VLS FAQ

What is WordPress?
WordPress is a state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. Often associated with a blog, WordPress is much more than a blog- it is a simple and easy-to-use web publishing platform that can allow you to build a web presence with little or no fuss!

VLS Notebooks is running a WordPress Multi-Site installation which allows the VLS community to have and customize their own customize their own web publishing space.

How do I get a notebook (blog) on VLS?
You VLS Notebook should have been setup for you already. if this is not the case, contact us.

How do I log in to my notebook?
First things first, where is your notebook? Your individual notebook should be located at your username. In other words, if my login username is jimgroom, my notebook will be http://virtuallanguagestudies.net/jimgroom.

You can login by going to the VLS Homepage. After logging in, click on the link in the lower-right sidebar "Connect to WordPress."

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Once you do this you will see a link to visit your site (which will bring you to the front end people see) or to go to the dashboard to write a post.

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How do I change my password?
You really can't change your password in WordPress, because this application is logging you in based on your Moodle username and password. To change those, you need to speak with Julio Rodriguez.

How do I change my blog title?
To change the title of your blog go to the Settings tab on the left side in the administrative back-end and you will see a field for blog title as well as a field for the site tagline, which is a space for a brief description of your site. Just type in a new title or tagline and save the changes.

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Note: Your tagline is automatically displayed in the header of some, but not all, of the available blog themes in VLS. If you want your tagline to be visible, be sure to choose a theme with this option.

How do I deal with issues of privacy?
Privacy at VLS is a major concern, and it is important to realize from the start that the spaces you create here are, by default accessible to the general public, but blocked from Google and other search engines. You can password protect individual pages and posts (learn more, as well as select more granular privacy settings for your entire blog or website.

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To make your blog or site private, go to the Settings tab on the left side in the administrative back-end and click on the Privacy subtab. From here, click on one of the the five options for controlling external access to your space, each of which is detailed in the image below. It is important to keep in mind, however, that if you restrict your privacy settings to members of the VLS community, registered users, or administrators only, the RSS feed will be disabled (find out more about RSS feeds below).

What's the difference between writing a post and writing a page?
This is an important terminological/conceptual distinction to grasp, as posts and pages serve radically different functions. A post is an article that shows up in the chronology of your notebook. In other words, posts appear in your notebook, most recent at the top of the page.

A page is what most folks may be more familiar with. This is a static space that is not part of the chronological logic (try saying that five times fast) of the notebook. A page sits outside of this inverted time line, and often features more static content like information about the site, the author, a syllabus, readings, etc.

What are comments and how do I manage them?
Part of the logic of a blog is allowing people to comment on your work. Comments are often associated with posts (as opposed to pages- see an explanation of this distinction above) and offer a way to have a discussion about a particular post.

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.

How do I control the comments, reading, and writing settings on my blog?
All of the options for reading, writing, and commenting are housed within the Settings tab in the administrative back-end of your blog. For example, using the Reading sub-tab options will allow you to create a static front page for your site rather than the default blog. You can also use the discussion tab to turn off comments on your blog, etc.

Why do I only see code buttons in the text editor?
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2290/3546358176_2dbd0052eb.jpg If for some reason you don't see a visual text editor then you have to enable this option in the Users tab in the Your Profile section (as pictured in the image above).

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In the top-left hand corner of the Your Profile page there is a check box that says "Disable the visual editor when writing". Make sure this box is unchecked. After that, editing your blog will be much, much more intuitive.

If this does not work, another potential cause of the problem is that you are using Apple's Safari web browser. Try another browser and see if the problem persists.

What's a feed?
A feed is a way to subscribe to blog posts, comments, etc. You can subscribe to a feed use an RSS reader such as Google Reader or Bloglines. To find out more about this RSS thing click here.

What is this RSS stuff?
Why listen to me? Watch the movie that explains RSS in plain English... 0klgLsSxGsU

How do I upload a mp3 file and place it in a post or page
You can easily upload sound files (specifically mp3 files) into a post or page. Doing this is relatively straightforward. Go to Posts &rarr; Add New and look for the "Add media" button that looks like a gray asterisk, as pictured below.

When you click on that button, a dialog box will appear offering you the option to upload an mp3 file from your hard drive. Once you have located your file (whether on your hard drive or online) click on the "Upload" button.



Or if you want to link directly to a file that is already online just click on the From URL tab and insert the URL and click "Insert into Post" button.



If uploading a mp3 from your hard drive, you will get a dialog box asking you to title the file, 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.



How do I upload a document and place it in a post or page?
You can easily upload documents, such as a course calendar or syllabus, into a post or page. Doing this is relatively straightforward. Go to Posts &rarr; Add New and look for the "Add media" button that looks like a gray asterisk.

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When you click on that button, a dialog box will appear offering you the option to upload a file from your hard drive. Once you have located your file (whether on your hard drive or online) click on the "Upload" button.

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Or if you want to link directly to a 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, 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.

How do I upload an image and place it in a post or page?
As with documents, you can easily upload and insert an image from your hard drive into a post or page. Go to Posts &rarr; Add New and look for the "Add Image" button that looks like a picture canvas.

