WordPress

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Blogging at Middlebury

Introduction

WordPress is an open-source platform that is used at Middlebury for individual blogs and as a content management system for creating web sites in general. Uses include journals, creative writing tools, and news publishing.  You can log into the Midd instance of WordPress with your Midd username and password.

Log in

To log into WordPress at Middlebury, locate the "login" link on whatever blog you want to contribute to.  If the blog has no "log in" link then go to: http://sites.middlebury.edu/wp-admin/.  Type in your Midd username (first part of your email address before @middlebury.edu) and password (same password you use to log into Midd email).

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New Blog Creation and Access

New Blogs

You must have a Middlebury user account to create a WordPress blog. Here are the steps:

1. go to the login page
2. then go to the sign-up page to give your blog a name. Do not use "wp" at start of blog name.
   

For more information see:  WordPress @ Middlebury

Course Sites

To create a course site using WordPress, begin at the Course Hub. Instructions are here Course Hub: Adding a Resource to Your Course Hub Site

Access and Roles

WordPress allows you to define who can access your blog/site (anyone, middlebury community, registered users, admins only( and what role individual users have (administrator, editor, author, contributor, subscriber)

Access (Privacy)

Access to a given blog/site can be defined in Dashboard > Settings > Privacy.  Here are the steps:

1. Go to Dashboard
2. Go to Settings > Reading > Site Visibility
3. Specify which option best meets your needs

Access can also be restricted by adding password protection to posts or pages.  Password protected posts/pages will only be accessible to blog/site administrators, editors, authors (of the post/page password-protected) or any site visitor who is given the password.  Here's how to password protect a post/page:

1. Add a new or edit an existing post or page
2. In the Publish panel chose edit the "Visibility"
3. Select Password protected and type in a password
4. Click the "OK" button
5. Click the "Publish" or "Update" button

Add Users

WordPress allows you to add "users" to your blog/site and assign them roles (administrator, editor, author, contributor, subscriber).  When you create a WordPress site, by default you will be the only person who can access it.  Here are the steps for giving access to additional  users:

1. Browse to your blog
2. Click on the Log In, using your Midd email name and password
3. Click on Add New to pull down menu
4. 
5. Click on User
6. 
7. To add an individual, use the "Add An Individual User" window and type in either a person's name or username.  To add a class, follow the instructions below.
8. 
9. Begin typing in a name. Wait for a couple of seconds
10. A list of names will appear. Choose the correct one.
11. Use the drop down menu to give appropriate access
12. 
13. Click on the ADD USER button.

Roles and access:

• Administrator - Somebody who has access to all the administration features
• Editor - Somebody who can publish and manage posts and pages as well as manage other users' posts, etc.
• Author - Somebody who can publish and manage their own posts
• Contributor - Somebody who can write and manage their posts but not publish them
• Subscriber - Somebody who can only manage their profile

[Alternatively, if you are adding group members as users (see below) then access to sites for your course can be managed in the same way that you manage access to your Courses Folders. This has the advantage of adding users once to give them permissions to any course platforms that need authorization. See Managing Access to Classes Folders and Other Folders on Middfiles.]

Adding Group Members as Users

Groups of users can be added to your WordPress site as well

1. Go to your site Dashboard
2. Go to Users > Add New
3. Under "Bulk-Add Users By Group" Type in the name of the group you want to add (i.e. span0101a-f11) and wait for this group to appear in the drop down list
4. Chose a role for these group members and click the the “Add User” button

Note:  WordPress does NOT automatically update groups when the members changes. However you can “bulk-add users by group” multiple times and any new members in the group will be added.

If you are using WordPress for a course site, its a good idea to “bulk-add” frequently during the first couple of weeks of classes.

Organization

WordPress sites can be organized in a variety of ways.

Posts

An author adds material to their blog by creating posts. Posts may be of any length, and can include text, audio and video. Once an post is created, it may be previewed, saved as unpublished, or save as published. Only published post will be seen by visitors.  Posts can be edited after they are published.  When posts are published they appear on the main page of your site in reverse chronological order (i.e. most recent posts first).

