Moon American Food HowTo

How do get a site/blog on UMW Blogs?
Please note: ''If you already have a blog and/or a username on UMW Blogs you can skip this step and go on to the next one. Remember that you can only have one username.''

To get a site on UMW Blogs go to the sign-up page and enter a username and e-mail address (you must use your UMW email). Make sure the "Gimme a Site" radio button is selected. After that, you will be taken to a page that asks you to specific the site URL, title, and privacy options. Fill in all the required information.

After that you should get a confirmation email with a confirmation link (check your junk mail folder if you don;t receive this immediately). Once you click the confirmation link, you will then be able to navigate to your site, login, and start blogging.

Once I have a site where and how do I log in?
First things first, where is your course blog? Well, this should be the URL you specified when you created your site. You should be able to login to the backend of your site by either click the login/site admin link in the sidebar, or alternatively appending /wp-admin to the site URL. In other words if your site has the follow URL:

http://mycourse.umwblogs.org

You would append wp-admin, and it would look as follows:

http://mycourse.umwblogs.org/wp-admin

Which should bring you to the login screen for the backend. Once you are there, you will see two fields asking for your login and password, as pictured below.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3368/3548600759_22da35eed6_o.png

How do I change my password?
When you sign up for a blog, you will be given an automatically-generated password. It's a good idea to change your password first thing. To do this, login to your blog, go to the Users tab on the left side in the administrative back-end, and click on the Your Profile subtab. From here you can enter your personal information and change your password at the bottom of this page.

How do I get an avatar?
Go to GRavatar and associate an avatar of your choice with the email you use on UMW Blogs. GRavatar is an external service that links avatars with e-mail addresses so that anytime you comment on another blog with that e-mail address your avatar will show up if enabled on that particular blog.

How do I write a post?
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3551/3549753002_2c8d98545c_z.jpg

View on Flickr here.

This section is where you can write new blog posts and edit existing posts. Writing a post (as opposed to a page which is distinct from blog posts because pages remain outside of the blog's reverse chronology) is probably the lion's share of how you will use your blog. When writing a new post you can control the status, i.e., make the posts a draft, password protected, etc. You can also change the time stamp to control when the post shows up in the blogs chronology of posts.

Additionally, you can add categories and tags to posts to create a taxonomy of terms and sections in your site. You can add tags and categories while writing a new post or editing and existing post. And the sub-sections "Tags" and "Categories" allow you to manage tags and categories across all your posts. Note that your professors will be asking you to categorize posts in very specific ways---you must do this to credit credit for your post.

How do I upload an image or document and place it in a post or page?
You can easily upload documents and images into a post or page. Doing this is relatively straightforward. Go to Posts &rarr; Add New and look for the "Add image" and/or the "Add media" buttons (the "Add Image" button looks like a monitor and the "Add media" button looks like a gray asterisk, as pictured below.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2480/3545704865_c165e6528d_o.jpg

View on Flickr here.

When you click on the button, a dialog box will appear offering you the option to upload a image or file from your hard drive. Once you have located your file click on the "Upload" button. http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2430/3545737607_09a0b61670_o.png

View on Flickr here.

Alternatively, if you want to link directly to an image or file that is already online just click on the From URL tab and insert the URL and click "Insert into Post" button.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2170/3546543874_9d89d79c0f_o.png

View on Flickr here.

If uploading a file from your hard drive, you will get a dialog box asking you to title the document/image, as well as to provide a caption and description---both of which are optional. Once you are done, click on the "Insert into Post" button and you are done. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3129/2717395133_a3b402e7cb.jpg

Click for larger version on Flickr here.

How do I add a video from YouTube?
To quickly embed a YouTube video, simply copy the video’s URL from your web browser’s address bar while viewing the video:

http://en.support.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/youtube-url1.png

And paste it on a line by itself in your post/page editor:

http://en.support.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/youtube-editor.png

How do I copy and paste word documents?
Click on the button the arrow is pointing to below- affectionately termed the "Kitchen Sink"- in order to get additional options for your editing toolbar.

Go from this:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3255/2718162791_94cc70c7a7_o.jpg

to this:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3039/2718982188_37a7ffc7e8_o.jpg

After following the step above you will see an icon with the MS Word icon in your visual text editor (which the arrow is pointing to). Click on this and copy the Word Document text into this window and save it. This strips out all the MS Word code and "cleans" the text for publishing on WordPress. There may be some minor formatting you have to update afterwards, but most of the formatting from MS Word should remain intact.

How do I Manage Comments?
Often times, initial comments are placed in a moderation queue until you approve them. Once you approve a comment from a user, he or she should be able to comment freely thereafter. You can view the comments on your blog as well as those awaiting moderation in the Comments tab on the left side in the back-end of your blog. If you want to change the permissions for your comments- say allow anyone to comment without moderating- see the Settings tab and look for the Discussion subtab. This is where you can control the comment settings.

Additionally, when writing a post, you can turn off the comments on a post-by-post basis by scrolling down to the Discussion section below the text entry field when creating a post and un-checking the comments field.

More questions?
See the much more thorough support documentation for UMW Blogs here.