GETTING STARTED ON WORDPRESS.COM____________________________________

Creating Your Account

Once you’ve gone to WordPress.com — Click on “Get Started Here.”

On this next page you want to create a blog address, username, and password. This is the info you will use to login to WordPress regularly so you want it to be something simple to remember. Give an accessible email address (that you can check right away for confirmation). Select your blog language. Scroll to the bottom and click "Create Blog".

Now you’ll want to check your email. WordPress will have sent you an email with an activation link. You will need to login using the username and password you've just created.

The following pages may appear once you login for the first time: "New Post" is a quick first post tab so you can start to add blog posts immediately.

"My Blogs" tab shows all of the blogs that you have created on your account."

YOUR SITE HAS BEEN ACTIVATED Copy URL Once you’ve made sure that your blog is live. Please copy your URL (blog domain or address) from the address bar of your browser and paste it in an email to me. If you are not using First Class, and your email address doesn't have your name in it, please write your name in the subject field of your email.

Logging In It will be important for you to be able to login again once you are ready to post again. You can do this a couple different ways: The easiest is to go back to wordpress.com and sign in at the top of the screen. You can also setup a "Meta" widgit on your blog which will create a link called “login” on your site pages. Finally if you add /wp-admin to the end of your address it will take you to this lovely login screen, e.g. http://mydomain.wordpress.com/wp-admin I suggest bookmarking this page.

THE DASHBOARD___________________________________________________________

The WordPress Dashboard is your editing room; any changes to the blog site will begin here. On the dashboard you will see a column of tabs on the left. If you click on any of the tab headings, a list of options will appear below it.

APPEARANCE Appearance > Themes For simplicity, and for the best looking/functioning portfolio possible, I will be asking you to use "Auto Focus" as your Theme for the semester. (Once the semester is over, you can change your theme to whatever you like.) Auto Focus can be found here http://theme.wordpress.com/themes/autofocus/ Once your blog is activated, this page will give you the option to "Activate" the theme on the right.

Appearance > Background (Or in the Theme tab on your Dashboard), you can select and change the "Background" colour or image of your site. Keep it simple as you don't want it to distract from your masterpieces: black, white, grey, or a very simple abstract image are recommended. (Note: the theme is setup to work best with a white background).

Appearance > Header (a task for later) Once you've setup your site and all its settings in this tutorial, your task is to create a Header for your site. The Photoshop document size will be 800 × 216 pixels. Again, nothing too distracting. It must include a title such as MBSS Student's Portfolio (as demonstrated here: http://mbssstudent.wordpress.com/), or something of the like. It must also use a downloaded font (refer to tutorial) and be legible. Once completed, this header can be uploaded here. At this point you may also opt to hide your original blog title and have your pages tabs run horizontally across the top in between your header and your posts.

SETTINGS Settings > General Site title, email, date and timezone info for posting is set here. Please set to the Vancouver timezone setting for accurate time-stamping. Save your changes to apply it to your site.

Settings > Discussion "Other comment settings" : please ensure that "Users must be registered and logged in to comment" is checked and enabled. If you find that you are getting unwanted comments from outside our class, please let me know and we will change our settings further. Settings > Sharing I don't want to tempt you to use social media sites during class ;) so please drag the icons to the Available Services section. None should be enabled.

CONTENT

Posts

This tab is where you create your posts, which are blog entries. If you want to create a static web page select the "Pages" tab, but this is not what you want for your assignments.

Title bar – this is where you will type the assignment/project name you’re posting.

The next area just below that are the controls for your text while blogging. They are much like controls you’d find in Microsoft Word. You have options for Bold, Italics, Strike through, Bullet points, Numbers, Indentations, alignments, creating and removing links to other websites, adding pictures and galleries, creating a line beak for your post, spell checker, etc.

Just below that is the text box. That’s where you do all of your typing.

WordPress runs automatic saves from time to time, but if you want to save your draft click the “save” button just beside the text box.

On the right please click "+ Add New Category" and create these 2 categories for your posts: Sketchbook and Projects. Once your categories are created they are always available in that box to be used for later posts. Every time you create a post I'd like you to categorize it based on what type of assignment it is. This will help keep things organized and easy for me to find when marking assignments.

Note: You can Preview your post before publishing it live to the web. Simply click "Preview" and it will open a draft of what your post will look like live.

Finally when you’re happy with it and ready to post – click “Publish.”

Check your post. You always want to double check to make sure your post is live. To do this, click on the “View Site” link at the top of your dashboard. This will take you to your blog’s public view. Any Posts created using this theme will additionally create a dated image/textbox link on your home page (creating a visual collection of your work as seen here).

Pages "Pages" are static web pages that you can setup for more permanent and organized information on your site. (Using "Menu"s you can create tabs for your pages across the top of your site for easy access). I'd like you to create 2 Pages by clicking "Add New": Sketchbook and Projects. Here you will simply create a list of all of your assignments within each page and "Link" each assignment to its corresponding Post.

Select the Post to attach here.

Appearance > Menus Once your Sketchbook and Project Pages are created, click on the Menu" tab. Select the checkboxes to your new pages and click "Add to Menu". You can drag them into the order you like. Save your changes to apply it to your site.

Appearance > Widgits (coming soon) Once we have blog addresses collected for the class, we will create a link list on our sites. Adapted from: http://ryanbolger.wordpress.com/2006/09/27/how-to-setup-your-blog-wordpress-for-students/