For next class:

We will reg­is­ter our blogs during/after class;
feel free to cre­ate, mod­ify, and update yours as soon as you’d like—
instruc­tions below.

 

Once you cre­ate your blog, please post your link in a com­ment below.
*This is impor­tant so I have your URL! (to update the blogroll ASAP, as well)

In your first entry (a “post,” not a com­ment), briefly intro­duce your­self: flex­i­ble para­me­ters for this, but please include your major and grade level, as well as any other writ­ing courses you’ve taken; your ratio­nale for (or inter­est in) tak­ing this course, and any ques­tions at this time (e.g. from review­ing the Syl­labus); your idea (“work­ing def­i­n­i­tion”) of “Par­tic­i­pa­tory Cul­ture”; plus, any other inter­est­ing infor­ma­tion or media you’d like to share (e.g. maybe a favorite image or video, meme from past or present? favorite or most-used “social media” platform?)

 

	Reg­is­ter @ WordPress
	WP Sup­port site

 
 

Tech­ni­cal Instruc­tions for Blog Setup:

Click →

 

Blog Setup:

• Word­Press Register
• Com­plete reg­is­tra­tion, using CU email account. Note: user­name will become URL (address) by default. e.g. http://jane­doe.wordpress.com.
• How­ever, you can rename domain on next page:
  e.g. User­name: GHink. Domain: “3020media.wordpress.com”
  And then (re-)title blog — Blog Title: for exam­ple, mine would be “Par­tic­i­pa­tory media | Sum­mer ’14”
  (title yours what­ever you would like!)
  
  
• (Then click “signup”).
  
• Next, choose Theme. Many to browse/select; choose a theme you like!
  (one expres­sive of your per­son­al­ity, aes­thet­i­cally pleas­ing, rel­e­vant wid­gets, etc)
  Browse or search; pre­view or activate—you can always choose new themes with­out any per­ma­nent changes to your blog. I sug­gest two– (or three-) col­umn lay­out.
  

 
Once you’ve cre­ated your WP account/blog:
—your user­name is your URL (e.g. ghink.wordpress.com)

— login in order to post/edit: WordPress.com

 

The “Dash­board” is the page to cre­ate con­tent and edit appear­ance. This page presents full con­trol of your blog — includ­ing appear­ance, entries/pages/content, and all admin­is­tra­tive func­tions. Look around — the nav­i­ga­tion is fairly intuitive.

 

Next, you’ll prob­a­bly want to change a few Set­tings (Dash­board, left sidebar):

• “Gen­eral Set­tings“: Blog Title (if you’ve not already)
  
• “Users” — “Your Pro­file”: Name, avatar, etc
• “Appear­ance” — “Themes“: (if you’ve not already)
• “Appear­ance” — “Wid­gets“:
  – All optional, yet I strongly sug­gest:
  “Search,” “Pages,” “Cat­e­gories,” “Tag Cloud,”
  “Links” (add class­mates to your Blogroll).
  Note: “Meta” is a key wid­get, in order to login directly on your page; (faster than WP.com).

 
 

Now you’re ready to add content.

• “Pages” (Dash­board, left side­bar :
  First, edit the “About” page (required); at min­i­mum, sug­gest Name, Course, Semes­ter (like my cur­rent About page). Use pri­vacy logic; do not post your email address, to avoid receiv­ing spam.
   
  Next, cre­ate a page for track­ing your group project work (anno­ta­tions).
  — You’ll cre­ate pages later for Projects 1 and 2.
  Any addi­tional pages are up to you. I will be able to dis­tin­guish your “offi­cial” class entries (weekly, for credit) by the tags and cat­e­gories that you add to Posts (required)

 

• Entries (“Posts”)

  First, edit the ini­tial / default entry.
  Here, briefly describe your blog; addi­tion­ally, I would like every­one specif­i­cally to intro­duce them­selves in their first entry.
   
  — Once you edit the text-field, add Tags and the Cat­e­gory (right side­bar).
  Then click “Update” (for new entries, “Pub­lish” but­ton).
   
  In the future, click “Add New” under “Posts” (left sidebar)—this is how you’ll add entries (and your response assign­ments).
   
  Note on Tags and Cat­e­gories:

  these are impor­tant for read­ers (me, pri­mar­ily), espe­cially as the semes­ter pro­gresses (and you accu­mu­late ~15–20 entries). This is how I’ll dis­tin­guish your class entries — Group Anno­ta­tions, read­ing notes, project prepa­ra­tion — plus any per­sonal entries that you might post (optional).

   
  More on “Posts” at Word­Press Support

 
 

• “Links” (left sidebar):
  — “Edit” (delete default links)
  — “Add New”
  (at min­i­mum, the course blog; plus any oth­ers you’d like to add, such as your class­mates’ blogs and rel­e­vant web sites).

 
For fur­ther tech­ni­cal help, you can find answers/instructions to most issues in the

Word­Press Sup­port sec­tion as well as the
Sup­port Forum
(both of which you can search with key­words).

 
 

Sug­ges­tion:

test out (“explore”) the inter­face con­trols, and you’ll likely intuit the func­tions fairly quickly (more quickly, I’d say!).
Specif­i­cally, when cre­at­ing an entry, you’ll see two rows of for­mat­ting com­mands at the top of the text field, when in “Visual” view—these cover most func­tions, (basic and oth­er­wise!). The “visual” view is the actual design/formatting (“what you see is what you get”)—this is how your “post” will look.
More about this later and/or by request, (and as always, email me with Qs/problems).