Pages

Authors can also add content to their site by creating pages.  Like posts, pages may be of any length and can include text, audio and video.  When pages are published a link to them will be created either in the top navigation bar of the site or in the "Pages" widget in the site's sidebar. You can change the order of pages on the menu by going into edit for a page and assigning a number in the order field.

Pages vs Posts

For more information of the difference between pages and pages, see:

WordPress @ Middlebury > Techniques > Pages vs Posts

Categories and Tags

All posts can be assigned one or more categories and/or tags for use in a guided search.  New categories can only be added by site administrators or editors and can be organized hierachically.  New tags can be added by site administrators, editors and authors.  

All the categories/tags on a site can be listed using the "tag cloud" or "categories" widgets.  For more information about widgets, see:

WordPress @ Middlebury > Widgets

Customization

Widgets

Widgets are available to add character and functionality to the blog. Some widgets that are available include:

• Calendar
• Latest entries
• Search
• Creative Commons License
• Tag cloud
• Subscribe to feed

A feed widget can be added to create a list of links to any other blog or website that has an rss feed. Also, third party widgets can be added.

To change the way widgets are displayed on your blog, activate the Display Widgets plugin. More information about the Display Widgets plugin is here: WordPress Plugin Spotlight: Organize your Widgets with Display Widgets.

Plugins

Plugins are features that are added to WordPress to expand its functionality. Some of the plugins we have added to WordPress at Middlebury have been highlighted in the LIS Blog. See Plugin Spotlight.

Commenting

Blog Authors, Editors and Administrators

Visitors to a blog may leave a comment through the use of a simple web form. In most cases, this is a name, an email address, and the text of their comment. Authors may decide whether comments appear immediately on the blog, or if they are held until the author can read them.

Blog Visitors, Subscribers

To comment on a Midd WordPress blog, click on the link to comment (usually below the title of the post or below the post text).  If you have a Middlebury user account and you see fields for name and email address, this indicates you should log in before you post. If you are NOT part of the Middlebury community (i.e. you don't have a Middlebury user account), you need to fill in your name and email address.

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RSS and Subscribing

WordPress supports both publishing its own content via RSS (really simple syndication) as well as accessing RSS feeds with widgets.  Blogs are RSS feeds for posts/entries, comments, categories, tags and authors.  Some blogs will display links to some of these feeds, most commonly, the feeds for posts and comments.  How you subscribe to a feeds depends on how your browser and computer is configured to handle RSS.  Some browsers may be configured such that when you click on an RSS feed link, you are given an option to chose what desktop or web application to use to read the feed.

Here is one way of subscribing to RSS feeds that will work on nearly all browsers/computers:

1. Locate the link to the RSS feed you want to subscribe to
   
2. Right click (or control click) on on the RSS link and chose "Copy Link Location" or "Copy Link" or "Copy Shortcut."
   
3. Open you favorite RSS Reader (or try Google Reader), and find the "add subscription" or "subscribe" link or button
   
4. Paste the RSS link url you copied above and click "add" or "save" button/link
   

The url (web address) of RSS feeds in WordPress follow a common syntax.  Thus if the blog you want to subscribe to doesn't display RSS feed links, you can always figure out what they are by using the following convention:

Posts RSS:
https://blogs.middlebury.edu/<<blog_name>>/feed

Comments RSS:
https://blogs.middlebury.edu/<<blog_name>>/comments/feed

Category RSS:
https://blogs.middlebury.edu/<<blog_name>>/category/<<category_name>>/feed

Tag RSS:
https://blogs.middlebury.edu/<<blog_name>>/tags/<<tag_name>>/feed

Author RSS:
https://blogs.middlebury.edu/<<blog_name>>/author/<<author_name>>/feed

Post Comments RSS:
https://blogs.middlebury.edu/<<blog_name>>/<<date>>/<<post_title>>/feed

Best way to get these urls is to go to the blog page that has the content you want to subscribe to and add "/feed" to the end of the url.

