create your own blog or website with wordpress.com

http://bryonytaylor.com

Build your own website or blog using wordpress.com

Cranmer Hall/Wesley Study CentreMay 2013


What’s a blog?

Contraction of web-log – it’s like an online journal

My definition: a place online where you can put stuff!


Why blog?

You could have all sorts of reasons to blog: for CPD, to have a resource to return to, to share what you’re learning with others, for fun, to share expertise, to keep in touch with friends & family, for business…


Create your blog – step 1

• Think of a name (this will be the url & your username eg. yourname.wordpress.com)

• Think of a title (you can change the title later)

• Visit wordpress.com and sign up• Click on confirmation email to complete



Familiarise yourself with the ‘dashboard’, save your username and password somewhere



Go to ‘Appearance’ first to get your site looking how you want it.



Choose a theme – this is how your site will look. Experiment with different looks. You can change your theme at any time.



Add a header picture if you wish. Go to ‘Header’ to change the header image.



Choose your ‘widgets’. ‘Drag’ which widgets you want to appear in your sidebar. Keep checking your site to see how they look until you’re happy.

Dashboard viewLooks like this on blog



Create a custom menu – can add external links



Add pages (you can add content to your pages later). You may wish to edit the dummy ‘about’ page so that your visitors know what they’re looking at.



Choose whether you want your home page to be ‘static’ (ie. Stays the same) or for it to show your latest blog post.

If you want to have a static home page (rather than your most recent blog post appearing on the home page) follow these steps:Create a new blank page and call it ‘Blog’, save itGo to ‘Settings’ and ‘Reading’. Choose which page you want as the ‘static’ page and choose ‘blog’ for where your blog posts will go – don’t forget to save!



Connect your social media accounts.

Link your social media profiles to your blog – this means whenever you publish a new blog post it will automatically go to twitter, facebook, linkedin etc.Go to ‘Settings’ and ‘Sharing’.Click on the relevant links on ‘Publicize’ to link your accounts.



Add sharing buttons so people can share your content on social networks. Go to ‘Settings’ and ‘Sharing’ and drag and drop the services you want.



Write your first blog post – edit the dummy post created for you called ‘Hello World’.Work out how to add a link, image and video and edit the text. It works much like Word.



Add tags and categories to your post. Decide when you want the post to publish and schedule.


• Always include an image in your post (ensure it is royalty free - http://sxc.hu/ & http://commons.wikimedia.org for free images)

• Connect to Twitter and Facebook to get more hits

• Always reply to comments (unless obviously spam)

Some quick tips on blogging

• Split long posts up into separate posts – max length 500 words

• A blog post could just be an image or video – it needn’t be long!

• Read other blogs for inspiration and respond

• Post regularly• Be topical• Have fun!

http://sxc.hu/

http://sxc.hu/

http://sxc.hu/

http://commons.wikimedia.org/

http://commons.wikimedia.org/


My 3 golden rules:

Don’t be afraid!Go for it, don’t be timid, you just have to give it a try.

Don’t be stupid!Don’t write anything you’d be embarrassed for a loved one or your boss to read!

Be yourself! Be authentic, people can spot a fake.


Thanks. Keep in touch! http://bryonytaylor.com I’m @vahva on Twitter [email protected] http://bigbible.org.uk & http://seedresources.com for extra help and resources

http://bryonytaylor.com/

mailto:[email protected]

http://bigbible.org.uk/

http://seedresources.com/

create your own blog or website with wordpress.com

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