Blogs and Using WordPress

Please read chapter 4 and Appendix A of Deltina Hay textbook for an overview of WordPress. You will NOT install WordPress in your computers and host your blog in a provider, but rather you will use the free hosting provided by WordPress itself. 

You will not need to use FTP, create a database, etc, as you would if you were a business starting a real Web  presence on the using WordPress. But, the process of creating the WordPress blog in itself is the same, only the hosting would change.

Brief tutorial on how to create  the group  blog in WordPress:

  1. Open a browser and go to: https://en.wordpress.com/signup/
  2. enter a valid e-mail address of one of the group members (this is important because he/she will receive an e-mail in this e-mail address  to activate the blog).
  3. select  a username to login in the blog,
  4. then select a password and  finally
  5. select a blog name for the organization you selected and did the presentation in project step 1. 
  6. there will be options on how to pay, choose WordPress.com  Beginner,  free,  and  press Create Blog at the bottom.
  7. The group member that entered the e-mail address  received  an e-mail to activate the blog, he/she should check the e-mail and click on Confirm E-mail address. Do it now.

This creates the blog in WordPress but your group still need to customize it, and do the group first posting. Your blog address will be blogname.wordpress.com, where blogname is what your group chose when creating the blog.   You can see a graphical tutorial here.

Customizing  and the first blog posting:
  1. When you pressed Create Blog, you  were taken to a page to Setup your blog (be sure you answered the e-mail to confirm the e-mail address before proceeding)
  2. You will be asked to select a  blog title
  3. Enter a tagline briefly describing the blog
  4. Ignore language and posting goal, and click next step
  5. Choose a theme: select a free theme, next
  6. Ignore connect to Twitter and Facebook for now, click next
  7. Select  text in the choice of what you would like to post
  8. An input area to enter text similar to SAKAI dialogs  will appear.
  9. Change the title and do the group first blog  (will only work after responding to the e-mail asking to confirm the e-mail address) .
  10. Click next, and will  publish . This is it! Your group did you first blog posting. 

Finally, visit you blog site and play with the Dashboard:

  1. Type wordpress.com/my-blogs and  login with your username and password.
  2. When you do this you will be placed in  your blog
  3. Select  Dashboard.
  4. Watch the initial video about the dashboard.
  5. You may change the header of your Blog selecting Appearance in the Dashboard, among other things.
    You can see another graphical tutorial here.
This page is maintained by Al Bento who can be reached at abento@ubalt.edu. This page was last updated on February 8, 2014. Although we will attempt to keep this information accurate, we can not guarantee the accuracy of the information provided.