Photo by Jess Watters on Unsplash Get Blogging! Festival of Creative Learning Week 2019 Photo by Jess Watters on Unsplash

Introducing the team… Lila Pitcher Student Intern on the Academic Blogging project Lorna Campbell Educational Design & Engagement, Information Services Karen Howie Digital Learning Applications and Media, Information Services Mark Findlay Digital Learning Applications and Media, Information Services

What we’ll be covering today Event introduction Why should you blog and what should you blog about? Setting up a blog Personalising your blog Plugins and themes Cake! How to write a blog Your responsibilities as a blog owner Get blogging! No fire alarm Bathroom Cake 3-3.15 ish Give you time at the end to start your blog

About this event We are covering: Why did we choose WordPress? Basics of web hosting Introduction to managing WordPress How to blog, what to blog about But if you want a simpler life, there are easier (but less flexible) solutions  Why did we choose WordPress? Free, open-source software Most popular 'Content Management System' in the world Lots of extra functionality and personalisations brought via plugins/themes

About your blog We are giving you a year of free hosting with Reclaim hosting. Your hosting is set to expire a year after today. What happens after the year is up? You can pay to keep the blog going as it is ($30 per year, ~£22) with your current domain name. You can move your blog to WordPress.com (free, less customisation possible but unless you have very specific requirements, it's probably ok) Lots of other hosting options (I.e namecheap, GoDaddy) Possible Domain-Of-One's-Own project here, planned to start next year Reclaim hosting – you can install other things, not just WordPress 2GBs of space

I want a simple life! Don't want to manage your own web hosting? WordPress.com Blogger - https://www.blogger.com/  Medium - https://medium.com/  Many other free/simple platforms.

About the competition On Wednesday next week, we’ll be looking through your blogs and picking a winner!  The winner will get a £20 BlackWells book voucher, and we’ll contact you via your email address to arrange to get it to you. We’d ask you to please, before you go, fill in our form and give us your blogs web address so we can help you later if needed and we know which blogs should be considered for the competition. What are we looking for? A blog that … Looks attractive and it’s appearance suits the purpose of the blog Has a relevant first post Has a useful ‘About this blog’ (or similar) page The blog has to be publicly available or we won't be able to see it :)  Photo by LubosHouska, CC0

Your responsibilities…. As a blog owner As a website manager! Your own hosting platform is a very powerful platform but you need to take care. This environment isn’t as protected as other services you might use. These are the sorts of things you need to watch out for….

Accessibility It’s important to make sure your site is accessible to people with disabilities. Having an accessible website often equates to it being usable too – following best practice. https://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/learning- technology/blogging/introduction/how-to-create-an-accessible-blog Main points: Provide alternatives to video/audio/image content. Don’t write in all caps, it’s hard to read. Avoid big chunks of italics. Preferably use sans-serif fonts. Use practical colour schemes Descriptive link text (not ‘click here’)

Digital footprint “It's the data you leave behind when you go online. It's what you've said, what others have said about you, where you've been, images you're tagged in, personal information, social media profiles, and much more.” Blogging more obvious digital footprint than other social media Make sure that anything you don’t want to be public is definitely private! Check as a non-logged- in user. Security important here! https://www.ed.ac.uk/institute-academic- development/about-us/projects/digital-footprint Security important – if your site gets hacked and you don’t notice…. Image by Elisa Riva, CC0

Security Patching, updates and back-ups Sometimes updates break things…. The follies of not staying secure… Be careful what plug-ins you install Think about a security plugin such as WordFence (https://en- gb.wordpress.org/plugins/wordfence/)

Data protection Be careful what you post You should have a privacy statement - https://www.isitwp.com/how-to-make-a- wordpress-privacy-policy/ What info do you collect, what do you do with it, how long do you keep it? If you have a form, need to add it! ‘Settings’ > ‘Privacy’ – template for a privacy page Make sure you add it into your site menu CC0 license @qimono

Moving your blog… From your admin panel Under ‘Tools’ – ‘Import’ and ‘Export’ This will import/export content only! ie not themes/plugins Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images, CC0

Now go and start building….! Image by geralt, CC0

Getting started suggestions Think about your reasons for blogging: This will influence the appearance of your blog and what you’ll need it to do. An ‘about this blog’ page – tell the world why you are blogging. Change the appearance of the blog to suit your purpose Image heavy vs image light