Don’t Tell Nobody
At the risk of ruffling the feathers of all the locavores around here, I’ll keep this brief.
That new McDonald’s by the mall? Delicious.
My internet, let me show you it.
You Are Your Own Admin
One of our goals with Citizen Wausau is to give a voice to everybody. We’re seeing a growing interest in the user blogs, and I think that’s great; I want to see everybody taking advantage of this new feature. And while some of our users were experienced bloggers already, others are new to the concept, which is why I wanted to post this.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time discussing some of the prominent features of our system thus far, but the most important thing I can possibly tell you is that when you start a blog, you are not only an author; you’re also an editor, a moderator, and an administrator. Blogging goes beyond simply posting articles or links. Think of your blog as your home.
Landscape
Read over your posts before you publish them. Reach a point where your post is compelling, or at least coherent. Give your blog curb appeal.
Be a Good Host
Follow the comments on your posts and join the conversation. Answer questions. Be sure to remind people if you feel they’re getting out of line, but tread carefully. Don’t be that guy who follows people around with a Dustbuster, but nobody wants to hang out in a sty either.
Upkeep!
It’s easier than it sounds. Maintain your blog. Follow your comments. If you require that comments must be approved, be on the ball with approving them or disable the feature; neglected blogs aren’t taken seriously and they bring down the neighborhood.
Everybody Loves iPhone
Just thought you should know: despite what CellularOne may or may not say, you can buy and activate (through iTunes) an iPhone in Wausau at this very moment. Have fun.
Widgets
Now we’re done with posts (for awhile). Let’s shift our gaze a couple inches to the left; see that area? It’s the sidebar, and it’s more interesting than you think!
The default sidebar has a couple sections underneath the user information area: categories and archives. While this is perfectly functional, you’re welcome to change it up a bit. In your admin area, click on the Presentation tab and then the Widgets subtab.
You’ll be in a page called Sidebar Arrangement, where you’ll see a tall blue box that represents your sidebar. Underneath, you’ll see some other boxes with names like Calendar and Pages. Each of these little boxes represents a Widget, or a little module that you can put in your sidebar to display certain information.
To use a widget, simply drag it into the sidebar area. You’ll notice a little icon at the right of each active box, and you can click on that to adjust the options for each box. You can also drag the widgets around inside the box to rearrange the order.
Most of these widgets are pretty self explanatory, so I’ll save you the descriptions unless you have a specific question. There are two that are pretty intriguing though: Text and RSS.
Text widgets simply create a box for you to type in whatever text you might want to show up in your sidebar. For example, I named my text widget Andy Laub and put a (very) brief blurb in there.
RSS widgets are nearly as simple; they let you paste in an RSS feed from any source to show in your sidebar. Erik’s blog has a great example of this; he brought in the RSS feed from his personal blog!
The other great thing about text and RSS widgets is that you can have as many as you want. Use the form at the bottom of the page to add more.
A Little Upgrade
This morning CitizenWausau.com took a little rest while I updated the site to the newest version of WordPress MU. Everything went relatively smoothly aside from some minor panic while the cache cleared. From your end you probably won’t see any differences, but this was the first step in isolating the problem mentioned here. Unfortunately, simply updating the site didn’t take care of it, but I’ll keep you posted on the progress.
Additionally, last weekend we wrapped up CWCT’s production of Oliver! I think it went pretty darn well, and hopefully you’ll an article or two about it from director Justin Evans. Plus, now I have some of my free time back, so when I can pry myself away from Assassin’s Creed I’ll be able to finish up the tuturials.
Let’s Write!
So now your blog is all set up. You’ve got a pretty new header, and a clever new tagline, but no content. It’s time to fix that. To write a new post, click the Write tab and you’ll automatically be directed to a blank page. Go ahead and fill out the title and write your post content. You’d think it would be as easy as that, and you can certainly call it a day and hit the Publish button, but there are a few things you can do to make your post easier to read and more useful.
Buttons, Buttons, Buttons
Right above the big textbox where you write your post, you’ll notice a big row of buttons. Each of those plays a different part in modifying the format of your post. In most cases, you’ll be able to highlight a piece of text and then click the button to apply that style.
- b - click this to make your text bold.
- i - click this to italicize your text.
- link - click this to turn the selected text into a link. A box will pop up where you can paste in the URL (address) you want to link to.
- b-quote - this is the blockquote tag; it gets wrapped around your whole paragraph.
- del - this is used for striking out
you’reyour text. You might also notice that it adds an attribute to tell viewers when the text was crossed out and modified. - ins - this pairs with the
<del>tag; it’s used to note the new, updated content (in this case, “your”). - img - this doesn’t wrap around any tags; click the button to add an image at the location of your cursor.
- ul, ol, & li - these tags correspond to unordered and ordered lists. This list is unordered, while an ordered list would have numbers instead of bullets. To properly format this, you’ll need to wrap the entire list with either
<ul>or<ol>, and each list item needs to be wrapped with<li>. - code - the code tag is used to define bits of HTML that you might use in your post. The result is that the content appears similar to how it would in an HTML editor:
like this. - more - this is used to insert
<!--more-->into your post; this tells the post where to truncate if you’d like to only show a fragment of the post on the homepage. - lookup - the “lookup” button simply searches answers.com for the highlighted text.
- close tags - this button looks for any unclosed tags in your post and closes them.
- SWF - click SWF to add a Flash movie to your post.
- Media - this button is used to insert YouTube videos and more into your post; simply click and follow the instructions in the popup box.
