Summer in the City - WordPress
From Help Wiki
Why a Wordpress site?
- What is WordPress.
- How is blogs.evergreen.edu different from wordpress.com
- Create an academic/travel journal
An academic journal
- Brainstorm session: what might your journals include?
- Examples:
Your journal categories are:
- Field study progress in relation to field study plan
- How readings inform field study
- City Impressions (with google maps) photo/audio/video/text
Journaling tips
- make connections between what you are experiencing/perceiving and the course readings
- write frequently, at least 2 times per week if not more. Write when impressions are fresh. If you are not near a computer keep a paper journal then type up your notes later.
- capture the experience of a place with images and audio
- interact what other students in the class are writing. They are going through a similar experience, how are they approaching their journal and the academic challenges of the course?
- Your site is public. You are publishing your ideas for the world to find and read if they are interested in what you have to say. If you don't want your mother or future employer to read it, then set the privacy settings accordingly.
- This site won't live forever, it will be deleted once you leave Evergreen but you can take the structure and text it with you.
Tips for geo-blogging
- keep track of the location for each journal entry, intersection/address info
- if possible, use a camera that captures gps coordinates
Getting started with a new web site
- Go to http://blogs.evergreen.edu to create your acount and blog. See Creating a new blog for detailed instructions.
- Dashboard overview
- Change the site's title and subtitle Settings > General
- Privacy settings - control who can see your site or if search engines will index your site Settings > Privacy
Writing and Managing your content
- Creating posts
- Using the rich text editor
- Images, media and linking to files
- Controlling commenting & publishing
- set your comment preferences for all new pages/posts Settings > Discussion
- Pages versus Posts
- Creating pages and your site's navigation
- Everyone will have at least one page title Field Study Plan
- working with sub-pages
- Editing already existing pages and posts
Designing your site
- Trying out new Themes Appearance > Themes
- Customize your header or banner image
- some themes allow for you to add your own header image Appearance > Header Image (may only appear if your chosen theme supports custom header images)
Important: Find a theme that meets your layout requirements.
Modify Your Sidebar with widgets
Add functionality to your site's sidebar(s) Appearance > Widget
Working with sidebar links
Links are useful for directing others to related sites. You might want to create a link to the program blog, for example.
- creating and managing sidebar links
- displaying sidebar links via widgets
Working with categories and tags
- Categories are useful for categorizing different types of posts. A category page for each is automatically created. Use the Category Widget to display in your sidebar.
- There are 3 required categories for your journals (see above)
- Tags are more free-form and attempt to capture more specific information about a post.
Customize the CSS of your theme with Custom CSS
You can write custom CSS to override the theme's CSS. Go Appearance > Custom CSS
You'll need to learn a bit about how your theme is structured. Some great tools for this are:
- Firefox Firebug
- Safari's Develop Menu
Plugins
Plugins add functionality to your site. To use them use must first activate. Some useful plugins include:
- Flickr Gallery
Things to know about your blog
Additional Resources
- Wordpress Tutorials Please note: some of these tutorials assume you have administrative access to your blog's server. You don't.
- Introduction to CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
