you’d like to appear in the sidebar.

Creating Posts

This section is where you can write new blog posts and edit existing posts. When you click on the “Posts” button, you’ll see a list of posts on the blog. Posts you have authored will be hyperlinked, and you are able to click into them (via the “Edit” or “Quick Edit” buttons), make changes, and update them.

Writing posts is probably the main thing you will do with your blog. When writing a new post you can control the status, e.g. make the post a draft if you are not ready to publish it, password protect it, etc. You can also change the time stamp to control when the post shows up in the blog’s chronology of posts. In addition, you can add categories and tags to posts to create a personalized taxonomy of terms and sections in your site. You can add tags and categories while writing a new post, or later while editing an existing post. Use the Quick Edit function if you just want to change the tag or category or status of your post. If you want to change what you wrote, click Edit.

To Write a New Post:

• Click the Add New button next to Posts at the top of the page. This will bring you to the post editor.
• Where it says “Enter title here,” type in a headline for your post.
  
• Above the top right corner of the body field are two tabs: Visual and HTML. Visual mode is recommended for most users, as it is a WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) editor that works like Microsoft Word. More advanced users may wish to use HTML mode, which allows you to use HTML and in-line CSS coding to format your post.
• Begin typing the text of your post into the body field.
• Above the body field are formatting buttons you can use similar to Microsoft Word. (More on that in the “Visual Editor” section below.)
• You can preview your post without publishing it by clicking the Preview button. This will show you exactly how the post will look on the blog.
• If you want to save your post and come back to it later, just click the Save Draft button. (All revisions, including drafts, are accessible at the bottom of the post editor. You can always restore a previous version of a post.)
• Before you publish your post, select a category (or multiple categories) by clicking the appropriate checkboxes in the categories box on the right side:
• When you’re done writing and formatting your post and you’ve added all the images and video you want to include, click the blue Publish button.
• To see how your post looks on the site, click the “View Post” link that appears at the top of the page.

Using the Visual Editor:

The visual editor provides an easy way to format and add a range of material to your post. Here is an image of the editor with the “kitchen sink” hidden (this refers to a full display of editing buttons).

Below is detailed functionality for the buttons in the visual editor:

• Bold selected text
• Italicize selected text
• Strikethrough selected text
• Create a bulleted list
• Create a numbered list
• Put text in a blockquote
• Insert horizontal line
• Align text left
• Align text center
• Align text right
• Create link (When you select text, this button will become active. See “To Add Links” section below for more detailed instructions.)
• Break link
• Split post with a “more” tag (used in longer posts, will insert a link that reads “Continue Reading this post”
• Run spellcheck on post
• Show/hide more toolbar options

To Add Links:

• Highlight the text that you want to turn into a link.
• Click the button that looks like a chain link.
• To link to an outside website:
  • In a separate browser window, go to the page you want to link to and copy the URL.
  • Back in the post editor, paste the URL into the URL field (making sure to replace the http:// so that you do not end up with the http:// command twice).
  • Click the Add Link button, and the text will change to blue or purple with an underline.
• To link to a page or post on the site:
  • Click the arrow next to “Or link to existing content.”
  • If you don’t see the page you want to link to in the menu, search for the page or post title and it will appear.
  • Click on the page or post title. It will automatically fill in the URL and Title fields.
  • Click the Add Link button, and the text will change to blue or purple with an underline.
• To remove a link, highlight the linked text and click the broken chain link button.

To Insert Images:
Note: Most cameras now take and export pictures that are thousands of pixels wide and tall. This is good for print quality but very bad for the web. Before you upload your photos to Blogs@Baruch make sure to use PhotoShop, iPhoto, Preview, Image Resizer, or another image editing program to resize them down to something more manageable. A good rule of thumb is to set the longest dimension to 800 pixels.

• Place your cursor where you want the image to show up.
• Click the gray media icon next to “Upload/Insert” above the formatting buttons.
• The window that pops up will walk you through the upload process.
• To upload an image from your computer:
  • Click the “From Computer” tab at the top of the window.
  • You can either drag image files directly from your computer into the window or click the Select Files button.
  • If you use the Select Files button, a window will open that allows you to browse your computer for the file(s) that you wish to upload. You can select multiple images by using Ctrl-click on a PC or Command-click on a Mac. Once your files are selected, click the Open button to upload the image. It may take a few seconds to load.
  • Once uploaded, the window will expand to show you a thumbnail of the image and several text fields.
  • In the Alternate Text field, type in a very short description of the image.
  • If you’d like to include a caption beneath the image, type it into the Caption field. How your caption displays depends on your theme.
  • Choose the Alignment style you’d like by clicking the button for Left, Center or Right. (Left and Right wrap the text around the image, Center pushes the text below the image.)
  • Choose the size that you’d like. Large fills most of the width of the page, Medium fills a little less than half, and Thumbnail makes a small, 150-pixel square image.
  • Now click the Insert into Post button and the image will show up, resized and aligned, in the body field.