Subscribing to Private Blogs

When you are logged in and viewing a private blog, the RSS feed links contain a special key unique to you and the blog that gives your reader access to the feed. There is nothing special you need to do, just subscribe as usual and feeds from private blogs will now work without redirecting your reader to the login page.

Q. Oops, I sent my private feed link to everyone! Now what?
A. If you accidentally share your personal feed link with others, you can go to your profile page and revoke your key for the blog in question.
Q. If someone finds out my key, can they use it to access my other sites?
A. No, keys are per-user and per-site.
Q. I removed a user from my private site, will they still see updates?
A. No, the feed keys just authenticate the user, they still are checked against the subscriber list before showing them content.
Q. Will my feed key let me edit without logging in?
A. No, the key only grants access to feeds, nothing more.

Podcasting

Links to audio files in a WordPress entry will appear in the RSS feed. Visitors may subscribe to this feed as a podcast.  To set up your WordPress blog to function as a podcast, do the following:

1. Log into your Blog
2. Click on the Plugins link in the upper righthand corner
   
3. Chose to Activate the Audio Player plugin
4. Click on links to Write > Post
5. Give you post a title and add text (describing your podcast post)
6. Click on the Add Media "starburst" in the post editor
7. Click on the MiddMedia tab
8. Chose to show files in your MiddMedia or Upload a new file to MiddMedia
9. Click on the "use" button for the file you want to use in your post
10. Click on the Publish button to publish your podcast post

Liveblogging

Liveblogging is the practice of covering an event as it happens on your blog. Rather than a composed post that covers your thoughts on a subject and is published once, a live blog post is updated with snippets of your thoughts on the event as it occurs. Common uses of liveblogging are covering a speech, television show, or sporting event. The practice allows the author to interact with their readers in real time via comments on the live blog post.

To do liveblogging on your site, activate the Liveblog plugin. More information about the Liveblog plugin is here: WordPress Plugin Spotlight: Liveblog.

Embedding Video

Wordpress has special plugins for video and therefore requires special plugin codes that normally aren't used in html coding.  In order to embed video, do the following:

1. Log into your Blog
2. Click on the Plugins link in the upper righthand corner
3. Scroll down the page and make sure that the plugin labeled "Wordpress Video Plugin" is green, meaning it is active.  If it is inactive, activate it.
4. In the upper lefthand corner, click on "Write" and begin a new post.
5. Add a title and descriptive text.
6. Determine which video hosting program you are using (ie. YouTube, Veoh, etc.)
7. Head to this link and find the embed code that's specific to your video server and follow the instructions there.

As an example, YouTube's embed code for Wordpress is [youtube id] where "id" is replaced by the video id on the server.

Access to Blogs

A visitor can view all published entries in a blog. Unpublished entries may have a scheduled publishing date, or they may be manually published.

A blog owner may allow, or not allow comments on their blog.

To limit blog access just to students enrolled in a class, do the following:

1. Go the "dashboard" of your blog (you'll need to log in and click on link to site admin or one of the links in the upper right corner.
2. Click on the link to privacy under Settings (in the right sidebar).
3. Chose to make your blog "visible only to registered members."
4. Click on link to "add new" under Users.
5. Under "Bulk-Add Users By Group" begin typing in the course code for your class until your class appears in the drop down menu and you can select it.
6. Click on the "Add Group Members" button and chose to add them as subscriber or authors (if you want them to create their own posts).

Removing a blog

You can delete a blog that you own.

1. Go to Dashboard
2. Go to Tools > Delete site
3. You will receive an e-mail, which you must respond to for deletion to happen.

WordPress at Middlebury

WordPress has been used in a variety of ways at Middlebury.

Curricular Use

WordPress has been used for creating course sites and curricular resources.

Personal Use

Many faculty, students and staff have used WordPress to create blogs that describe things they have done at Middlebury. These sites could contain information about research, studies, projects, e-portfolios... etc

Department Use

Some departments/areas at Middlebury have used WordPress to supplement information on the main college website.

Journal/Research Use

For more examples, see the blog roll on the home page of Blogging at Middlebury.