Your SFU Blog

SFU Blogs use the Wordpress blogging system. It’s easy to set up and maintain your blog pages using Wordpress, and if you run into difficulties, there’s extensive online help at http://codex.wordpress.org/Main_Page.

Getting Started To request an SFU blog, send an email from your sfu email account to blogs@sfu.ca. When your request has been approved, use your web browser to go to http://blogs.sfu.ca/people/<your SFU login>/wp-admin.php to set up your blog. (Your blog’s public address will be http://blogs.sfu.ca/people/<your SFU login>/. This is the address which will appear in search engines, email signatures, etc.) You will be prompted to log in (with your SFU id and password) and then redirected to the correct page:

This is the dashboard. It shows a summary of your activity on the blog. On the left is a menu that shows your available options. The main ones are Posts, Media, Links, Pages, Appearance and Settings. Before adding content to your blog, you will need to adjust your settings, in particular, the General, Reading and Discussion settings.

General

The most important settings here are Blog Title and Tagline. The information you enter for these will appear on the front page of your blog and will also appear in search engine results. You should also enter your email address (to be notified of comments and links to your blog). You can also customize your time zone, and date and time format. Be sure to click on Save Changes at the bottom of the screen when finished.

Reading

If you plan on using your SFU Blog mainly for news updates, select Your latest posts for the Front page displays option. If you are using your blog as an online C.V., select A static page and then choose which page (“About Me”, or “Resume”, for example) will be shown on your front page. (You will need to create some pages first, so you’ll have to come back to this screen). Remember to Save Changes when finished.

Discussion

If you want to encourage discussion on your blog, select Allow people to post comments on new articles. However, this default will apply to all pages and posts and will encourage “comment spam” (irrelevant comments posted to a blog for the sole purpose of dropping a link to the spammer’s website). If you do allow people to post comments, it’s a good idea to require that comments be approved and/or an email be sent to you whenever a comment is posted. You can also turn comments on or off for individual pages and posts.

Posts

Posts are (generally) short news items. If you selected Your Latest Posts on the “Reading” setting, your posts will appear on the front page of your blog with the newest post at the top. Otherwise, they will appear on whatever page you designate as your “Posts” page. You can add text, images, sounds and video to your posts, and edit or delete old posts. To create a post, click on Add New in the left-hand menu. To edit an existing post, click on Edit.

Media

The Media Library shows all the images, videos, sounds, and pdfs that you have uploaded to your blog. In this section you can upload new files, delete files or rename them.

Links

Links are hyperlinks to other blogs or websites. You can create new links, or edit or delete old links. You can also sort them by creating Link Categories and then applying a category to your links.

Pages

Pages are like posts, but are generally less frequently created or changed. Use pages for important information such as your C.V. or your contact information. You can nest pages (making a particular page a subpage of another page). Nested pages are shown on the Edit Pages screen with a dash before their titles.

Creating pages and posts

Creating pages and posts are similar. Give your page a title, and then click in the box below the row of buttons and enter your text. You can cut and paste text from other applications and format the text using the buttons above the text box. If you are familiar with Hypertext Mark-up Language (HTML) you can click on the HTML tab and edit your text there, otherwise use the Visual tab, which shows your content as it will appear to someone viewing your site.

Besides text, you can insert images, movies, sounds and pdf files by using the appropriate button below the title field (use the * button to upload a pdf).

You can save your work without publishing by clicking the Save Draft button. If your page is a subpage of another page, click on the arrows beside the Main Page (no parent) button and select the parent page.

When you’re finished, click on Publish and your page will appear on your blog.

Creating/editing posts is similar except that the Parent attribute is replaced by Category and Tags attributes.

Wordpress’s own website has detailed information on creating and formatting posts and pages. Go to http://codex.wordpress.org/Main_Page to learn more.

page/post content

title

Widgets

Widgets (under the AppearanceI menu) are pieces of information that you can insert on the right hand side of your blog, such as a list of your pages, recent posts, links and a calendar of your posts. To place a widget in your sidebar, click and drag the widget from the list of widgets on the left and place it in the Sidebar 1 area. Your widget is saved automatically. Some widgets have options, such as Title that you can fill out. Note: the Google Analytics Stats widget does not work in the current SFU Blogs setup (as of March 2012).

Options

The only option you can set is the Header Image. This is the picture that appears above your name and below the links to the SFU campuses. You will need to upload an image (for best results make sure it’s at least 755 pixels wide by 185 pixels high) in the Media section of your blog (see below) and then copy the image’s File URL into the Header Image URL field on the Options screen. Remember to save when you’re finished. If you change your mind, click on Revert to switch back to the default image.

The final product

Done! You now have a blog title and description, a default front page, some other pages, a few news items, links to other sites, and a customized banner image. Now it’s time to get the word out about your blog and to track visits to your site.

default page

list of pages

news items

links

description

title

custom ban-ner

Google Analytics

Google Analytics allows you to find out about how many people are visiting your site, what pages they look at, where they come from, and other useful information. To activate Google Analytics, you will need to set up an Analytics account at www.google.com/analytics (described below). When you do this, you will be given a Google Analytics UID. Copy this number and enter it in the appropriate box on the Google Analytics screen of your blog (see above). You should also select Administrator in the User roles to not track part of this screen (otherwise your own visits to your site will become part of your statistics). Remember to Save your information.

To create a Google Analytics account, go to http://www.google.com/analytics and click on “Sign Up Now”. You will be asked to confirm your email address and agree to Google’s Terms of Service. When you do this, and sign in again, you will see a web page that looks like this:

The string of numbers and letters that begins with “UA-” is your Google Analytics UID. This is what you enter on the SFU Blogs Google Analytics page.

Now that Analytics has been set up, you can go back to www.google.com/analytics at any time to track and analyze your web stats. Analytics has many options, the use of which is beyond the scope of this tutorial, but the Google Analytics site has extensive help pages.

Getting the word out

Now that your SFU Blog has been set up, don’t forget to spread the word. Add your blog address to your email signature, your business card, personal web page, Facebook page, etc. And remember to keep it active and up-to-date. When you publish a paper, attend a conference, or defend your thesis, add that to your blog, and Tweet about it and update your Facebook status.

Finally

When you leave SFU, you can take your blog content with you. Click on Export in the left hand column, and follow the instructions to save your blog to a file on your own computer. You can then import this data into another blog.

Good luck with your blog!