• To add an image from the web:
  • Click the “From URL” tab at the top of the window.
  • In a separate browser window, find the image you want to use and copy its URL. To do this, right-click (ctrl-click on a Mac) on the image and select Copy Image Location.
  • Back in the post editor, paste the URL you’ve copied into the Image URL field.

• In the Image Title field, give the item a 1-2 word title.
• In the Alternate Text field, type in a very short description of the image
• Enter source information on where exactly you found the image into the Caption field.
• Choose the Alignment style you’d like by clicking the button for Left, Center or Right. (Left and Right wrap the text around the image, Center pushes the text below the image.)
• If you’d like the image to act as a link to another web page, paste the URL into the “Link Image To:” field.
• Now click the Insert into Post button and the image will show up in the body field just as it would if you had uploaded from your computer.

• To add an image that has already been uploaded to your site:
  • If the image was initially uploaded to this post, it will be available in the “Gallery” tab at the top of the window.

• If it was uploaded elsewhere on your site, it will be available in the “Media Library” tab.
• Click the appropriate tab, find the image on the list and click the Show link to the right of it. This will expand the image properties options.
• If not already filled in, enter alternate text and a caption (if desired), choose the alignment you want and then click the Insert into Post button.
• To edit the alignment, size, alternate text or caption for an image you’ve already inserted into a post, click on the image and then click on the pencil icon that appears in the editing bar.
• To delete an image you’ve already imported, click the image and then click the X icon in the top left corner.

To Embed a Video:
From YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, blip.tv, Flickr (both videos and images), Viddler, Hulu, Qik, Revision3, Scribd, Photobucket, PollDaddy, Google Video, WordPress.tv, SmugMug, FunnyOrDie.com:

• In a separate browser window, find the video you wish to include in your post.
• Once you’re on the page for that video (the headline at the top of the page should be the video’s title, not “Search results for…”), Copy the url of the video after clicking the “Share” button.
• Paste the URL into the post editor. It will embed the video directly in your post.
  Note: This function only works if the pasted code is NOT formatted in any way. (Do not bold or italicize the text.)

Categories
Categories allow you to group posts in a way that makes sense to you or your readers, and you can cross-list items in multiple categories.

To create categories as you create new posts, use the + Add New Category link in the post editor. If you’d like to set categories before you start posting, you can do so from the Categories link under Posts in the left-side menu.

To create a new category, all you need to do is type the category name into the “Name” field and then click the Add New Category button below. If you’d like your category to act as a sub-category within another (such as having one category called Assignments and sub-categories for the assignment titles), use the “Parent” dropdown menu to select the parent category before clicking Add New Category.

Once you’ve created your categories, make sure to let your users know which categories to place their posts in. If they don’t designate a category before publishing a post, it will show up in a group called “Uncategorized.”

Tags
Tags show up as links at the end of each post (and in a Tag Cloud widget, if you’ve added one). Readers can click on these links to see all of the posts on the blog that have been given that tag.

It is generally easiest to add tags within the post editor before publishing, but you can also create tags ahead of time by using the Tags link under Posts in the left menu. Simply enter the name of the tag in the “Name” field and then click Add New Tag.

Menus
You can control what appears in the navigation menu at the top of your site by going to the Dashboard and selecting Appearance > Menus from the left-side menu. That will bring you to the Custom Menu editor.

Under “Edit Menus,” click the link that says “create a new menu.” Start by giving your menu a name in the “Menu Name” field, then click the blue Create Menu button. This will create an empty menu with fields called “Menu Structure” and “Menu Settings.”

To the left of the “Menu Structure” area, you will see the three types of items that you can add to a menu: Pages, Links, and Categories, along with a fourth item for Format, which you can ignore. To add your required posts to the menu, click the Links option from this box to display the “URL” and “Link Text” fields.

In a separate browser window, navigate to the post and then copy the web address from the URL bar at the top of the browser. (When doing this, make sure you are viewing the actual post and not the post editor.) Then return to the menu editor and paste the URL in the “URL” field under Links. Now enter the name of the assignment (Option 1, for example) in the “Link Text” field and click the Add to Menu button.

Under “Menu Settings,” check the box for “Navigation Menu” to make this custom menu display as the main menu at the top of your site. Note: Depending on the theme, the top menu may be titled something different than “Navigation Menu.”

