SLUblogs Overview
Click video icon for a brief overview of the SLUblogs interface
and how to work with it to create a blog and manage it's appearance and content

• Creating a Blog
  • All students automatically have a SLUblogs account set up with their network credentials.
  • Type "blogs.stlawu.edu" (or just "blogs" if you are on campus) into your address bar to go to the homepage.
  • Log in using your network credentials.
  • Click on the "Click here to create a blog" link.
  • Give your blog a name and title, then click "Create Blog".
    • Here, you can choose to make your blog available to search engines like Google.
  • Click "Site Admin" on the lower right to go to the Dashboard.
• Initial Settings Management
  • Navigate to the Dashboard link in the left-hand management bar.
  • Click on the settings link in the menu on the left.
  • Make sure to click on the save after you make changes.
• The Dashboard
  • A. This is the central panel.  While viewing the dashboard,it gives you many options for editing your blog's content.  While editing a page or post, the central panel will contain the fields where you type the content and titles of your pages and posts.
  • B. This is the left-hand dashboard menu.  It allows you to choose what part of your blog you are editing, such as posts, pages, or plugins.
  • C. This button allows you to see your blog after you've made changes.
  • D. These are quick links for creating a new post, viewing the dashboard, and logging out.

• Creating a Post.
  • Posts are the most frequently updated components of blogs; a post is a short & specific article focused on a single relevant topic.
  • Navigate to the Dashboard link in the left-hand management bar.
  • Click on the "Posts" tab, then "Add New" to create a new post.
  • The post will default to unpublished. When finished writing, click Publish.
• Creating a Page.
  • A Page is  a main section of your blog that is not often changed.
  • Navigate to the Dashboard link in the left-hand management bar.
  • Click on the "Pages" tab, then "Add New" to create a new page.

• How to manage widgets.
  • Widgets are small add-ons that you can apply to your page to enhance the user experience.
  • When viewing the dashboard, click the "Appearance" link in the left-hand management bar.
  • Click the Widgets tab
    • Make sure to have your final theme selected before modifying widgets to preserve the layout and design.
  • Before adding a widget, open up the section of the blog you would like to display it in by clicking the down arrow next to that section's name.
    • Drag the widget you want to use from the "Available Widgets"section to the section of your blog you want to put it in
    • 
    • Some themes may have more widgets than others.
  • Your blog will automatically save where you put your widgets.
• How to manage plugins.
  • Under the Dashboard, click the "Plugins" tab.
    • Select whichever plugins you feel would benefit your page.
    • You can add them one at a time by clicking the "Activate" button on the bottom left of each plugin. You can also add them in bulk but checking multiple check-boxes, and then Bulk Actions > Activate > Apply at the top.
    • At the top of the page you can choose to view All, Active, or Inactive plugins.

• Advanced Posting.

  • In order to full understand this section, you should already know the basics of creating content.
    • Tags - A tag is rather self explanatory. 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 hierarchical 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 ways of notifying someone that they may be interested in the content of the page.
    • Password Protect - You can add a password to your post.
    • Tag-clouds - You can enable tag-clouds to appear on one of your sidebars. They show visually which tags have the most posts associated with them.
  • To manage your posts, click Posts > Edit.

• Advanced Page Creation.
  • How pages differ from posts.
    • Pages can have an organized hierarchical structure. You can create a page and set it to be a main page (without a parent), or a child page to another main page.
    • If you create many layers of child pages, you will need to set the order numerically if you do not want it done alphabetically (the default).
  • To manage the pages that you already have created, click Pages > Edit. This will list the page hierarchy of your blog.