We've had several new blogs started since I posted the last list, but only one of them has two or more posts, so that's the only one I'll list.
Brian Wendler's Blog: Technical information about the Banner system
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Monday, May 30, 2005
Memorial Day
I don't intend to stray much from work-related stuff here in this blog, but today is an exception. It's Memorial Day.
There are a lot of soldiers and sailors out there giving their lives, limbs, and sanity for what they believe in. No matter what you think of the Bush administration's handling of this war, the troops deserve our support. Even more so if you (like me) don't think the war was the right idea; if we're honest with ourselves, we'll admit that this means the troops are getting a raw deal from the government and deserve even more support from us.
If you're thinking about buying one of those car magnets that say you support the troops, please don't unless you actually have given time and money to support them or their families. Otherwise you're really just saying "I support the company that made this magnet."
Of course, if you've already served, that's different. I salute you, and I salute the families of those who have given their lives.
But most of us have not, nor will we ever, put our lives on the line for what we believe in. Shouldn't we at least put some time and money on the line instead? If you don't know where to start, try a google search for charities that support the troops. Or take a look at this list.
If everyone spent as much money on actual support as we spend on flags and car magnets, I bet things would look a whole lot better for the troops. They'd still be in harm's way, but at least they'd really know we were behind them.
There are a lot of soldiers and sailors out there giving their lives, limbs, and sanity for what they believe in. No matter what you think of the Bush administration's handling of this war, the troops deserve our support. Even more so if you (like me) don't think the war was the right idea; if we're honest with ourselves, we'll admit that this means the troops are getting a raw deal from the government and deserve even more support from us.
If you're thinking about buying one of those car magnets that say you support the troops, please don't unless you actually have given time and money to support them or their families. Otherwise you're really just saying "I support the company that made this magnet."
Of course, if you've already served, that's different. I salute you, and I salute the families of those who have given their lives.
But most of us have not, nor will we ever, put our lives on the line for what we believe in. Shouldn't we at least put some time and money on the line instead? If you don't know where to start, try a google search for charities that support the troops. Or take a look at this list.
If everyone spent as much money on actual support as we spend on flags and car magnets, I bet things would look a whole lot better for the troops. They'd still be in harm's way, but at least they'd really know we were behind them.
Thursday, May 26, 2005
No FAQ this week
There won't be an FAQ this week; I've been buried in the systems programming side of my job for the last couple of days. I'm glad my schedule gives me three-day weekends, even if that means extra-long days Monday through Thursday. I like programming, but I can't do it too many days in a row anymore.
I'm probably going to have jury duty sometime next week, by the way. The next part of the stylesheet tutorial may be delayed a while because of that.
I'm probably going to have jury duty sometime next week, by the way. The next part of the stylesheet tutorial may be delayed a while because of that.
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Changing blog colors, part 1
OK, I've been meaning to post about this for a few days now. The trouble is, changing colors and other style attributes requires more than basic HTML knowledge; you have to get into what's known as "Cascading Style Sheets" or CSS, which take a bit of explanation. If you are careful, though, it's not terribly hard, especially if you keep a backup of your blog's stylesheet so you can recover from any experiments that go awry. I'll start with a general overview of stylesheets and then get down to the nitty-gritty about how you use them to change the look of your blog. Part one will end with a concrete example of how to change the colors of links in your blog; later, part two will show you how to apply that technique to other aspects of your blog.
Stylesheets have a lot of options and technicalities, but basically they boil down to a list of rules for how different HTML elements should be displayed. For instance, if you want all bold text to look red, you can set up a rule that the B tag has the color red. You can actually change much, much more than colors; stylesheets let you control all sorts of things like font, text size, margins and borders for just about everything, and even the position of items on the page.
I suggest taking a look at your blog's stylesheet at this point. Open up a separate browser window and log in to the blog admin page. Go to your blog's control panel and click the "Templates" button in the sidebar. Look for the Stylesheet entry in the index Templates list, and double-click it. Before doing anything else, back this template up; copy everything in the large text box and paste it into notepad or some other text editor (Word is OK as long as you save as text and not .doc format.)
If you decided to skip that step, I seriously suggest going back and doing it right now. If you don't, you may regret it as soon as you start making changes.
Once you have backed up the stylesheet template, take a closer look at it. The top section should look much like this:
body {
margin: 0px 0px 20px 0px;
background-color: #8FABBE;
text-align: center;
}
a {
text-decoration: underline;
}
a:link {
color: #8FABBE;
}
a:visited {
color: #8FABBE;
}
a:active {
color: #8FABBE;
}
a:hover {
color: #006699;
}
These are the first six rules in the stylesheet. (Each rule starts with a name, and inclides one or more attributes inside a set of curly braces.) The name of the rule defines what HTML elements it applies to; the first one is the BODY tag, and the rest are for the A tag. Those of you at least somewhat familiar with HTML will know that the A tag defines a link; all the different A rules here control the appearance of various states of a link, i.e. before it is visited (the a:link rule), after it has been visited(the a:visited rule), as it is being clicked on (a:active) and as the mouse is hovering over is but not clicking (a:hover).
We'll use these as examples to work with. You probably want to change more than the colors of links in your blog, but that will be covered later after we have a basic understanding of how colors work in stylesheets.
Take a look at the "color: #8FABBE" line in the a:link rule. That 8FABBE encodes a color, expressed as a combination of red, green, and blue. Now, I could spend paragraphs explaining hexadecimal encoding of RGB colors, but there's an easier way to get the encoding for a particular color. webreference.com has created a tool called the colorizer that makes this process fairly painless. Go there and play around with the settings until you have a color you like (it's probably easiest to click on the "Red" selection, move the red scrollbar up or down until you see a color you like somewhere on the color grid, then move the pointer on the color grid to that color.)
Once you have picked a color, copy the Hex value from the top of the three boxes to the lower right of the colorizer. Paste that in place of the "#8FABBE" in the a:link rule; be sure you include the pound sign. Now hit the Save button below the template text box; after a moment the page will refresh and a "Rebuild" button will appear in a yellow area near the top of the screen. Click that button to complete the process.
