Blogging Support

• Decide if this is a personal blog or a group blog

  First you will need to consider who will be doing the blogging – will it just be you or will there be multiple bloggers?

  If it is just you, you’ll need to sign up to the service on your login. If it’s going to be a team of bloggers you will need to sign up to the service using an office account for your team – this could be an account that already exists, or you may need to create one for this purpose.

  See http://www.aber.ac.uk/en/is/access/staff/office/

• Enable blogging

  Once you have established which account you are using (personal or office) you will need to enable blogging for that login. Visit the following address and log in with the chosen account: https://myaccount.aber.ac.uk/protected/permsets/

  Once logged in you should see a screen like the following:  

  

  Click the Add button in the wordpress row to enable blogging for this account.

  The page will refresh and now the Add button becomes a Remove button should you wish to disable blogging for this account at a later date.

  WAIT FOR AT LEAST 30 MINUTES BEFORE ATTEMPTING TO PROCEED AS THERE IS A DELAY FROM CLICKING THE ADD BUTTON TO ACTUAL ENABLING OF YOUR BLOG.

• Initial Set up

  Now visit the following address to access your new blog (replacing USERNAME with the username of the account you chose to use for your blog):  http://wordpress.aber.ac.uk/USERNAME

  If you have waited long enough you should find that you have a blog! If not, you will see a default blog with the message:

  

  Assuming you have waited long enough, you should find you have a blog showing a test post. Scroll down a little and find the Log in link on the bottom right – click on it.

  You’ll now see your ‘dashboard’ with a welcome message:

  

   

• Changing your Blog address

  If you have created a blog for a group, using an office account, you may find that the usual blog address including the name of the office account (e.g. wordpress.aber.ac.uk/wwwstaff/) is not ideal. If you are in this situation and you would prefer your blog to have your group's name in the address instead of the office account name (e.g. wordpress.aber.ac.uk/webteam/), then please email blogging@aber.ac.uk giving the current address of the blog and the address you would like it to have.

• Editor Settings

  Before you start writing blog posts, you may need to change the editor settings. Due to a slight glitch in Wordpress, it defaults to only show the HTML editor instead of giving you the choice between the HTML and Visual (WYSIWYG) Editors. If you are not comfortable writing posts using the HTML Editor you will need to take the following quick (rather counterintuitive) steps:

  1. Click on your name in the top right corner of the screen – this will take you to your profile editing page
  2. Tick the box at the top marked “Disable the visual editor when writing”
  3. Scroll down and click “Update Profile”
  4. Now untick the box you just ticked and click “Update Profile” again.

  This should now fix the editor glitch and when you go to create a new post you should have 2 tabs available for the Visual and HTML Editors

• Blog Language

  It is possible to change the language used for your blog to Welsh - this will affect both the editing interface and the blog itself. To do this:

  1. Click on Settings in the left menu
  2. The last option on the General Settings page is “Site Language” – choose Welsh from the drop-down list and click “Save Changes” to finish.
• Blog Theme

  You may wish to change the theme of your blog. The theme controls the appearance of the blog, and you have the choice of AU Unbranded, AU Full or AU Lite themes. The unbranded theme is suitable for more personal blogs where you intend to express your personal opinion on subjects. This theme includes the standard disclaimer in the footer. The Full and Lite themes are branded – Full is fully branded and Lite is a “light touch” branding. These themes should be used if you are blogging in an official capacity. Choose the appropriate theme for the nature of your blog. You can customise the themes by changing the background colour and header image if you wish to.

• Starting to Blog

  To create a blog post, you can either put your mouse over “+ New” in the grey bar at the top of the page and choose ‘Post’, or put your mouse over “Posts” in the left menu and choose ‘Add New’.

  You can also create static pages in your blog (for example an About Me page). To create a page, you can either put your mouse over “+New” in the grey bar at the top of the page and choose ‘Page’, or put your mouse over “Pages” in the left menu and choose ‘Add New’.