12 17 08 Creating A Blog

Creating a Blog with WordPress: The How-To’s December 17, 2008 Presented by Judy Kammerer, MA, MLIS, AHIP Medical Librarian, UCSF Fresno & CRMC * Email: [email_address] *

Create a new blog for free

Open Explorer browser and go to www.wordpress.com

Click “Sign Up Now”

Create a username (this will be part of your new blog’s URL) & password (write these down), type email address, check agree, next

Write down your blog domain

Change blog title if you want (or you can change this later), privacy box(?), sign up

Check email to activate new account

Go back into www.wordpress.com and enter username & password

You will see a new header that has 3 sections: My Account, My Dashboard, & New Post

Name your blog, set the time stamp, allow/disallow comments

Click on My Dashboard

Click Settings/General (on left) to create tagline & set time (PT is -8 hours), click Save Changes

Under Settings/Discussion, uncheck “Allow people to post comments” if you do not want any dialog (keep it checked if you want to be part of Web 2.0’s social interactivity ~ WordPress has a very good spam blocker called Akismet)

Pick a template

Click Appearance/Themes and scroll down to view templates

Pick one (some offer “custom headers” like Contempt, Freshy, etc.; if you’ll be using multiple pages, it’s nice to have one that lists “Home” in a page bar along the top) and click on the name to view, then Activate (top right), and View Site (next to title)

If you have a picture stored on your computer and you chose a template offering a custom image header, you can go to My Dashboard, Appearance, Custom Image Header, under Upload New Header Image, browse, choose your picture, upload, move cropped area box, click crop.

Write a post

Click on New Post

Each post needs a title

Write text (under Post)

Include a tag – draws attention to subject in Wordpress

Create a category (name folder) – organizes similar posts (like a file cabinet)

Click “add” and make sure correct category is checked for this post

Click Publish and then View Site

Edit a post and import a video

Click on Edit by the post you just created. (You can also get there via My Dashboard, Posts/Edit, click on the post title)

Change title. Open another browser & go to www.youtube.com and find something interesting, copy the URL. Go back to your post and click 2nd icon by “Upload/Insert.” Click “From URL” & paste in URL. Click “insert into post” then “Update Post.” (If this was a new post you would click “Publish.”) View Site.

Create a post with a picture

Click “new post” then open another browser & go to Google Images at http://images.google.com to find a picture (make sure it doesn’t say it’s under copyright protection)

Copy the picture to the desktop.

Go back into the new post screen, click on 1st icon by “Upload/Insert.” Next to “choose files to upload,” click Select Files to find the link from your desktop. Give it a title, Upload, make selections (try thumbnail), then “insert into post,” then “publish.” View Site.

Create a post with a link

Click “new post” then open another browser, go find a website and copy its URL

Go back to your post, write a title and in the text field write a short annotation to comment on the website, paste the URL in the same field, add a tag and category, publish. View Site.

Move the mouse over the link to see a small popup of that webpage (“Snap Shots” feature)

Create a Blogroll (list of favorite links)

Under My Dashboard, click Links. “Add new” to add your favorite websites & blogs.

Examples of popular physician blogs: http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/ & http://doctorrw.blogspot.com/

Medical blog search: http://medlogs.com

Create a Web Page

Under My Dashboard, click Pages/Add New

In addition to blog entries in reverse chronological order, you can create static web pages that link to your front page.

The About page has already been set up; you just need to edit it.

Create a 2nd page for a topic you’d like to develop. Give it a title and write the text, then “publish.”

Then each time you want to add content, go to Pages/Edit, click Edit under page title, make changes, click “Update Page.”

Change your Template & Customize your Widgets

Go to My Dashboard, Appearance/ Themes, click on the name of a different template, Activate. View Site.

Check out Widgets (tools that appear in columns next to your postings) under Appearance for further customization. (Good ones to start with include: Archives, Categories, Pages, Links/blogroll, & Meta.) Meta includes “log in/out” which is convenient.

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