Now view your blog. If you've done this correctly, any unvisited links in your blog will be the new color, instead of the default grayish-blue. If it didn't work, go back and check that you followed the directions exactly; there should be only one "color" line within the curly braces that follow the "a:link" name. The word "color" should be followed by a colon, a space, a pound sign, the six hexadecimal digits you copied in, and a semicolon. Every time you make a change, remember to save and rebuild.
If you can't get it to work, or if it does anything weird that you weren't expecting, just copy the "color" line from one of the other rules in place of the one you changed, so you get back to "color: #8FABBE;".
Try this with some of the other A rules. Play around with the colorizer some more until you get the hang of it. That's all for today; tomorrow I'll talk about how to change the colors of other page elements, like the banner, the background, and so on. If you have any questions, post them as comments here and I'll answer them for you.
Hope this helps, and happy blogging!
Monday, May 23, 2005
New Blogs at WOU
I'm going to start linking to new blogs as they are started up on the WOU server. I'll wait to mention a blog until it has at least two entries, though.
Here are the new ones so far, in alphabetical order:
Here are the new ones so far, in alphabetical order:
WOU Blog Server FAQ, Part 2
This is a reprint of the FAQ sent out on Friday, May 20. Please feel free to comment or email me questions!
Hello, everyone--
We've gotten some more questions about running blogs on our new Movable Type blog server, so this week I'll address them, and say a bit more about some features that may be of interest even though people haven't asked about them.
* I saved a blog entry but it doesn't show up when I view my blog! What's wrong?
Most likely, you saved it as a draft. All entries default to draft status, which means they don't show up even after you save them; this is useful when don't have time to finish an entry and want to add more later without posting it right away. When you are ready to add text or change the entry's status from draft to Publish, you can edit the entry.
* How do I edit a blog entry?
Whenever you save a new entry for the first time, you are automatically taken to the edit page for that entry. You can get back to it later by clicking the "Entries" link on the sidebar of your blog control panel. (Remember, you get to the control panel by clicking on your blog's name after logging in at http://www.wou.edu/blogadmin.)
The edit screen is basically like the entry screen, only with a few more fields at the bottom. The most important is Post Status, where you can change the entry from draft to publish, or vice versa. (The Future option in this menu also prevents the entry from being displayed.) The other important ones will be covered below.
* How can I notify people when I have posted something to my blog?
At the bottom of the edit screen for any saved entry, you can choose to send a notification to your predefined notification list. You can type in extra text if you want, and choose to include the entire text of the entry, or just an excerpt. All users in your list will get an email notification when you click the Send button.
* Who is on my notification list?
Click the "Notification" link on your control panel's sidebar. At first, your list will be empty, but you can use the form on this page to add email addresses. Unfortunately, you can only add them one at a time; we understand that this makes it difficult for professors to add all their students, and are working on a way around this. You might also consider contacting Paul Lambert (lambertp@wou.edu) and getting an email list created, and just entering that address into your notification list.
* What if I want to keep people from commenting on a specific entry?
Near the bottom of either the new entry or edit entry screen, you will see a "Comments" menu. Normally this is set to "Open", meaning that readers of your blog will be able to both read comments and post their own. "Closed" means that no more comments may be added, but any comments already left are still visible. "None" hides all the comments and prevents any from being added. For a new entry, set this to either "None" or "Closed" to prevent all comments.
Note that there is a way to force people to leave a name and email address when posting comments, and to be notified whenever a comment is left; these and other options will be discussed below.
* How do I delete a comment I find offensive or inappropriate?
When you edit an entry, near the bottom of the edit page you will see a list of all comments that have been made on that entry. From here you can delete any comment.
* How can I post links that stay on my front page?
You can do this by editing your index template. This requires some HTML knowledge; the better you are at HTML, the more things you can change. It is possible to change the look of your blog in almost any way, but that is beyond the scope of these FAQ's. However, in my blog, I have posted a fairly simple way to add links to your blog's sidebar. You can see this here or just look for the entry titled "Sidebar Links".
* How can I change the colors or font of my blog?
This can be done by editing your blog's stylesheet; again, the more you know about stylesheet code, the more you can change. The possibilities are almost limitless, but I don't have room to talk about them here; I intend to post some basics in my blog fairly soon, probably early next week.
* How can I change the name of my blog?
After the last two questions, you'll probably be relieved to hear that this does not require any HTML or CSS knowledge. First, click the "Weblog Config" link in the control panel sidebar. As you might expect, this takes you to the Weblog Config area, which has many options. The first page you will see is "Core Setup"; the first item there is the name of your blog. Please note that it is extremely dangerous to change any other settings on this page! They can completely mess up your blog. (Well, all right, you can change the time zone if you really want, but there's no reason for it to be anything other than Pacific Time.)
* How can I change the description of my blog?
If you are already in the Weblog config area, just click the "Preferences" link near the top of the page. The Preferences page has many more options than the Core Setup page, and they are much less dangerous; however, you should still not change anything if you don't understand what it is even after reading the help text.
The very first option is the description of your blog; you can change it to anything you want, but I recommend keeping it fairly short.
* What other preferences can I change here?
Well, any of them, really, but I don't recommend mucking about in here unless you know what you are doing. If you do change things you aren't sure about, make sure you make note of the settings that were there before, so you can change things back if they have an effect you don't like.
One setting that might be useful is the "Default Post Status"; if you find yourself saving entries as drafts too often, and having to go back and edit them to make them visible, you can change this setting. Just remember that this can lead to the opposite problem of saving things in publish mode by mistake when you meant to save them as drafts!
Other useful settings can be found near the bottom of the page, in the Comments section. You can make people leave a name and email address wen commenting on your blog, control the way comments are displayed, and get email notifications whenever someone comments.
* Where can I go for more information?
I already mentioned this last week, but you can find the Movable Type user manual at http://sundown.wou.edu/mtstatic/docs/mtmanual.html. Also, look at my blog at http://www.wou.edu/~swartzer/blogs; I will post more tips and tricks as I discover them!
That's it for this week; feel free to post questions as comments on my blog, or just email me at faq@wou.edu.
Thanks as ever for your time and attention!
----Ron
Hello, everyone--
We've gotten some more questions about running blogs on our new Movable Type blog server, so this week I'll address them, and say a bit more about some features that may be of interest even though people haven't asked about them.
