ENGL 302A: Introduction to Creative Writing

How do I get a blog on UMW Blogs?
To setup a blog on UMW Blogs go to the sign-up page and enter a username, e-mail address (you must use your UMW email), and a password. Make sure the "Gimme a site!" radio button is selected.

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View larger version on Flickr here.

Once you have done this, you will be taken to a page that asks you to specify a domain (this can be anything you like, however there can be no spaces and no special characters- only letters and numbers), enter a blog title (you can change this later on), and select the privacy settings for your blog. (Note: Once you've setup your blog, you will be able to further customize your privacy settings.)

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View larger version on Flickr here.

Once these steps are all completed, you should receive an e-mail confirming that you do, indeed, want a blog. (Be sure to check your Junk Mail folder when looking for the email - sometimes it ends up there.) Click on the link in the e-mail to activate your blog and log into your account.

Once I have a blog, where and how do I log in?
First things first, where is your blog? Your individual blogs should be located at the address you specified on UMW Blogs. Your initial blog address is determined by the domain you choose when creating your blog. For example, if the domain you chose is "myblog" your blog address will be http://myblog.umwblogs.org.

If you go to this address, you will see the public "front-end" of your blog. In addition to this view, you have an administrative (private) "back-end" for your blog, where you can add and edit posts/pages, change your theme, activate plugins, and, more generally administer your blog's content and appearance.

There are two ways to access the administrative back-end of your blog:
 * 1) Go to http://www.umwblogs.org and enter your Username and Password in the "Login" block on the right.
 * 2) Go to your blog's URL and add the following to the end of the address: "/wp-admin" (no quotes) - the address should look like the following:

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

Once you are there, you will see two fields asking for your login and password, as pictured below.

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View original image on Flickr here

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?
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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 personalized 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.

How do I get my post to show up on the course blog?
In order for your posts to show up on the course blog two things need to happen.


 * Your blog must be public. To make sure this is the case, go to Settings --> Reading in your blog's dashboard and make sure your blog is one of the two top privacy settings. It should be either openly indexed by search engines or blocked from search engines, but still accessible without a password.

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 * Additionally, you MUST use the course and section tag on any posts that should show up on the main course blog. The available course tags are:

302poetry 302prose

The available section tags are:

section1 section2 section3 section4

You can enter these tags when you first create, or later update, a post by using the Tags widget in the sidebar. In addition, you need to add the tag that signifies the assignment for which the post is being written. For example, journal1, journal2, etc. Please check with your instructor for additional tags.

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If all of these conditions are met your posts should automatically show up on the course site, although it may take up to two hours from the time you publish 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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:

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

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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:

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to this:

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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.

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