Setting up your site with Blogs@Baruch

  1. Use your Baruch username and password to log in to Blogs @ Baruch
  2. Choose Select New Site
  3. In Site Address, write your name as firstnamelastname. This will be the slug of your website URL. For example, I wrote gulliverjones and my website URL is blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/gulliverjones
  4. For Site Title, write your name (for example, I wrote Gulliver Jones)
  5. Choose the Privacy setting you prefer for now. You can change privacy settings at any time. I chose Visible only to registered users of this site while I was building the site, and then, when my site was built, I changed it to Visible to registered users of this network (that means anyone who uses Blogs@Baruch. You can also make it viewable by a wider public, and choose whether you want search engines to find it easily.
  6. In Role, choose Student
  7. In What kind of a site will this be?, choose Personal/group blog
  8. Select your Major
  9. Click on Create Site
  10. You will get a “Congratulations!” message. Again, congratulations. Log into your site.

Before we go any further, I need you to add me to your site.

  1. Hover over your name at the top left of the screen. A dropdown menu will drop down. Click on Dashboard.
  2. Go to Users > All users > Add existing
  3. Type my email address into the box
  4. Set my role to Administrator
  5. Click on Add existing user
  6. Done. Click on your name on the top left of the toolbar. This will take you back to the front end of your site.

Now, we can start building the site.

  1. Hover over your name at the top left of the screen. A dropdown menu will drop down. Click on Dashboard.
  2. Go to Pages > Add New
  3. In Title, call this page About
  4. Type a short welcome message (one paragraph), saying a little about yourself. You will go back and edit this as often as you like, so don’t overthink it.
  5. Click on Publish
  6. Go to View Page
  7. Congratulations! You have created the first page of your site!

Let’s create another page. Follow the steps above, calling the second page Resume.

This time, instead of writing, let’s use some place holder text from this lorem ipsum generator. Generate lorem ipsum, and paste it into your Resume page. Publish, and view.

Now, we are going to change some settings and edit the Sample Page post. Your instructor will walk you through the following steps:

  1. Go to Dashboard > Settings > Reading
  2. Set Your homepage displays to A static page
  3. For Homepage, select About
  4. For Posts page, select Sample Page
  5. Scroll to the bottom and Save Changes
  6. Go to Dashboard > Settings > Writing
  7. Set Default editor for all users to Block Editor
  8. Set Allow users to switch editors to Yes
  9. Scroll to the bottom and Save Changes
  10. Go to Pages > All pages
  11. For Sample Page, select edit page (classic editor)
  12. Change the page title to Blog
  13. Next to the permalink, select change permalinks
  14. In Permalink Settings, change Common settings to Post name
  15. Scroll to the bottom and Save Changes
  16. Congratulations! you have changed the URL of the page. To see your changes, click on View Page

Next, we are going to create a menu so you can access your pages from the front end. Your instructor will walk you through the following steps:

  1. Go to Menus, and create a menu called Primary Menu
  2. In Menu settings, choose Display location > Primary Menu
  3. Add pages to the menu (I will walk you through this – it’s a bit fiddly)
  4. Save menu
  5. Visit site

The last thing we are going to do today is the even more fun bit. Click on Customize > Theme. Explore themes. Choose a theme. Share your site with the class.