* I saved a blog entry but it doesn't show up when I view my blog! What's wrong?
Most likely, you saved it as a draft. All entries default to draft status, which means they don't show up even after you save them; this is useful when don't have time to finish an entry and want to add more later without posting it right away. When you are ready to add text or change the entry's status from draft to Publish, you can edit the entry.
* How do I edit a blog entry?
Whenever you save a new entry for the first time, you are automatically taken to the edit page for that entry. You can get back to it later by clicking the "Entries" link on the sidebar of your blog control panel. (Remember, you get to the control panel by clicking on your blog's name after logging in at http://www.wou.edu/blogadmin.)
The edit screen is basically like the entry screen, only with a few more fields at the bottom. The most important is Post Status, where you can change the entry from draft to publish, or vice versa. (The Future option in this menu also prevents the entry from being displayed.) The other important ones will be covered below.
* How can I notify people when I have posted something to my blog?
At the bottom of the edit screen for any saved entry, you can choose to send a notification to your predefined notification list. You can type in extra text if you want, and choose to include the entire text of the entry, or just an excerpt. All users in your list will get an email notification when you click the Send button.
* Who is on my notification list?
Click the "Notification" link on your control panel's sidebar. At first, your list will be empty, but you can use the form on this page to add email addresses. Unfortunately, you can only add them one at a time; we understand that this makes it difficult for professors to add all their students, and are working on a way around this. You might also consider contacting Paul Lambert (lambertp@wou.edu) and getting an email list created, and just entering that address into your notification list.
* What if I want to keep people from commenting on a specific entry?
Near the bottom of either the new entry or edit entry screen, you will see a "Comments" menu. Normally this is set to "Open", meaning that readers of your blog will be able to both read comments and post their own. "Closed" means that no more comments may be added, but any comments already left are still visible. "None" hides all the comments and prevents any from being added. For a new entry, set this to either "None" or "Closed" to prevent all comments.
Note that there is a way to force people to leave a name and email address when posting comments, and to be notified whenever a comment is left; these and other options will be discussed below.
* How do I delete a comment I find offensive or inappropriate?
When you edit an entry, near the bottom of the edit page you will see a list of all comments that have been made on that entry. From here you can delete any comment.
* How can I post links that stay on my front page?
You can do this by editing your index template. This requires some HTML knowledge; the better you are at HTML, the more things you can change. It is possible to change the look of your blog in almost any way, but that is beyond the scope of these FAQ's. However, in my blog, I have posted a fairly simple way to add links to your blog's sidebar. You can see this here or just look for the entry titled "Sidebar Links".
* How can I change the colors or font of my blog?
This can be done by editing your blog's stylesheet; again, the more you know about stylesheet code, the more you can change. The possibilities are almost limitless, but I don't have room to talk about them here; I intend to post some basics in my blog fairly soon, probably early next week.
* How can I change the name of my blog?
After the last two questions, you'll probably be relieved to hear that this does not require any HTML or CSS knowledge. First, click the "Weblog Config" link in the control panel sidebar. As you might expect, this takes you to the Weblog Config area, which has many options. The first page you will see is "Core Setup"; the first item there is the name of your blog. Please note that it is extremely dangerous to change any other settings on this page! They can completely mess up your blog. (Well, all right, you can change the time zone if you really want, but there's no reason for it to be anything other than Pacific Time.)
* How can I change the description of my blog?
If you are already in the Weblog config area, just click the "Preferences" link near the top of the page. The Preferences page has many more options than the Core Setup page, and they are much less dangerous; however, you should still not change anything if you don't understand what it is even after reading the help text.
The very first option is the description of your blog; you can change it to anything you want, but I recommend keeping it fairly short.
* What other preferences can I change here?
Well, any of them, really, but I don't recommend mucking about in here unless you know what you are doing. If you do change things you aren't sure about, make sure you make note of the settings that were there before, so you can change things back if they have an effect you don't like.
One setting that might be useful is the "Default Post Status"; if you find yourself saving entries as drafts too often, and having to go back and edit them to make them visible, you can change this setting. Just remember that this can lead to the opposite problem of saving things in publish mode by mistake when you meant to save them as drafts!
Other useful settings can be found near the bottom of the page, in the Comments section. You can make people leave a name and email address wen commenting on your blog, control the way comments are displayed, and get email notifications whenever someone comments.
* Where can I go for more information?
I already mentioned this last week, but you can find the Movable Type user manual at http://sundown.wou.edu/mtstatic/docs/mtmanual.html. Also, look at my blog at http://www.wou.edu/~swartzer/blogs; I will post more tips and tricks as I discover them!
That's it for this week; feel free to post questions as comments on my blog, or just email me at faq@wou.edu.
Thanks as ever for your time and attention!
----Ron
What to blog?
Tricia raised some good issues in this post in her blog. Personally, I think the content of any blog should be up to its author. If you want to talk about personal stuff, that's fine. Political opinion is likewise fine. Work-related stuff is also fine. The only things that are not fine are listed in the Acceptable Use of Computing Resources Policy; basically, this means no commercial or criminal activity.
Bill posted a draft version of some guidelines that I think make a lot of sense. Of course, these guidelines aren't mandatory, nor should every blog here at WOU be considered a "work blog".
Also, when you have a blog, you should not feel like you have to conform to a certain schedule, unless you purposely set one for yourself. Many blogs are daily, but that doesn't mean they all have to be. There's nothing wrong with having a weekly schedule, or just writing an entry whenever you have something to say, without worrying about a schedule.
Just so you know, this blog is mostly going to cover work-related stuff, though I'm not going to limit myself to that. I'll try to post an entry every day I'm here (which, in case you didn't know, is generally Monday through Thursday,) but I may skip days occasionally, or post when I'm not here.
Bill posted a draft version of some guidelines that I think make a lot of sense. Of course, these guidelines aren't mandatory, nor should every blog here at WOU be considered a "work blog".
Also, when you have a blog, you should not feel like you have to conform to a certain schedule, unless you purposely set one for yourself. Many blogs are daily, but that doesn't mean they all have to be. There's nothing wrong with having a weekly schedule, or just writing an entry whenever you have something to say, without worrying about a schedule.
