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Blogging with WordPress

This is a quick way for educators to get started with blogging in their class (Age 13 and older). Each section might take about one class period to work on. I use WordPress.com to get started. You and your students will need to sign up for an account to get going. Once you have done that, follow along with the different sections. There is one section that requires the use of Adobe Dreamweaver, but you could adapt using pure HTML coding, which I haven’t shown.

Part 1 – Intro

First you will want to change the major things people will notice in your blog.

Change: Settings – General

Customized Blog Picture/Icon
Change Site Title
Change Tag Line

Change: Appearance

Theme (Allows Drop-down Menus)
Widgets –
- Links
- Recent Posts
- Meta

Add: Links

to Classmates websites (Popout in Blank)
Add: Link Categories

Add: Pages (Menus) –

About Me
Where I am from: Trivia
Other

Part 2 – Trivia

On this day you should be getting the Trivia Section set up:

It should have at least ten different tidbits of information
The information should be bullet pointed
Look at the difference between VISUAL and HTML to see how bullets are made
You should create Links to the 10 different sources
Make sure to check: Open in a New Link or Tab

If you haven’t done so already, now is the time to start blogging each day about things that you are doing in your blog. They are called Posts.

Part 3 – Posting

Today you will concentrate on Posting.

You will go back over everything that you have done and make sure that you have a post for each day
You will start to create Categories – These are common themes that you might use more than ten times
You will also make Post Tags – These are words that people might want to search. They will also show up in the Tag Cloud you are going to insert
Insert a Tag Cloud using the Widgets
You will change the Publish immediately of some of your posts, either to the past, or in the future, so that it releases on a certain date, at a certain time

You will also concentrate on getting the About Me Section completed

It should mention any modification you might make to an original recipe
It will have a link to the source

Try adding a <hr> (Line)

Part 4 – Adding Media

Add Pictures on each page (You need to go back and add images to posts too)

Choose Link URL = None
Alignment = up to you
Size = up to you
Don’t Forget – Insert into Post

You are allowed to use pictures that you have or find from the internet. To do so – Choose From URL (Like you see in the image above)

You need to cite the information for where the picture came from with a link to that page

Go to Users – My Profile

Update information
Add Gravatar (Different from Blog Picture/Icon)

Part 5 – Nested Pages

Under the page “About Me” you will create other pages. “Music”, “Sports”, “Games”, and “Movies” In each of the pages, you will list at least 5 of each of your favorite, and possibly an explanation about them.

You will concentrate on making page navigation work properly

This means that you will go to each Parent Page and put links to Child Pages like you see below

This way, a user never comes to a Blank page AND they can navigate to the page they want with only One Click

Part 5 – Anchors and Jumps

You are going to work on Anchoring and Jumping within a page.

IN DREAMWEAVER

Create a 2 column, one row table
In the Left side write “Music” and “Sports” on separate lines
In the Right side write “Games” and “Movies”

You will create Anchors and Links on the Same Page

Create 4 Sections below your table.
First Music
Then Sports
Next Games
Finally Movies
Add Anchors above each Section, named appropriately

Create Links to each of the section Anchors with the names in the Table
Use the Link Dropdown# to choose the link on the page

Copy all information from the Music, Sports, Games and Movies and put them in the sections on this page
SEE EXAMPLE AT BOTTOM OF POST
Delete Music, Sports, Games and Movies Pages