When you’re done editing a menu, be sure to click the blue Save Menu button or else your changes will not be saved.

Creating Pages

Pages are similar to Posts, but they exist outside the chronology of the blog. These tend to be used for “About Us” statements, class procedures, or an annotated list of suggested readings.

Some themes will automatically display pages in the menu bar at the top of the home page, while others allow custom menus that you can edit in Settings -> Menus. You can then place these custom menus in the Widgets section.

You can also create a Page that will act as your static homepage, rather than having your homepage display the most recent blog posts. To do this, go to Settings and click the “Reading” link. The first option says “Front page dislays” and gives you options for “Your latest posts” or “A static page.” Click the button for “A static page” and select a Page that you’ve created from the “Front page” dropdown menu.

Commenting on Posts

To view comments or add your own, scroll to the end of the post. If you’re reading the post from the site’s home page, you should see a link that says “Leave a comment” that will take you to the existing comments and allow you to add your own. If you have already clicked into the full version of the post you will just see the comments and an open “Comment” field where you can type your own text.

Once you’ve finished writing your comment in the “Comment” field, click the Post Comment button to add it to the post. Note: If the site owner has comment moderation set up, your comment will not appear immediately. Please do not submit the comment multiple times.

Registering Students for a Course Blog

We’ve streamlined the process by which students can be added to individual blogs. There are still two ways that you can register students, though most will choose the first.

Creating Accounts for Your Students:

• • Visit the Dashboard of your blog. Since many users are all members of multiple blogs, be sure that you’re in the correct place (the blog name should appear at the top of the Dashboard).
  • Click on the “Users” menu, and click “Import Users.”
  • Paste a list of the Baruch email addresses for your students into the field on that page (faculty members can download an eRoster with student email addresses here). The list must be in the following format, using Baruch emails:

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

 

• Select the appropriate user role from the drop down menu
• Click “Import Users”

The page will then give you a report of accounts created and accounts added to the blog. Please copy that report and save for your files in case there are any problems.

Each of your students will receive an email to their Baruch email account with their username, password, a link to your blog, and a link to their BuddyPress profile page (and a nudge to fill it out). Speaking of which, if you haven’t filled out your profile, please do so!

Having students self-register (an older method, but it still works):

If you want your students to register and add themselves as subscribers, contributors, authors (most common), editors, or administrators, they’ll need to first create an account on Blogs@Baruch (if they don’t have one already), and then individually add themselves to your blog. You’ll need give your students this handout (a PDF file that you can alter if you’d like) and make sure that the “Add Yourself as A User” widget appears in the sidebar of your blog.

During this process, you have the choice to password protect self-registration on your blog, and to allow self-registrants to add themselves to your blog at any user level. Once your students have completed registration, you will see them listed in your Users menu.

User Accounts

One user account allows an individual to contribute content to multiple blogs across the Blogs@Baruch system. All that’s needed is for the administrator of a blog to add a user’s account through their administrative panel.

There are five levels of users on a WordPress weblog:

• Administrator – Somebody who has access to all the administration features
• Editor – Somebody who can publish posts, manage posts as well as manage other people’s posts, etc.
• Author – Somebody who can publish and manage their own posts
• Contributor – Somebody who can write and manage their posts but not publish posts
• Subscriber – Somebody who can read comments/comment/receive news letters on a blog that is password protected

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Questions about the Blogs@Baruch Profiles and Accounts

Most of your account options are available in a dropdown on the right side of the top navigation bar when you are logged in to Blogs@Baruch.

How do I load a picture of myself (an “avatar”) to appear in my profile and other areas?

You can load a picture, or avatar, of yourself through the gray navigation bar that appears at the very top of the page. Go to “My Account > Profile > Change Avatar” to upload a new image.
You can also create a Gravatar at http://en.gravatar.com/ ; doing so will enable you to use that same image across many different websites.

How can I change my password?
You can change your password through the gray navigation bar at the top of the page. Go to “My Account > Settings > General” to change your password.

How do I change my display profile name?
1. Select: My Account> My Profile> Edit Profile
2. To change your display name, re-write your preferred name in the ‘Full Name (required)’ field
3. Select Save Changes

How do I change my display email?
1. Select: My Account> My Profile> Edit Profile
2. To change your display email, re-write your preferred email in the ‘Email Address’ field
3. Select Save Changes

What are @mentions and how are they used?
The @mention system links others to the hyperlinked profile of the individual while notifying the individual of the mention via email.
If you are trying to reach out to specific group members, simply put the @ symbol in front of their username and it will send a notification to their email address and show up in their @mention activity stream.
To learn more about the @mention system read this blog post.