Just so you know, this blog is mostly going to cover work-related stuff, though I'm not going to limit myself to that. I'll try to post an entry every day I'm here (which, in case you didn't know, is generally Monday through Thursday,) but I may skip days occasionally, or post when I'm not here.
Thursday, May 19, 2005
A new fraud
A week or so ago I got an email from someone claiming to be "Jerson Estandarte", a recent high school graduate in the Philippines who needed money for college. This person was trying to reach someone else on campus, but I got their email since they sent it to webmaster@wou.edu.
I thought there might be a chance they were legitimate and just very naive; I looked around and couldn't find any other examples of this kind of thing being a scam. So I asked them for some proof, and they got evasive, pretending to misunderstand my requests.
Finally when I asked them to mail actual paper documents to me, I got a reply accusing me of being unsympathetic and saying they would stop trying to contact me. At that point I figured the whole thing had been a scam all along.
I'm curious if anyone else has seen anything like this; it sounds like a new strategy.
By the way, for fraud information with a humorous slant, check out http://www.scamorama.com/.
I thought there might be a chance they were legitimate and just very naive; I looked around and couldn't find any other examples of this kind of thing being a scam. So I asked them for some proof, and they got evasive, pretending to misunderstand my requests.
Finally when I asked them to mail actual paper documents to me, I got a reply accusing me of being unsympathetic and saying they would stop trying to contact me. At that point I figured the whole thing had been a scam all along.
I'm curious if anyone else has seen anything like this; it sounds like a new strategy.
By the way, for fraud information with a humorous slant, check out http://www.scamorama.com/.
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Sidebar Links
You may notice that I've put some links on the sidebar of my blog; it takes a bit of HTML knowledge, but not too much. Read the full entry for instructions.
Here's how to add links or any other text to your sidebar:
First, go to your blog admin page; the easiest way to do that is to log in at http://www.wou.edu/blogadmin and click on the name of your blog.
Next, look in the middle of the left column of buttons; click the "TEMPLATES" button. This will take you to a list of templates. Click "Main Index" to go to the edit screen for that template.
Don't make any changes to the top parts of the form unless you are sure you know what you are doing. The important stuff is in the big text box. Before making any changes, I recommend backing it up! Select the entire contents of this box, copy it to the clipboard, and paste it into an empty text document. Save the document some place where you will remember it later. If you ever get this template messed up, you can go back to the file, copy the stuff back out, and replace everything in this text box with the file contents. (If you don't understand this part of the instructions, you probably shouldn't be trying to add links to your blog.)
Once you've got it backed up, look for the following text, about halfway down:
Below that, paste in the following HTML code:
Of course, you can change the word "Links" to whatever you want, and change the link addresses and text as well! Bill and Joe probably wouldn't mind if everybody linked to their blogs, but I'm sure you have your own ideas for places to link to. :-}
Make sure to put a blank line below the inserted text, for readability. If you want more than one list of links, just paste in that block of code multiple times. Note that the links may look a bit more spread out in your blog than in mine; that's because I also messed with my blog's stylesheet to tighten things up a bit. I'll talk about some stylesheet tweaks later.
That's all there is to it! I know some people have requested a way to set up links that does not involve HTML editing; I will see if I can come up with something over the summer.
Here's how to add links or any other text to your sidebar:
First, go to your blog admin page; the easiest way to do that is to log in at http://www.wou.edu/blogadmin and click on the name of your blog.
Next, look in the middle of the left column of buttons; click the "TEMPLATES" button. This will take you to a list of templates. Click "Main Index" to go to the edit screen for that template.
Don't make any changes to the top parts of the form unless you are sure you know what you are doing. The important stuff is in the big text box. Before making any changes, I recommend backing it up! Select the entire contents of this box, copy it to the clipboard, and paste it into an empty text document. Save the document some place where you will remember it later. If you ever get this template messed up, you can go back to the file, copy the stuff back out, and replace everything in this text box with the file contents. (If you don't understand this part of the instructions, you probably shouldn't be trying to add links to your blog.)
Once you've got it backed up, look for the following text, about halfway down:
| <div class="sidebar"> |
Below that, paste in the following HTML code:
| <h2>Links</h2> <div class="link-note"> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.wou.edu/~kernanb/blogs/">Bill's Blog</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.wou.edu/~crowej/blogs/">Joe's Blog</a></li> </ul> </div> |
Of course, you can change the word "Links" to whatever you want, and change the link addresses and text as well! Bill and Joe probably wouldn't mind if everybody linked to their blogs, but I'm sure you have your own ideas for places to link to. :-}
Make sure to put a blank line below the inserted text, for readability. If you want more than one list of links, just paste in that block of code multiple times. Note that the links may look a bit more spread out in your blog than in mine; that's because I also messed with my blog's stylesheet to tighten things up a bit. I'll talk about some stylesheet tweaks later.
That's all there is to it! I know some people have requested a way to set up links that does not involve HTML editing; I will see if I can come up with something over the summer.
What's happening
Don't forget to check out Bill's Blog for important updates about UCS and what we're up to.
I've been working on a script to migrate people's email address books from the old email system to the new one; that took up a lot of my time last week and the week before. Apologies to those of you who are still waiting on other things; however, now that the script is done, I'm working through the rest of my to-do list. If you haven't heard back from me by Thursday afternoon, feel free to call or email.
I've been working on a script to migrate people's email address books from the old email system to the new one; that took up a lot of my time last week and the week before. Apologies to those of you who are still waiting on other things; however, now that the script is done, I'm working through the rest of my to-do list. If you haven't heard back from me by Thursday afternoon, feel free to call or email.
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
WOU Blog Server FAQ
This is a reprint of the FAQ on the WOU blog server. It was originally sent out on Friday, May 13. (And no, I'm not superstitious.)
Hello, everyone--
The Movable Type blog server is now up and running, so this week I'll talk about how to get started with it. This will be a fairly short FAQ because my week has been filled with other urgent projects, but luckily there's not much you need to know to get going!
* So what do I do first?
First, you need to send a message to Paul Lambert at blogadmin@wou.edu and request that a blog be created for you. Eventually, we will tie the blog server in with our other systems and automatically create blogs, but for now you must request it.
