Creating another blog on New South Blogs

Published
by
mikebogle
on June 16, 2010
in Tutorials
. 0 Comments

Recently a few people have asked about how to create new blogs on New South Blogs when you have an existing account and I’ve taken the opportunity to create a short screencast demonstrating the process.

Steps:

  1. Go to http://newsouthblogs.org and login using the prompts on the right-hand side of the page. You’ll then be returned to the page, where you’ll see “Welcome [your username.] “
  2. Immediately below this you will see “Register with New South Blogs.” This area includes a link to sign up as a user here. If you click on this link it will take you to a form that lets you add a new blog to your existing account.
  3. Complete these two fields and click Create Blog. You’ll then be shown a confirmation message and provided with the link to your new blog.

Once you login to the Dashboard area for your new blog you’ll see a series of links across the top of the page that will provide you quick access to the dashboards of any other blogs you have in the system.

Video Tutorial

The following video is best viewed full screen.

Common Craft video on Wikipedia

Published
by
mikebogle
on May 26, 2010
in Social Media
. 0 Comments

In light of the recent wiki workshops held for the School of English, Media and Performing Arts I wanted to circulate the following video that just came out from the people at the Common Craft Show. Common Craft is the company responsible for the “Plain English” series, which explains a variety of social media tools in easily understood language.

Their most recent video (released just today from the look of things) covers Wikipedia – both from the technical perspective on how wikis work, but also from the policy standpoint on how Wikipedia manages the site and how the editorial process is conducted and moderated.

http://commoncraft.com/wikipedia-video

[No embed option is currently available for the video, so I can only link to it at the moment.]

Session Follow-up & Deleting a Blog

Published
by
mikebogle
on May 19, 2010
in workshops
. 0 Comments

For everyone who attended the EMPA Blog Workshop today, thanks again for coming.  I realise we jumped around a fair bit, so if you have any questions about what was covered please let me know, or perhaps post a comment or feedback on the blog and we can discuss things in the comments area.  Among other things it will let others benefit from the information.

For those of you who created blogs on New South Blogs and decided you’d rather delete them, here are the details on how you do this.

Deleting a Blog from New South Blogs

First login to the dashboard area.  There should be a link to the Site Admin somewhere in the navigation on the site (frequently at the bottom of the menu).  If you’re not able to locate it just add “wp-admin” to the end of the URL.

For instance.

http://fasstelt.newsouthblogs.org/wp-admin

This will take you to the login screen.

Once inside the dashboard area look for the Settings link in the upper right hand corner of the screen – located just next to the Plugins link.  After you click this you should see an additional set of options appear just below that – Delete Blog is one of them.

When you click on Delete Blog you’ll be taken to a confirmation page that asks you to reaffirm your decision by ticking on a box.  To complete the process click on “Delete My Blog Permanently.”

URLS for Deleted Blog are NOT Reuseable

NOTE: If you delete the blog, the URL you used can never be used again.  So if you think you might have a use for it at some point you might consider updating the privacy settings instead  - this option is located in the same row as the original Delete Blog option at the top of the screen.

If you want to hide the blog to the world select “I would like my blog to be visible only to Registered members of this blog.”   Because you are the only member of the blog you’re the only person who can access the blog (aside from people with system admin access).  These privacy settings can be changed later if you decide to use the blog after all whereas deleting the blog is permanent.  That said it’s completely up to you what you decide to do.

If anyone is interested can I suggest we get together again sometime to discuss blogs in a bit more detail – for instance a more in depth look into some educational use cases.

Information for the upcoming EMPA Blog workshop

Published
by
mikebogle
on May 12, 2010
in workshops
. 0 Comments

For the participants of the upcoming EMPA Blog Workshops in Webster 136 on Wednesday May 19th (2 to 3) and/or Thursday May 27th (12 – 1 pm).

Details of the session have in the EMPA Blog Workshop section of this blog.

(Please see the Pages section in the right menu to browse through the session topics.)

Regarding the session’s activity, if you have your own blog already please feel free to use that, however if you need to create one I’ve outlined some potential choices on the activity page.

If you do not have a blog and need to create one please consider a few choices for your blog’s URL prefix. Depending on your chosen provider this will be something like

  • yourblogname.blogspot.com
  • yourblogname.wordpress.com
  • yourblogname.newsouthblogs.org
  • blogs.unsw.edu.au/yourblogname

Once created your blog’s web-link is irreversible and unchangeable, so please bring a few ideas with you (in case one is taken).

Also note, in order to create a blog with blogs.unsw.edu.au you need to submit an expression of interest. So if you want a blog there please complete the TELT Expression of Interest Form immediately:

http://telt.unsw.edu.au/PilotEOI.cfm