What are “friends”?
In Facebook, “friending” is social networking: Members search for people whom they know, used to know, or want to know. The friending tool enables them to contact these people or to accept someone’s request for contact (and determine the extent to–and ways in which–the person can contact and interact).

On Blogs@Baruch, “friending” is “academic social networking”: it enables us to contact one another and share resources and knowledge. By accepting a person’s friend request you become part of his or her “‘network.”

To accept a “friend request,” you can either follow the link in the e-mail you receive requesting friendship, or once you’ve logged in, look again at the gray tool bar on the top right; hover your mouse over “Notifications.” Then click on the number of notifications you have pending. You will then be directed to a web page that allows you to accept or reject the friendship request.

What are “notifications”?
The Notification link (at the top of the screen if you’re logged in) indicates if you have a new message, friend request, or invitation to join a group.

How do I change my email account where I receive email notifications through the Blogs@Baruch?
1. Select: My Account> My Settings> General
2. Re-write your preferred email account in the ‘Account Email’ field
3. Select Save Changes

How do I send a private message?
To send an email to another member, you can either find them on the member list or you can go to the Blogs@Baruch home page and click your avatar, click the “Messages” link on the left, and click “Compose.” Start typing the person’s first name in the addressee box and the program will give you a list of all the members whose names include the letters you’re typing. Next to the addressee box is an empty box for copying other members. Do the same thing in this box that you just did for the addressee. Each time you do this, a new box will appear for another person to whom you might want to send a copy of the message.

How can I toggle my email notification settings?
The settings on your profile page (available by going to the top gray navigation bar and clicking My Account > My Settings > Notifications) allow you to choose whether you want the site to email you in response to a variety of different actions, such as a message being posted on the forum of a group to which you belong. Please visit this page to easily change your preferences.

Can member profiles be made private? How can I prevent my profile from showing up in a Google search?
Right now, Profiles are visible only if a user is logged in to Blogs@Baruch. If users are worried about privacy within the system, they should avoid using their full names on their profiles. Instead, they could use some combination of initials and first or last names.

How Do I Delete My Account?
To delete your account, log in to the site and look for the gray navigation bar at the top of the page. Mouse over the Welcome message in the top right to expand the menu, then go to My Settings > Delete Account and follow the directions you see. Remember, this will delete your account and all content associated with it, including blogs posts you’ve written. You will lose all this data if you delete your account. For information on how to export your data to take with you to another web space, submit a question through this contact form.

(special thanks to our awesome colleagues at the CUNY Academic Commons for allowing us to crib from their BuddyPress support page)

The Settings area allows you to change many of the overall options for your blog. For example, you can use the General Settings section to change the blog title, change the time zone, or add a brief description. The various sub-sections allow you to control the comments, reading, and writing options for your blog, among other things.

Settings also allow you to control the privacy settings, or even delete your blog entirely. The Permalinks sub-section is where you establish the convention WordPress will use for naming each new post to your blog, and Media is where you change the settings for media files.

If you are adding plugin functionality, you often control the settings for plugins within the Settings area (the plugin will frequently have an associated sub-section in the Settings section). There are many, many options housed within this tab, and it may be useful to click on each one to explore the possibilities.

Blog Privacy Settings

• On the Dashboard, scroll down to Settings on the left side menu.
• Click Settings to expand the menu, then click Privacy.
• In the Privacy Settings area, you have five options:
  
  • Allow search engines to index this site
    Anyone can visit your blog without needing a password. Search engines will index all pages and posts, meaning your site will show up in search results on Google, Bing and others. Select this option for maximum public visibility.
  • Ask search engines not to index this site
    Visitors do not need a password to see your site if they know the URL or are linked from elsewhere, but Google, Bing and other search engines will not index your posts and pages. Choose this option if you want to be able to show the blog to people who are not registered for Blogs@Baruch, but you don’t want people to stumble upon it via search engines.
  • I would like my blog to be visible only to registered users of Blogs@Baruch
    Users will need to enter a password to see the site, but it is open to all Blogs@Baruch members. Select this option if you’d only like the Baruch community to be able to see the blog.
  • I would like my blog to be visible only to registered users I add to “My Blog”
    Only members of your specific blog will be able to visit the site. Choose this option if you are teaching a class and only want those enrolled to be able to see the blog. (Note: You will need to import your students as members or authors and select this option.)
  • I would like “My Blog” to be visible only to admins.
    Only those registered as admins (meaning they have full access to edit the blog’s design and other components) can visit the blog. Select this option if you’d like a private workspace or are collaborating with other faculty/staff who will need full access to edit the site.
• Once you’ve selected the best option for you, click the blue Save Changes button