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When you click on that button, a dialog box will appear offering you the option to upload an image from your hard drive. Or if you want to link directly to an image that is already online you can click on the "From URL" tab. Once you have located your file (whether on your hard drive or online) click on the "Upload" button and for images on the "From URL" tab you will click "Insert into Post" button.

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If uploading an image from your hard drive, you will get a dialog box asking you to title the 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.

How much upload space do I have on VLS?
As of now you have 100 MB of upload space. If you need more, please contact us with the details.

Additionally, you cannot upload a single file that is larger than 40 MB.

If you are uploading large pdf files or images it may be preferable to use an outside service that you can integrate with VLS, such as Flickr for your photos, YouTube for your videos, and/or DivShare for your files. This is probably the best practice, because if you ever want to move your blog to another service you will have persistent links to documents, videos, and images that you will not have to update for the blog when it is moved.

Why should I consider using external services to store my images and documents?
You have 100 MB of upload space. This will not be enough if you are uploading large pdf files, videos, or images. It may be preferable to use an outside service that you can integrate with VLS such as Flickr for your photos, YouTube for your videos, or Google Docs for your files. This is probably the best practice, because if you ever want to move your blog to another service you will have persistent links to documents and images that you will not have to update to the new blog URL.

How do I export my data from VLS?
Exporting your posts from VLS is easy, but there are some important issues you may want to keep in mind, so be sure to read this entire article!

To export your data from VLS, you need to do an export for your blog (or an individual export for each and every blog you have on this service). You do this in the Tools &rarr; Export subtab. When you export your blog you will be given an XML file that stores all of the posts, pages, and comments for your entire blog.

What's a plugin?
A plugin is a third-party application that interacts with WordPress to provide a certain, usually very specific, function for your blog or web space. For example, if you have a Flickr account you can use a the specific plugin like flickrRSS to bring photos into your blog space. There are literally thousands of plugins, but if you have something specific you need to do, contact us we'll test it and get it up and running for you.

How do I make my blog look different?
You can change the look and feel of your blog using the Appearance tab. When you click on the Appearance tab you'll notice you have a number of themes for your site to choose from.

WordPress paginates the themes and provides users with a preview of each theme that they can either activate or close and select another theme to preview.

If you need to do specific customizations of your theme for whatever reason, this is possible. Just contact us with more details here.

How do I add a custom image to the header of my notebook?
Not all of the themes provided by VLS allow you to add a custom header image. In fact, each theme has its own options through which you can customize the look and feel of your notebook. So the theme, in effect, is much more than just look and feel- it is also functionality and possibility. Look at the Appearance section and see if there are additional options for your theme.

What are widgets?
“Widgets” is just a silly buzzword for the functionality built into WordPress that allows you to customize the sidebar of your WordPress site without knowing HTML. You can use widgets to add a list of recent comments, posts, links, and much more. You can find your widgets in the Appearance &rarr; Widgets subtab. You may also get access to more widgets as you activate new plugins, for many of the plugins available have an associated widget.

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How do I get an avatar?
Go to GRavatar and associate an avatar of your choice with the email you use on VLS. 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.

All VLS sites will automatically pickup your GRavatar.

How do I embed YouTube videos?
You have at least two options for embedding YouTube videos. And, in truth, embedding a video from most online video services has never been easier.

Copy and Paste Embed Code
This is simply a process of copying the embed code from a site like YouTube into the HTML tab of the text editor.

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Anarchy Media Player
When writing a post or page in your notebook, look for the little yellow "A" icon in the visual text editor and click on it.

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Next, paste the URL provided by the respective online video service in the dialog box. For certain video sites, the actual URL in the web browser field is not always the correct URL- for example, in YouTube you can find the correct URL in the field to the right of the video. Keep in mind that Anarchy will play just about any media (such as mov files, mp3 files, mp4 files, etc.), you just need to copy and paste the URL into the dialog box.

How do I copy and paste word documents?
Click on the button in your visual text editor called "Kitchen Sink" (hover over the buttons to see there names) in order to get additional options for your editing toolbar.

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to this:

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After following the step above you will see an icon with the MS Word logo in your visual text editor. 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 deal with spam?
Spam is the bane of any respectable blogger's existence. Luckily we have ways of dealing with these parasites. VLS uses the spam filtering filtering service Akismet to manage spam comments and trackbacks. If you are getting spam comments, please contact us here and we will look into it immediately.

How do I password protect a page or post?
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Password protecting a post or page is quite simple. All you need to do is look for the Visibility option (which by default is public) in the Publish box and click the Edit link. Once there you have the option to make the post password protected by clicking on the radio button. Once clicked it will prompt you to put in a password. It can be whatever you want it to be, but if you want others to see what is in this page or post, you will have to share the password with them.

There's an error message on my blog. What do I do?
If you are coming across an error message on the sidebar or in the header of your blog please use the contact form to send us the exact verbiage of that message (copy and paste it), when it happened, and your blog address so that we can research and fix the problem promptly.

How do I get more help for issues not listed here?
If there is an issue or question you have that you don't see here, then contact us and we'll be sure to both answer your question as well as update this knowledge base so that everyone can benefit from your contribution (anonymously, of course).