* Can I choose my username, password, title of my blog, or anything else?
Your username will be the same as your WOU email username, and your password will be a standard one, which you should change as soon as you log in the first time. You can choose whatever title you want for your blog, within reason, and also a short descriptive phrase, one line of text or less. These can be changed later.
* Where do I log in?
Go to http://www.wou.edu/blogadmin, and enter your username and password. The next screen is the main blog administration page; you will see a list of all the blogs you can post to; at first, this will just be one. Later on, some users may be able to post to multiple blogs; for instance, their own and another one that is written by a group. For now, though, you will see only the blog you just requested.
* How do I change my password?
This is the first thing you should do. Look on the right side of the page, and you will see a box labeled "Shortcuts". One of the links there is called "Edit your profile"; click on it to go to the profile page. You can change any of the options here, but we do not recommend changing your username. To change your password, enter the new password in both the "Password" and "Confirm Password" boxes.
* Why does it ask me for my birthplace on the profile screen?
If you want, you can enter your birthplace for the purposes of password recovery. If you don't, the "forgot password" link on the login screen will not work. You must also make sure that your email address is listed correctly in you profile, because the password recovery system sends the password to that address.
* How do I get back to the main page from the profile editing screen?
Click the "Main menu" link near the top, or select your blog's name from the menu at the top of the screen and click the Go button.
* How do I actually post to my blog?
To the right of the blog name on the main page, you should see a "Create Entry" link. Click it, and it will take you to the "Create New Entry" page. This page has a lot of options on it, but luckily there is a fairly good help page available; just click the question mark button next to some of the field names. I'll still cover the basics here, though.
* So what are the basics?
You'll need to fill in the Title and the Entry Body fields; the rest are optional. Notice that you can choose categories for your posts; there's no need to worry about that now, though. If your entry is long, consider putting the bulk of it in the "Extended Entry" box; that will hide that part Down at the bottom are some more options, but the only one you need to worry about right now is the Post Status menu. When you are done with your entry, you should make sure that menu is set to "Publish" rather than "Draft" or "Future".
Go ahead and hit the Preview button at the bottom. Naturally enough, this will show you a preview of what your entry will actually look like to readers. You can choose to re-edit the entry if you want to make changes, or save it now if you are done.
* What can I say in my blog?
Pretty much anything you want. Because the blog server (like every everything else here) is owned by the state, blogs are subject to the standard limitations spelled out in the Acceptable Use of Computing Resources Policy, available at http://www.wou.edu/policy/36. This really isn't any different from the rules on email or anything else; you just can't use your blog for any sort of commercial business or criminal activity, and you agree to take sole responsibility for what you say.
* Where do I go to view my blog? Or anyone else's?
Your blog is stored in the public_html folder on your H: drive in the folder called "blogs". You should not try to edit anything in this folder by hand, unless you really know what you are doing. Since it is in the public_html folder, it can be accessed at "http://www.wou.edu/~username/blogs" (substitute your actual network username for the "username" part; and don't forget the tilde "~" before it!)
This address will be listed below the blog name in the main menu page of the blog server. Anyone else's blog, if they have one, will have a similar address. If you have a home page, I recommend putting a link to your blog somewhere on it as well. You can find my blog at http://www.wou.edu/~swartzer/blogs. Feel free to post comments there!
* How do I post a comment?
Click on the "Comments" link at the bottom of any blog entry (that number beside it is the number of comments already left, by the way) and you will be taken to a comment form. Just fill it out, preview it if you like, and save it!
* Where do I go for more information?
Movable Type has a good user manual; you can find it at http://sundown.wou.edu/mtstatic/docs/mtmanual.html.
That's it for this week; feel free to email me with any questions, or post them as comments on my blog!
Thanks once again for your time and attention!
----Ron
Hello, everyone--
The Movable Type blog server is now up and running, so this week I'll talk about how to get started with it. This will be a fairly short FAQ because my week has been filled with other urgent projects, but luckily there's not much you need to know to get going!
* So what do I do first?
First, you need to send a message to Paul Lambert at blogadmin@wou.edu and request that a blog be created for you. Eventually, we will tie the blog server in with our other systems and automatically create blogs, but for now you must request it.
* Can I choose my username, password, title of my blog, or anything else?
Your username will be the same as your WOU email username, and your password will be a standard one, which you should change as soon as you log in the first time. You can choose whatever title you want for your blog, within reason, and also a short descriptive phrase, one line of text or less. These can be changed later.
* Where do I log in?
Go to http://www.wou.edu/blogadmin, and enter your username and password. The next screen is the main blog administration page; you will see a list of all the blogs you can post to; at first, this will just be one. Later on, some users may be able to post to multiple blogs; for instance, their own and another one that is written by a group. For now, though, you will see only the blog you just requested.
* How do I change my password?
This is the first thing you should do. Look on the right side of the page, and you will see a box labeled "Shortcuts". One of the links there is called "Edit your profile"; click on it to go to the profile page. You can change any of the options here, but we do not recommend changing your username. To change your password, enter the new password in both the "Password" and "Confirm Password" boxes.
* Why does it ask me for my birthplace on the profile screen?
If you want, you can enter your birthplace for the purposes of password recovery. If you don't, the "forgot password" link on the login screen will not work. You must also make sure that your email address is listed correctly in you profile, because the password recovery system sends the password to that address.
* How do I get back to the main page from the profile editing screen?
Click the "Main menu" link near the top, or select your blog's name from the menu at the top of the screen and click the Go button.
* How do I actually post to my blog?
To the right of the blog name on the main page, you should see a "Create Entry" link. Click it, and it will take you to the "Create New Entry" page. This page has a lot of options on it, but luckily there is a fairly good help page available; just click the question mark button next to some of the field names. I'll still cover the basics here, though.
* So what are the basics?
You'll need to fill in the Title and the Entry Body fields; the rest are optional. Notice that you can choose categories for your posts; there's no need to worry about that now, though. If your entry is long, consider putting the bulk of it in the "Extended Entry" box; that will hide that part Down at the bottom are some more options, but the only one you need to worry about right now is the Post Status menu. When you are done with your entry, you should make sure that menu is set to "Publish" rather than "Draft" or "Future".
