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

2. 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

3. 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 ish
Give you time at the end to start your blog

4. 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

5. 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

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

7. 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 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

8. 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….

9. 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.
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’)

10. 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!
development/about-us/projects/digital-footprint
Security important – if your site gets hacked and you don’t notice….
Image by Elisa Riva, CC0

11. 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 ( gb.wordpress.org/plugins/wordfence/)

12. Data protection Be careful what you post
You should have a privacy statement - 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

13. 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

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

15. 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