Of those listed above, you’ll probably be using link and media the most. Videos are a great way to supplement your point, and links are basically the entire foundation of the internet. If you’re talking about a subject, it’s always helpful to link to other resources that support (or contradict) your point.
Categorization
Once you’re finished with the content of your post, another helpful thing to do is assign categories for it. I’m going to assign this post to blogging and WordPress, but I’m the type of person who likes to use categories sparingly. There’s no limit to how many categories a post can have, so if you want to be more specific, go ahead.
By default, your blog shows a list of categories in the sidebar; this is a helpful way for readers to get a quick idea of what you like to write about. And remember; once you type in a category and assign it to your post, it will always show up on the list in the future so you never have to type it in again.
Talk to Me
Underneath the post area, you’ll see a section for Trackbacks. If you’re mentioning another blog post in your post, you can paste that URL here, and that site will be notified.
Below the category list you’ll see two discussion options. If you’re not interested in hearing feedback, you can turn off Allow Comments. By default, Allow Pings is also turned on; this means that you’ll see trackbacks about your post from other bloggers.
Password & Status
These three options are all pretty basic. The Password field protects your post from being viewed by those you haven’t given the password to. The Status is exactly what it sounds like: Published means that your post is live and available for viewing; Draft means that you’re still working on the post and it is not public (posts in draft also show up at the top of the Write and Manage tabs so you can quickly access them again later); Private means that your post is only visible to you (to see it you must be logged in). Be careful about the private setting, though; clicking Publish instead of Save will overwrite it.
The Slug
The Post Slug refers to the address of the post in the address bar. By default, it will be the title of your post, but with punctuation removed, and hyphens in place of spaces. The post slug for this post is lets-write. You can change your post slug to anything, but if that slug has been used before, it will automatically be appended with a number. Most importantly, though; this allows you to easily change your post address if you decide to change your title after publishing. If I changed the title of this post to “Write Now!”, the post slug would remain unchanged unless I also edited that. It’s not generally good practice to change a post slug unless you absolutely have to; a person who may have linked to your post with the original slug will now have a broken link.
Time to Go
The last thing I want to cover today is the Post Timestamp. This option lets you change the date and time of your post; just make sure Edit Timestamp is checked when you save the post. For example, you might be inspired one day and write two posts, one after another. If you don’t want to post them both right away, you can adjust the timestamp on the later one to a different day, and when that time is reached, the post is published automagically. I’ve used it on my site at times when I’ve gone on vacation or know that I won’t have computer access.
That wraps it up for now. This was a very long-winded post, but there are an amazing amount of options for such a simple page. It should be assumed by now, but comment here if you are having any troubles.
You Want Media?
I’ll give you media:
As you can see, YouTube (and friends) are now welcome on Citizen Wausau.
To embed a YouTube video into your blog post, do the following:
- When writing a post, click the Media button (located in the row of buttons underneath the title box).
- When the box pops up, follow the instructions. If you’re using YouTube, just copy the address of the page (the one in the address bar) and paste it in.
- If you have any questions, post ‘em here.
PS: I sincerely hope that the diesel Honda Accord, coming next year, redefines America’s perception of diesels. If anyone can do it, Honda can.
Now What?
So you just filled out the signup form, picked out an address, and now you’ve got a shiny new WordPress blog that’s all yours… now what do you do?
Of course, you can click the “write” tab and start posting, and that’s great! But there are a couple WordPress features you can take advantage of to make your blog a little more “you”.
Title & Tagline
When you sign up for a blog, you’re asked to put in a blog title. Whatever you choose ends up at the top of your site. In my case, it’s “Andy’s New Thing“, but yours can be whatever you’d like. Don’t get stressed out though; it’s easy to change your title later if you can’t think of the perfect one right off the bat. Simply click on your Options tab from within your blog admin (http://citizenwausau.com/(your address)/wp-admin) and there and update the Weblog Title field to instantly change your blog’s title.
While there, you’ll see the Tagline right beneath that. Everybody’s blog starts out with the same default tagline; that too is easy to change, and it’s all right there in the Options panel. On that note, you can click around the different submenus there to find other settings for posting, comments, and more.
Register to Comment… or Not
By default, and unlike the main Citizen Wausau site, visitors to your site do not have to be registered members of Citizen Wausau to post a comment. While this is not a bad thing (I have my own blog set up that way) and encourages discussion, you may prefer to require registration first. This option is easily enabled by visiting Options » General and clicking the checkbox next to “Users must be registered and logged in to comment”. There are more discussion options under - where else? - the Options » Discussion panel.
Better Header
You may have noticed that the header image on my blog is different than the standard header image. You’re welcome to upload your own to further add a touch of personalization to your site. Header images are cropped to 726 x 200 pixels, so try to find a photo or image that suits the horizontal layout.
To change the header, click the Presentation tab and then click the Custom Image Header subtab. That will get you started on uploading and cropping your own header image.
Hello world!
When you visit your blog for the first time, you’ll notice that there’s exactly one post and one comment there. You can keep it for posterity’s sake if you like, or you can just delete it. If you’ve decided that’s the route you want to take, visit the Manage panel, where you’ll see a list of your blog posts (in this case, just the one). Vanquishing the “Hello world” post is as easy as clicking the Delete button on the right side of the screen.
That wraps it up for now. Later I’ll talk about meta, widgets, and other fun stuff. In the meantime, enjoy your blog, and please post here if you run into any issues.
This is it.
This post is the first post on the newly completed Citizen Wausau blog network. What do you think?
Hello world!
Welcome to Citizenwausau.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!