Go ahead and hit the Preview button at the bottom. Naturally enough, this will show you a preview of what your entry will actually look like to readers. You can choose to re-edit the entry if you want to make changes, or save it now if you are done.
* What can I say in my blog?
Pretty much anything you want. Because the blog server (like every everything else here) is owned by the state, blogs are subject to the standard limitations spelled out in the Acceptable Use of Computing Resources Policy, available at http://www.wou.edu/policy/36. This really isn't any different from the rules on email or anything else; you just can't use your blog for any sort of commercial business or criminal activity, and you agree to take sole responsibility for what you say.
* Where do I go to view my blog? Or anyone else's?
Your blog is stored in the public_html folder on your H: drive in the folder called "blogs". You should not try to edit anything in this folder by hand, unless you really know what you are doing. Since it is in the public_html folder, it can be accessed at "http://www.wou.edu/~username/blogs" (substitute your actual network username for the "username" part; and don't forget the tilde "~" before it!)
This address will be listed below the blog name in the main menu page of the blog server. Anyone else's blog, if they have one, will have a similar address. If you have a home page, I recommend putting a link to your blog somewhere on it as well. You can find my blog at http://www.wou.edu/~swartzer/blogs. Feel free to post comments there!
* How do I post a comment?
Click on the "Comments" link at the bottom of any blog entry (that number beside it is the number of comments already left, by the way) and you will be taken to a comment form. Just fill it out, preview it if you like, and save it!
* Where do I go for more information?
Movable Type has a good user manual; you can find it at http://sundown.wou.edu/mtstatic/docs/mtmanual.html.
That's it for this week; feel free to email me with any questions, or post them as comments on my blog!
Thanks once again for your time and attention!
----Ron
Blogging FAQ
Here is a reprint of the UCS FAQ on blogging in general. This was originally sent out on Friday, April 22.
Please feel free to post comments and questions!
Hello, everyone--
Though the FAQs have been on hiatus for a while, they should be more regular in the near future. This week's topic is blogging.
* What does that word mean, anyway?
The term "blogging" started out as a slang term for "Web Logging", the practice of keeping a public log of comments about interesting websites. It started back in the early days of the Web, before search engines were widely available. The first web logs were just web pages created by hand, like all other pages back in that era; but as the web took off in the late 1990's, software tools appeared to let non-technical people create and maintain web logs of their own. Around the turn of the millennium, references to web logs started showing up in other media, and the term "blogging", which began as slang, became the standard word. Someone who maintains a blog is called a "blogger" and the collection of all blogs is commonly known as "the blogosphere".
* Blogging is about a lot more than just commenting on websites now, isn't it?
That's right. Blogs are now used for all sorts of things, most commonly personal online journals, technical newsletters, or political discussions. Often they do include links to other websites, and comments about them, but this is no longer required. Blog entries are just as likely to refer to items in the news, or developments in the technical world, or events in the blogger's life, or whatever else the blogger feels like writing about.
* Why would I want to know about blogs now?
Blogs are an important means of communication these days. For years now the Web has been too vast for any one person to find everything they are interested in, but blogs can be useful "filters" that help people find sites they would not have otherwise known about. Despite the claims of some, blogs have not yet rendered traditional media obsolete, but they still provide a lot of useful information and commentary on things the more traditional media might miss, or provide a place for different opinions to be expressed freely.
More to the point, WOU is in the process of setting up a blog server of our own, using the Movable Type system. Any member of the WOU community will be able to set up a blog, free of charge. The specifics will be covered in a later FAQ. If you have anything you want to talk about, a blog is easier to set up than a personal web page. Also, blogs can be very useful in a classroom setting, facilitating communication and discussion. See below for more on this.
* So what makes a blog a blog?
The exact definition of "blog" is open for debate. Most people agree that the key feature of a blog is that it has dated entries, like a diary or journal. The most recent entry is visible first and previous entries are available lower on the page or in archives; any entry can be bookmarked or linked to individually. Virtually all blogs include a sidebar of links to other sites (mainly other blogs.) Most blogging software also allows readers to post comments on blog entries, and several programs also have a "trackback" feature that allows readers to see what other blogs have linked to the entry they are currently reading. Some make a distinction between a "weblog" in which every entry contains a link, and a "journal" which is more free-form, though for most people, the term "blog" covers both.
* What are some common types of blogs?
As already mentioned, the three most common types of blogs are personal, technical, and political. Many blogs cross these boundaries, of course, but the three categories remain fairly distinct, with common features shared among blogs of the same type.
Another way to categorize blogs is by the contributors. Most blogs are run by a single individual, who may or may not allow other users to comment; examples might be a class blog run by a professor, or a personal online journal, or a blog dedicated to political commentary by one person. Many blogs are are run by groups of people, sharing the responsibility for keeping the blog updated. Others, known as community blogs, are open to anyone, sometimes for a fee. Still others are official publications of companies or other organizations.
* What's the difference between a blog and a forum?
The main difference between a blog and a forum is that most blogs maintain a distinction between the blogger and the readers, while in a forum, anyone who is a member may post. Forums are also designed to maintain many different discussions at once, while blogs are more linear, in that they are date-based. The distinction blurs a bit when a blog allows readers to comment, or when a forum only allows a few people to post but many people to read. Of course there are also many technical differences, but I won't get into that here.
* Why has there been so much in the news lately about bloggers and blogging?
Political blogs have been very much in the news in the last year or so. Blogs of several different biases have spread news that was at first ignored by the mainstream media, and in some cases this led to embarrassment and retirement of public figures. Since many people on different sides have a low opinion of the mainstream media these days, many have turned to blogs for their news. Also, the mainstream media has begun picking up stories from blogs for their own use.
* How much should I trust what I read in a blog?
