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Project Presentation April 14

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Labs‎ > ‎Lab 01 to 05‎ > ‎

Lab 1: Set up your blog

This will be finalized by class time on Monday.

Lab goals

  1. Contents

    1. 1 Lab goals
      1. 1.1 Get a Wordpress account
        1. 1.1.1 Fill out the form
      2. 1.2 Sample confirmation email message
      3. 1.3 Create your blog
      4. 1.4 Navigate the Dashboard
      5. 1.5 Know where to get help
      6. 1.6 Distinguish your Global Dashboard from the blog's Dashboard
      7. 1.7 Get the right Theme
      8. 1.8 Add Users
      9. 1.9 Set the preferred privacy level
      10. 1.10 Add Widgets to your sidebar
      11. 1.11 Change the custom header
      12. 1.12 Post something
      13. 1.13 Use Save & Publish buttons
      14. 1.14 Apply tags & categories
      15. 1.15 Reflect
    2. 2 You're done!
    Build confidence with Wordpress Blogs and accomplish something tangible toward one of your first assignments.
  2. Ask questions of each other, Carmen, and Dr. Smith while you are present with each other in lab.  Don't worry or be anxious.  Think of it as a low-stakes game or challenge
  3. Finish as much as you can on this page within the 50 minutes of lab time.
  4. If you don't finish everything by 1:45, jump to the end and click on the link to reflect on your learning.  Finish the rest on your own time before the end of the week.
  5. Always use the last 3-5 minutes to post a reflection as instructed at the bottom of this page.  This reinforces your learning process.

Get a Wordpress account

Fill out the form

Your Username for this course should be Coms 463 Firstname Lastname so that Dr. Smith and others in the course can easily find your blog.  It will turn it into 1 word, like coms463jenli, which will be in your blog's address.  Don't worry, you can have multiple accounts. You can create a separate username for a personal blog. You can also delete this blog when the course is over.

Use a real email address that you can check immediately online.  It will send an activation email.

If you experience problems with your current email account, create a Gmail address by going to http://mail.google.com/ and use it because you will need a Google account later in the course anyway. 

Check your online inbox for an email from Wordpress and click on the link to activate the account. After you click on it, you will get the following confirmation email.  

Sample confirmation email message

Your new Wordpress.com username has been successfully set up.

You can log in with the following information:
Username: coms463testing
Password: *****
at http://wordpress.com

Check out your dashboard at https://dashboard.wordpress.com/wp-admin/ 
where you can edit your user profile or use the numerous tools such as
the Blog Surfer, Readomattic and many more.

Also, see what others are writing about on http://wordpress.com/tags/

If you're just getting started, there are tons of helpful resources available and
easily searched for on our support site and forums.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/introduction/

More Frequently Asked Questions: http://support.wordpress.com

We hope you dig your new blog. If you have any questions or comments, please let us 
know!
http://support.wordpress.com/contact/

Your WordPress.com API key allows you to use services like Akismet @
http://akismet.com/
API Key: 6b1870f2b77e

--The WordPress.com Team

Create your blog


Use the same pattern of coms463firstnamelastname and Coms 463 Firsname Lastname.

Leave privacy unchecked.  This is the preferred setting for Coms 463 individual blogs. 









Click "Create Blog" and it will take you to http://en.wordpress.com/signup/ where you will be told that your blog has been created with a particular address.

Log in using your username and password.

Navigate the Dashboard

The blog's "dashboard" is your editing/control area for the blog.

The default dashboard will look like this, with 1 post, 1 page, etc. already created



  • Click on "visit site" to see the public view of the blog.  It will have a blue header.  Then click "My dashboard" to come back.  You will make changes to the blog using the Dashboard.

Know where to get help

Notice the "help" button in the upper right corner of your Dashboard. 


Outside of lab time, help can also be accessed

If none of these resources works for you, then use the Blackboard Discussion forum called Blogs & Wordpress Labs to ask questions about this technology.  Carmen and Dr. Smith and your ECs will be subscribed to this forum so that we can all share answers to questions as they pop up.

Distinguish your Global Dashboard from the blog's Dashboard

  • Click on "my account" in the upper left corner and select "Global Dashboard" in the drop down menu.

It will look like this



Use this area to update your profile, create additional blogs outside of this course, or manage all blogs at once.

If you ever wish...

  • To create an additional blog under your current username of Coms 463 Firstname Lastname, click the "register additional blog" button in the bottom right-hand corner. 
  • To create an additional blog under a different username, you will need to log out and go back to http://wordpress.com and create a new username.

Get the right Theme

Go back to your blog's editing dashboard by ckicking "My Dashboard"

  • Click on "Change theme" to get the standard theme for Coms 463 blogs.  
  • Choose "Connections." 
You can search for the theme by key word, or search A-Z to find it.  The selection will look like this. 


