WordPress

Blogging at Middlebury

Introduction

WordPress MU is an open source platform that is used at Middlebury for individual blogs. 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://blogs.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.
   

For more information see:  WordPress @ Middlebury

Course Sites

For more information on using WordPress for course sites, see:
WordPress @ Middlebury > Using WordPress for Course Sites

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 > Privacy
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).  Here are the steps:

1. Browse to your blog
2. Click on the Log In link at the top. You will now be in your Dashboard
3. Click on the Users link on the left hand side toward the bottom
4. Click on Add New
5. Where it says "Add An Individual User," type in the person's name or username. Wait for a couple of seconds
6. A list of Names will appear. Choose the correct one.
7. Use the dropdown menu to give appropriate 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

8. Click on the ADD USER button.

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.

Organization

Course sites

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.  For more information on using WordPress for course sites, see:

WordPress @ Middlebury > Course Sites

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.

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

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.

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

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).

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.

WordPress at Middlebury

The cforms plugin can be used by all offices, departments, and organizations to create general forms for collecting information on the web. This plugin gives users a self-service interface to forms creation.

Journal/Research Use

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