Good question! Since blogs are most often written by individuals, they are subject to the mistakes and biases of those people. As with any web page (or any piece of information at all, really,) you need to consider the source. If the blogger is someone you know, such as a friend or one of your professors, trust is easy to judge. Most bloggers will not be known to you, of course; in general, they do mean well, though they are of course still human, and fallible. A few bloggers actually tell outright lies or intentionally distort their sources to fit some agenda. Even if someone is trying to be honest, they still might fall prey to false information; it is easy for a rumor to start somewhere in the blogosphere and spread like wildfire with little or no fact checking. Naturally this is not unique to blogs or even the Internet, since gossip has been with us for thousands of years; blogs just allow it to spread faster. On the other hand, blogs can also spread truths that other sources have missed or ignored.
With all this, it isn't easy to know how much to trust anything in a blog. The best way I've found is to read a wide variety of blogs, as well as other news sources, and compare them. If a story only appears on blogs of a certain bias, take it with a larger grain of salt than normal. It's also crucial to consider the track record of the people involved. Have they exaggerated before? How much and what kind of documentation do they provide? Just like anything you hear from anywhere else, you have to weigh different factors before deciding how much to trust something on a blog, and whether it is worth passing along.
* What are some examples of blogs?
For legal reasons I will not link to or recommend any political blogs here, though there are a vast number of them. I'm also not going to point people at anyone's personal online journal (Well, I'd point you to mine but it's horribly out of date!) That still leaves a lot of the blogging world to be explored, though. Here are just a few blogs to take a look at:
http://www.metafilter.com/ - a good example of a community blog; anyone can buy a membership for a small fee and post about anything they please. Metafilter is a weblog in the strict sense, in that every entry has to contain at least one link. The result is a widely mixed bag, with often fascinating and obscure links appealing to all sorts of different interests.
http://www.boingboing.net/ - a widely-read multiple-contributor blog covering technology and modern culture. It is generally considered to be reputable, despite its often irreverent tone.
http://www.slashdot.org/ - probably the most popular general technical blog in existence. It has so many readers that when it links to another site, that site sees such a massive traffic increase that its server sometimes crashes. This has become known as "getting slashdotted". Slashdot's motto is "news for nerds, stuff that matters", though if you aren't interested in technical stuff, their news might not matter so much to you.
http://www.robotwisdom.com/ - one of the oldest popular blogs. It purposely maintains an old-school look and feel, and might not be the easiest to use, but still has a lot of good stuff. It's an interesting example of what most blogs were once like.
http://www.orblogs.com/ - not a blog in itself, but a directory of blogs written by Oregonians. If you start a blog on WOU's server, you can be listed here.
* I'm a professor. What if I want to start a blog for my class?
Dr. Shaun Huston of the Geography department recently gave a presentation on effective use of blogs in a classroom setting. If you missed it, you can contact him at hustons@wou.edu. Dr. Huston has also written a paper (co-authored by Anne-Marie Deitering of OSU) on the use of blogs for teaching and learning; you may view it on the Web at http://www.rapidintellect.com/AEQweb/5mar2879z4.htm.
* Where can I go for more information?
The links below are all, appropriately enough, either blog entries or articles by bloggers.
Introduction to weblog terms - This covers some basic terminology you'll run into if you start reading blogs. It is also a good example of a blog entry, with comments from readers.
A History of Weblogs - This is a fairly brief history of blogging from the earliest days.
Weblogs: a history and perspective - This more in-depth history and discussion article is widely referred to by other blogs.
That's all for this week. Next week we'll cover more about WOU's blog server, and answer any blogging questions that come up between now and then. Feel free to send those questions to me at faq@wou.edu.
Thanks for your time and attention,
----Ron
Please feel free to post comments and questions!
Hello, everyone--
Though the FAQs have been on hiatus for a while, they should be more regular in the near future. This week's topic is blogging.
* What does that word mean, anyway?
The term "blogging" started out as a slang term for "Web Logging", the practice of keeping a public log of comments about interesting websites. It started back in the early days of the Web, before search engines were widely available. The first web logs were just web pages created by hand, like all other pages back in that era; but as the web took off in the late 1990's, software tools appeared to let non-technical people create and maintain web logs of their own. Around the turn of the millennium, references to web logs started showing up in other media, and the term "blogging", which began as slang, became the standard word. Someone who maintains a blog is called a "blogger" and the collection of all blogs is commonly known as "the blogosphere".
* Blogging is about a lot more than just commenting on websites now, isn't it?
That's right. Blogs are now used for all sorts of things, most commonly personal online journals, technical newsletters, or political discussions. Often they do include links to other websites, and comments about them, but this is no longer required. Blog entries are just as likely to refer to items in the news, or developments in the technical world, or events in the blogger's life, or whatever else the blogger feels like writing about.
* Why would I want to know about blogs now?
Blogs are an important means of communication these days. For years now the Web has been too vast for any one person to find everything they are interested in, but blogs can be useful "filters" that help people find sites they would not have otherwise known about. Despite the claims of some, blogs have not yet rendered traditional media obsolete, but they still provide a lot of useful information and commentary on things the more traditional media might miss, or provide a place for different opinions to be expressed freely.
More to the point, WOU is in the process of setting up a blog server of our own, using the Movable Type system. Any member of the WOU community will be able to set up a blog, free of charge. The specifics will be covered in a later FAQ. If you have anything you want to talk about, a blog is easier to set up than a personal web page. Also, blogs can be very useful in a classroom setting, facilitating communication and discussion. See below for more on this.
* So what makes a blog a blog?
The exact definition of "blog" is open for debate. Most people agree that the key feature of a blog is that it has dated entries, like a diary or journal. The most recent entry is visible first and previous entries are available lower on the page or in archives; any entry can be bookmarked or linked to individually. Virtually all blogs include a sidebar of links to other sites (mainly other blogs.) Most blogging software also allows readers to post comments on blog entries, and several programs also have a "trackback" feature that allows readers to see what other blogs have linked to the entry they are currently reading. Some make a distinction between a "weblog" in which every entry contains a link, and a "journal" which is more free-form, though for most people, the term "blog" covers both.
* What are some common types of blogs?
As already mentioned, the three most common types of blogs are personal, technical, and political. Many blogs cross these boundaries, of course, but the three categories remain fairly distinct, with common features shared among blogs of the same type.
