• Creating a Blog once you have a user name.
  • Type "blogs.stlawu.edu" into your web browser. This will take you to the blog home page.
  • Click on the "Gimme a blog!" link.
  • Click on the link to go to you blog.
  • On the top of the screen, you will see the dashbaord. Most of the controls to manage your blog are located here.
• Initial Settings Management.
  
  • It is very important that you set up your settings before you make your blog live.
  • Navigate to the Dashboard link in the top management bar.
  • Click on the settings link in the top right.
    • There are pleanty of settings to explore on this page.
  • Make sure to click on the save changes button before you navigate away from this page or your changes will be lost.

• Creating a Post.
  
  • Navigate to the Dashbaord link in the top management bar.
  • Click on the Write tab. This will open up the page where you can create your post.
  • The page will default to unpublished. When finished writing, click Save, then Publish.
• Creating a Page.
  
  • Big difference between pages and posts is pages are static while posts are dynamic.
  • Navigate to the Dashbaord link in the top management bar.
  • Click on the Write tab and then click Page right below the Write header. This will bring up the area where you can create a new page. This works almost exactly like the post editor.

Design Management Return to Top

• How to manage widgets.
  
  • Widgets are small add ons that you can apply to your page to enhance the user experience.
  • Navigate to the Dashbaord link in the top management bar.
  • Click the Design tab, and navigate to the widgets section.
    • Make sure to have your final theme selected before modifying widgets. Design integrity may not be preserved across themes.
  • Select a widget and click add.
    • Some themes may have more widget bars then others.
  • Make sure you click "Save Changes" before you navigate away from the page.
• How to manage plugins.
  
  • Click on the Dashbaord link in the top of the window.
  • Click on the Plugins button in the top right.
    • Select whichever plugins you feel would benefit your page.
    • You can add them one at a time by clicking the "Activate" button on the right. You can also add them in bulk but clicking multiple checkboxes, and then "add" at the top.
    • Any unactivated plugins will now appear in the bottom part of the screen, while the active ones appear on top.

Content Management Return to Top

• Advanced Posting.

  • In order to full understand this section, you should already know the basics of creating content.
    • Tags - A tag is rather self explanitory. If you give 2 posts the same tag, they will be related to each other. This is an easy way to quickly group similar posts.
    • Categories - Categories work similarly to tags, except you can create a heirarchial structure to the categories. When you create a new post, you can choose to give it a new category, make it a child of another category, or part of an existing one. This is also a very quick and easy way to manage content.
      • Searching - Tags and categories allow you to quickly and easily search content.
    • Excerpt - This option allows you to create a small summary of your post if it is exceptionally long. You would want to do this if your post is pushing other posts off the screen. The user would then see your excerpt follwed by a link to the real post.
    • Trackbacks and pings - These are essentially ways to let other blogs know that you have linked or cited them in your post and managing citations.
    • Custom Fields - This area is used to create extra data for your posts you can use in the theme. In order to enable this data, you have to know a bit of php. To see more information about this topic, see this page.
    • Comments - It is possible to enable and disable comments on your page. Trackbacks are essentially ways of notifying somone that they may be interested in the content of the page.
    • Password Protect - You can add a password to your post.
    • Tagclouds - You can enable tagclouds to appear on one of your sidebars. They show visually which tags have the most posts associated with them.
  • To manage your posts, click Manage -> Posts.

• Advanced Page Creation.
  • How pages differ from posts.
    • Pages can have an organized heirachial structure. You can create a page and set it to be a main page, or a child page to another main page.
    • If you create many layers of pages, you will need to order them so they appear the way you want them too.
  • To manage the pages that you already have created, click Manage -> Pages. This will list the page heirarchy of your blog.

Tips and Tricks Return to Top

• Custom Sidebar Content
  • It is possible to add custom widgets and content to your sidebars from the design management area.
  • Click on the manage widgets link
  • Add a text widget to the blog.
  • Give it a title, and then copy and paste the HTML link to whatever content you would like to add to your page.
    • This can be anything from text, images, all the way to full blown embedded widgets.
  • Make sure to click "change, and then save changes" in order for your new widget to take effect.