Please keep this theme so that members of our instructional team do not have to hunt for information & links on 30 different blog designs. 

If you want to experiment with other themes, do so on your private Wordpress blog.  You can always get additional blogs by going to your Global Dashboard (see below) or by signing up again under a new username and email address.

Add Users

To enable Dr. Smith and the instructional team to assist with the technology and content, and keep tabs on your blog's development and ethics, you are expected to add them as administrator & as contributors. 

Don't worry, we won't change things on you without asking/telling you first.  Besides, the blog will keep track of who changes what, and exactly when!

In the left navigation bar, click on "users."

Then add
  • smit@ucalgary.ca as administrator
  • coms463@gmail.com (the rest of the instructional team) as contributor

Set the preferred privacy level

In Wordpress you can set privacy at TWO levels, for your whole blog, or for individual posts. First set the privacy of the whole blog by going to the Settings at the bottom of the navigation bar (below "users" and "tools")

Set the preferred setting for this course:

  • "I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors"

This will enable any people (i.e. members of this class, your interviewees, friends and family)  to find your blog if you or I give them the URL, but will not attract unwanted users.  For your individual blog we are not concerned about the # of hits or comments. 

However, be aware...

  • If your team wants to attach a blog to their final website, then it makes sense for the blog to be visible to everyone via Google searches, and so you might want to make a blog accessible to search engines.
  • If you set your blog as private, you'd have to add each individual person's email address to your site manually, and it restricts even how they access your blog.  Privacy is not worth it unless you are a) creating a private online community, or b) developing a blog (outside of Coms 463) privately and don't want to reveal its contents until you are ready. 

Add Widgets to your sidebar

In the left navigation bar on the dashboard, go to "Appearance"  and click on "widgets."  Widgets are tools that your readers use to navigate through your site or they are features that advertise elements of your site / theme.

The center of the page will show the widgets. 

Use the mouse to drag them over to your sidebar on the right.

Add the default COMS 463 widgets to your sidebar until you have the following in this order --

  • Search

  • Pages

  • "Tag cloud" and/or "categories" or "category cloud"

  • Meta

You can add more widgets at your liesure, later.

Change the custom header

Your blog's default is the green image of a car driving through a tunnel.  Practice changing your image today using an ethical source.  You can find an appropriate image later online.

In the left navigation bar, click on "Appearance" and then "Custom Header." 

It will give you the option to upload a new header image, but first you need to have an image to upload from your computer.

  • Choose one below, then right click on the image, select "save as" and save it as a file on your computer -- put it somewhere you can find to upload it, such as the Desktop.

Prokofiev, 2008

Nova fractal relaxation


Sandstorm

After verifying the new image, You can change the color of the text so that it contrasts appropriately.
Go back to the dashboard - appearance - custom header area. 

  • Under the image click the button "Select a text color"


  • click on the color that will show up properly.
This is for lab practice and you can find your own image later.  These image clips were found via Wikimedia Commons search for "fractals" (fractals are electronically-generated images).  I used the free image editing software "IrfanView" to crop a section of them to 741 x 142 pixels.  I followed the author's instructions regarding citation and reuse. 

Eventually you should create a page called "Header image" where you provide the full citation of the image you are going to be using, since this is for an academic course and you must cite ethically according to APA guidelines. 

Post something

In various places on the Dashboard you will find a button to add a "New Post."
Click it, and you will get this editing area:


Under "Add new post" give it any title, such as "Test post"

Within the screen under the buttons, type in anything you want (as long as it would be rated General or PG and is not offensive).

Create a heading within your post.  First select the text that you want to turn into a heading. Then click the down arrow next to "Paragraph" and select heading level 1 or 2. 

Try making a bulleted item.  Use the bullet list button to create an item
  • like this
Later, as you experiment, you can use the buttons to insert images or media and change the layout or color of the text. 

Use Save & Publish buttons

  • Occasionally click "save draft" button to the right (in the Publish box), so you don't lose your work.
  • Click "preview" to see what it looks like before you publish it.
  • For now, leave the visibility of the post as "public."  Use a "private" post with caution.  If you set it to "private" you might forget that others can't see it, besides you and your administrators. 
  • At any time you can click "View post" to see what the public would see, and then return to your dashboard.
Before you finish editing your blog for the day, add some tags and categories to the post so that it can be categorized on the blog's sidebar. 

Apply tags & categories

Add a set of tags separated with commas, such as words that remind you to edit this post later.

  • testing, new blog, delete soon

Add a new category like "Just Testing", and then check it off. 

Eventually you will figure out how a blog displays your tags and categories and decide which system, or both, you would like to use.

You can ignore other features on the dashboard like "Excerpt" "Trackbacks" and "discussion" and "location."  Those are frills.

Reflect

Go to the Coms 463 Lab 1 blog post to fill out the final poll and provide your reflections.



You're done!