Another way to categorize blogs is by the contributors. Most blogs are run by a single individual, who may or may not allow other users to comment; examples might be a class blog run by a professor, or a personal online journal, or a blog dedicated to political commentary by one person. Many blogs are are run by groups of people, sharing the responsibility for keeping the blog updated. Others, known as community blogs, are open to anyone, sometimes for a fee. Still others are official publications of companies or other organizations.
* What's the difference between a blog and a forum?
The main difference between a blog and a forum is that most blogs maintain a distinction between the blogger and the readers, while in a forum, anyone who is a member may post. Forums are also designed to maintain many different discussions at once, while blogs are more linear, in that they are date-based. The distinction blurs a bit when a blog allows readers to comment, or when a forum only allows a few people to post but many people to read. Of course there are also many technical differences, but I won't get into that here.
* Why has there been so much in the news lately about bloggers and blogging?
Political blogs have been very much in the news in the last year or so. Blogs of several different biases have spread news that was at first ignored by the mainstream media, and in some cases this led to embarrassment and retirement of public figures. Since many people on different sides have a low opinion of the mainstream media these days, many have turned to blogs for their news. Also, the mainstream media has begun picking up stories from blogs for their own use.
* How much should I trust what I read in a blog?
Good question! Since blogs are most often written by individuals, they are subject to the mistakes and biases of those people. As with any web page (or any piece of information at all, really,) you need to consider the source. If the blogger is someone you know, such as a friend or one of your professors, trust is easy to judge. Most bloggers will not be known to you, of course; in general, they do mean well, though they are of course still human, and fallible. A few bloggers actually tell outright lies or intentionally distort their sources to fit some agenda. Even if someone is trying to be honest, they still might fall prey to false information; it is easy for a rumor to start somewhere in the blogosphere and spread like wildfire with little or no fact checking. Naturally this is not unique to blogs or even the Internet, since gossip has been with us for thousands of years; blogs just allow it to spread faster. On the other hand, blogs can also spread truths that other sources have missed or ignored.
With all this, it isn't easy to know how much to trust anything in a blog. The best way I've found is to read a wide variety of blogs, as well as other news sources, and compare them. If a story only appears on blogs of a certain bias, take it with a larger grain of salt than normal. It's also crucial to consider the track record of the people involved. Have they exaggerated before? How much and what kind of documentation do they provide? Just like anything you hear from anywhere else, you have to weigh different factors before deciding how much to trust something on a blog, and whether it is worth passing along.
* What are some examples of blogs?
For legal reasons I will not link to or recommend any political blogs here, though there are a vast number of them. I'm also not going to point people at anyone's personal online journal (Well, I'd point you to mine but it's horribly out of date!) That still leaves a lot of the blogging world to be explored, though. Here are just a few blogs to take a look at:
http://www.metafilter.com/ - a good example of a community blog; anyone can buy a membership for a small fee and post about anything they please. Metafilter is a weblog in the strict sense, in that every entry has to contain at least one link. The result is a widely mixed bag, with often fascinating and obscure links appealing to all sorts of different interests.
http://www.boingboing.net/ - a widely-read multiple-contributor blog covering technology and modern culture. It is generally considered to be reputable, despite its often irreverent tone.
http://www.slashdot.org/ - probably the most popular general technical blog in existence. It has so many readers that when it links to another site, that site sees such a massive traffic increase that its server sometimes crashes. This has become known as "getting slashdotted". Slashdot's motto is "news for nerds, stuff that matters", though if you aren't interested in technical stuff, their news might not matter so much to you.
http://www.robotwisdom.com/ - one of the oldest popular blogs. It purposely maintains an old-school look and feel, and might not be the easiest to use, but still has a lot of good stuff. It's an interesting example of what most blogs were once like.
http://www.orblogs.com/ - not a blog in itself, but a directory of blogs written by Oregonians. If you start a blog on WOU's server, you can be listed here.
* I'm a professor. What if I want to start a blog for my class?
Dr. Shaun Huston of the Geography department recently gave a presentation on effective use of blogs in a classroom setting. If you missed it, you can contact him at hustons@wou.edu. Dr. Huston has also written a paper (co-authored by Anne-Marie Deitering of OSU) on the use of blogs for teaching and learning; you may view it on the Web at http://www.rapidintellect.com/AEQweb/5mar2879z4.htm.
* Where can I go for more information?
The links below are all, appropriately enough, either blog entries or articles by bloggers.
Introduction to weblog terms - This covers some basic terminology you'll run into if you start reading blogs. It is also a good example of a blog entry, with comments from readers.
A History of Weblogs - This is a fairly brief history of blogging from the earliest days.
Weblogs: a history and perspective - This more in-depth history and discussion article is widely referred to by other blogs.
That's all for this week. Next week we'll cover more about WOU's blog server, and answer any blogging questions that come up between now and then. Feel free to send those questions to me at faq@wou.edu.
Thanks for your time and attention,
----Ron
Continuing tests
I'm trying out a few more things. This blog may look really ugly for a while as I delve into templates and try making changes.
Thursday, May 12, 2005
Test of features
Test post. Thanks to Troy for setting up the blog server for us, by the way! You should maybe visit his blog and post a comment.
This part was entered in the extended entry field. It probably won't look any different from the first part.
Anybody, feel free to comment on this post, especially if you have questions!
This part was entered in the extended entry field. It probably won't look any different from the first part.
Anybody, feel free to comment on this post, especially if you have questions!
First Post
First Post! Woo-hoo!
Well, OK, it's kind of silly to call first post in a place where I'm the only one allowed to post. But hey, this is my blog and I can say what I like! (Within the limits of the Acceptable Use of Computing Resources Policy of course... but since I don't intend to use this thing to try and make money, or steal copyrighted info, or anything like that, I should be fine.)
Anyway, this is mostly for testing, though I may turn it into a real blog somewhere along the line.
"There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. Everybody's crew."
--Marshall McLuhan
Well, OK, it's kind of silly to call first post in a place where I'm the only one allowed to post. But hey, this is my blog and I can say what I like! (Within the limits of the Acceptable Use of Computing Resources Policy of course... but since I don't intend to use this thing to try and make money, or steal copyrighted info, or anything like that, I should be fine.)
Anyway, this is mostly for testing, though I may turn it into a real blog somewhere along the line.
"There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. Everybody's crew."
--Marshall McLuhan
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