WordPress in the college classroom

  • Unknown's avatar
    denisehalvorson08 · Member ·

    I teach English at the college level. Recently, we received a new text that recommends to students that they can blog. The text does not offer any application steps, so I will be expected to at least get students started.

    Is there an easy way to bring WordPress to my students in the classroom? And can they do a blog on their own outside the classroom?

    I would need to be able to easily manage the whole process. To this end, I tried creating my own blog, and have only gotten so far on my own. Not all applications are intuitively easy.

    Thanks for any help.

    Thanks
    Denise

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • Unknown's avatar
    denisehalvorson08 · Member ·

    This is a good example of not knowing what to do here. My question is above. What is this space for?

  • Unknown's avatar
    timethief · Member ·

    You can have either a public or a private WordPress.COM hosted blog and there is no limitation on the total number of contributors to any blog. If you’d like to invite others to publish posts or help approve comments on your blog, you can invite them to be a Contributor, Editor, or Author. If you want users to receive updates each time you publish new content you can invite them to be a follower/viewer.

    To change blog visibility to Private go to > Settings > Reading scroll to Blog Visibility and choose option 3. See the guide here http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/privacy-settings

    See here please:
    http://en.support.wordpress.com/adding-users/ and here http://en.support.wordpress.com/user-roles/

    The person will have to register a username account which requires an email address only, but does not need to register a blog. That requirement is because the software has to be able to differentiate between hackers and official users and allow access only to those with username accounts and official roles on the blog.

    Upon receipt of the invitation the invitee will need to click the “Accept Invitation” button in the invitation email. If the invitee is logged into their WordPress.com username account, he or she will be taken directly to your blog. If not, he or she will be taken to the log-in screen, where he or she can either log in, or can register a new WordPress.COM user account.

    Note that invitees who do create a new WordPress.com account at that point will still need to return to the invitation email and click the “Accept Invitation” button after doing so.

    Lastly, there is a built-in spammer prevention so send out only 10 invitations at one point in time and then wait and manage those before sending out 10 more.

  • Unknown's avatar
    timethief · Member ·

    re: the front page error message found on every new .wordpress.com blog

    Nothing Found
    It seems we can’t find what you’re looking for. Perhaps searching can help.

    There is nothing wrong with your site. By default the front page of the blog is the only page that will display all published posts on it. As soon as you publish a post not a page the front page error message and searchbox that appears on every new WordPress.COM blog will be gone. http://en.support.wordpress.com/post-vs-page/

    I recommend using the step by step tutorial linked to the bottom of your Admin page https://learn.wordpress.com

    See also the “Video Quick Start” tutorial http://en.support.wordpress.com/video-quick-start/

    The support documentation is all found at the Support link http://en.support.wordpress.com which is also linked to on the bottom of your Admin page.

    A blog is a website.

    A blog is a post based website designed for interactive communication. As the posts are frequently updated and appear on the front page of the site it’s very attractive to search engines.

    What most people call a website is merely a page based site that functions as a one way noticeboard. As the structure is page based and as pages are for static content that rarely changes, and as pages do not have RSS feeds, and as others do not backlink to pages, it is not as attractive to search engines as a post based blog structured site is.

    Any WordPress blog can be restructured from being post based to being page based – no upgrade required. For greater clarity read > http://en.support.wordpress.com/using-wordpress-to-create-a-website/

    Here’s a link to my step by step post too http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2013/07/25/create-a-wordpress-website-step-by-step/

    re: changing themes
    Themes are just “skins” on WordPress.COM hosted blogs. You can quickly and easily change themes on any WordPress.COM hosted blog to another one found here http://wordpress.com/themes/ and no data will be lost or negatively affected by the change. The only time you may have to do some work is if you are changing to a dramatically different theme and have done any CSS editing.

    Provided you are logged in as Admin under the same username account that registered the blog go to Dashboard > Appearance > Themes, Browse themes until you find one you like and click the “activate” or the “preview” link, or type in the name of the theme you want to use when it appears.

    After you change your theme all you need to do is go here Dashboard > Appearance > Widgets > Inactive Widgets and re-install them where you want them to appear. The widget contents and settings will be the same as they were prior to changing themes.

    Note that every theme will have a detailed theme description page with set up instructions and a live demo site page that you can consult. Here’s an example:
    https://theme.wordpress.com/themes/twentyfourteen/
    http://twentyfourteendemo.wordpress.com/

    re: menus
    When we publish a post on WordPress software the software automatically creates the same entry in the Archives, and on the dynamic (automatically updating) Categories and Tags pages in accord with the Categories and Tags we assign to that post.

    So when we create custom menu and add the dynamic (automatically updating) category pages to it we create the appearance (not the reality) of posting to more than one page.

    You need to be aware that:

    1. There are differences between posts and pages described here
    https://en.support.wordpress.com/post-vs-page/

    2. There are differences between static pages we bloggers create https://en.support.wordpress.com/pages/ that will not automatically update, and dynamic category pages created by the software when you publish a post which will automatically update https://en.support.wordpress.com/category-pages/.

    3. We organize posts by category assignment prior to publication. http://en.support.wordpress.com/posts/categories/ and when we publish posts the dynamic category pages they automatically display on are determined by the categories we assign to them.

    So the process you need to use is:

  • Unknown's avatar
    auxclass · Member ·

    One question – do you want a common blog for the class (all students contributing to the same blog)? If so then follow the instructions above for adding users

    If you want each student to have their own blog (then they can keep writing after they finish your class)? If so then they can create their own blog – if you want to leave feedback or edit their site then they would need to add you as a user (see above) – – this is a bit more work in some ways since finding the different blogs can be a bit of an issue and some busy work – they could have a links page with links to the other student blogs in the class (not hard to do – but some busy work)

    Good luck

  • The topic ‘WordPress in the college classroom’ is closed to new replies.