USD Blog Server
Welcome to the web log server at USD. The contents of this server do not represent official publications or policies of The University of South Dakota. The materials hosted by this service reflect the personal views of the authors. Use is governed by the IT Acceptable Use Policy and The USD Blog Policy Guideline. Services provided by blogs.usd.edu are self-supporting. If you need assistance, please refer to the online documentation. If you encounter a technical problem, please send an email to helpdesk@usd.edu.
USD Weblogs Quickstart
Follow these instructions to get up and running with your blog.
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To sign up for a USD Weblog, click the "Login" link on the blogs frontpage,
and then enter your USD username and password.
Figure 1. Login link
Figure 2. Login form
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After login, you will see a screen that states that you currently do not have
a weblog defined. Click the "create one?" link to get started.
Figure 3. Create a blog
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Then enter the details of your blog.
Figure 4. Blog details
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When the blog has been created, you will see your new blog in the main menu.
Figure 5. Main menu after blog creation
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To add a new entry, select "New Entry" from the right hand menu shown in figure 5.
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Enter your post, then submit.
Figure 6. New entry
Description of the available fields are as follows:- Title - Each weblog entry must have a title. Be careful when you pick your title, it will be used in the link to your weblog entry. For best results, do use titles that are short and to-the-point. Don't include any HTML in your titles, just plain text - if you want your titles to be bold, then customize your templates instead of embedding HTML in your titles.
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Status - This read-only field tells you about the current state
of the weblog entry that you are editing.
There are three possible status settings:- Not Saved - the entry has never neen saved
- Draft - the entry is saved as a draft and is not yet visible to your weblog's readers
- Published - the entry has been published and is visible to your weblog's readers
- Permalink - this read-only field is the permalink link to your weblog entry. It is set the first time that you save an entry, based on the title at the time you save - and it cannot be changed later.
- Category - You can pick one category for your weblog entry. Categories are for folks who want to organized the entries in their weblog into a small-set of fixed and possible hierarchical categories, defined by the weblog admin (that's probably you). You can add and remove categories via the Create & Edit ->Categories page.
- Tags - (optional) Enter a list of one or more tags that describe your weblog entry, separated by spaces. As you type, Roller may suggest tags that you've used before.
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Content - This is the main body of your weblog entry, in HTML format.
We try to make that easy by providing two ways to edit the content.
Via the Preferences -> Settings page, you can pick either of these:
- Rich Text Editor (Xinha) - a rich-text editor that's designed to make editing HTML as easy as using MS Word or Open Office.
- Text Editor - a plain-text editor that you can use to edit the raw HTML markup of your weblog entries. Don't use this unless you know HTML.
- Summary - (optional) If you wish, you can enter a short summary of your weblog post. If you do so, then the short summary will be displayed on the main page of your weblog and your readers will have to click a Read More link to get to the full-content. Some bloggers like to do this when they have very long post and they don't want that long post to dominate the main page of their weblog.
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To view your weblog, click on your weblog name shown in the upper-left
hand corner of the current screen.
Figure 7. Weblog