an introduction to setting up a (self-hosted) WordPress blog.

2. to start your own blog point your browser to http://blog.midchesh.ac.uk and click this link

3. give your blog the name you want to use in the URL (10 letters max) and enter your email address

4. This is the URL of your blog. Wait a few minutes before clicking the link for your admin password (which will also be emailed to you).

5. Enter the title of your blog (whatever you want – it doesn’t have to be the same as your URL name and is NOT limited to 10 characters) your email address will have been automatically added. click here to create your blog

6. WordPress then reveals the password for the blog’s ‘admin’ user. (How are you going to remember it?) copy the password (CTRL/C on a PC) and click Log In

7. In the meanwhile you will have received an email which confirms the URL, username and admin password.

8. paste the password (CTRL/ V on a PC) and click Log In

9. You have now created your blog and are in the admin screen (the Dashboard) Your first post has been created for you – ‘Hello World ’. This is just an example and you can delete or change it at any point. the example post has also received an example comment

10. First, change the admin password. Click Users in the l/h column. Next, click Edit below the admin username. This will bring up the user profile.

11. Enter your choice of admin password. Confirm new password in box below.

12. Now add yourself as an administrator. Click Users again – then Add New .

13. Complete required info and select Administrator from the list of roles. click Add User to create the new user. You can give other users access too if you want them to contribute to your blog. Choose the type of access that you want for them from the Role list.

14. Click here to see your blog page

15. not too impressive yet is it!

16. click Posts > Add New Give your post a title and add text content in the notepad area (shown below)

17. If you want to upload an image (or other media file) click on the appropriate icon. When the item has been uploaded it can be inserted into your post.

18. Select the file to upload from your computer The Title is what appears when you hover over the image with your mouse. If you decide to use a Caption it appears underneath your photo. Choose an alignment option (& web link, if you want to be able to jump to another website when you click on the picture) then click Insert into Post .

19. The photo has now been inserted into your blog ( shown here with a caption)

20. The default template (theme) isn’t very ‘cool’. There are plenty of other themes to choose and they are easy to apply. Click on Appearance > Themes

21. Choose a ‘theme’ that you like and click inside for a preview of how your blog will look with that template.

22. If you don’t like it close the window – no change is made. If you do like it click Activate and it becomes your blog’s theme

23. here is the same blog with a completely different theme

24. The General Settings let you change your Title, Tag Line, email address, time zone, etc Check ALL the settings before publishing your blog.

25. The Discussion Settings let you specify who can make comments and whether you want to approve them before they are published (I suggest that you set your blog so that an administrator must always approve comments – otherwise you will be spammed)

26. Widgets are features that you can add to your blog (e.g. calendar, search box, links etc)

27. When you click Add against a widget it moves it over to the r/h side of this screen. It will now show up in your blog’s sidebar.

28. from this to this in a few minutes!

29. You can easily include YouTube video by copying the embed code and pasting it into your blog.