View source for Maintaining Your Blog

Once blogging is enabled for your school, you need to login into the WordPress administration area, where you can write posts and articles, manage comments, change your theme, etc.

* You should replace '''school1''' with your school's [[Online Name]].
* Your username and password are the same you use to upload your [[WebHosting|Website]].

{| border="1"
| School's [[Online Name]] || ''school1'' 
|-
| Blog URL || '''<nowiki>h</nowiki>ttp://school1.scoilnet.ie/blog'''
|-
| Login to your Blog ||  '''<nowiki>h</nowiki>ttp://school1.scoilnet.ie/blog/wp-login.php'''
|}

== Logging in ==

Navigate to the schools blog admin login page. You have two ways to get to the admin login page:

* You should replace ''schoolname'' with your school's [[Online Name]]. 
1) Go to http://''schoolname''.scoilnet.ie/blog and then click the 'Log In' link on the left hand side

2) Alternativly you can go to http://''schoolname''.scoilnet.ie/blog/wp-login.php

You will be presented with the login screen,as shown below. Enter your [[Account_Settings | Scoilnet Account]] Username and Password into the two highlighted boxes.

[[Image:LoginDetails.PNG]]

== Dashboard ==

If login was successful you will be presented with the blog control panel, as shown below. This is known as the Dashboard and it is from here that all the main blog tasks are carried out.

[[Image:Dashboard-New.PNG|1000px|Main Dashboard]]

== Using the Dashboard ==
The dashboard is the working area of your website and provides links to all the features that you can use. The dashboard is used to determine exactly what your website contains and how it will appear to viewers.

* Select '''Visit Site''' in the top left hand corner to see what your website looks like. The website’s overall appearance will depend on the theme that you choose.

* '''Posts''' Menu
Here you can add new posts, edit existing ones and manage your tags and categories. Tags are keywords used to identify posts. Posts with the same tags are all linked together and will all be accessed when the tag is selected by a user. Categories refer to general topics under which posts may be classified. Usually a blog would have 7-10 categories. All posts with the same category are linked together.

* '''Media''' Menu 
From the media menu you can view and manage all your uploaded media including video content added with wordTube. You can also add new media.

* '''Links''' Menu 
A link is a static hyperlink to another website. From this menu, you can add new links, edit existing ones and categorise them.

* '''Pages''' Menu 
Pages are used for static content that rarely needs to be changed. Here you can add new pages and edit existing ones.

* '''Comments''' Menu 
Here you can manage all the incoming comments to your blog posts including approving, not allowing and deleting.

* '''Appearance''' Menu 
Here you can change your website [[Blogs - Changing The Theme|theme]], which determines exactly how the website will appear to visitors, including your website image header. You can also add widgets and enabled plugins using this menu.

* '''Plugins''' Menu 
Plugins extend and expand the functionality of your website. Here you can activate and deactivate any of the plugins that have been supplied by Scoilnet.

* '''Users''' Menu 
Here you can change your profile and add new users to the website. This includes setting the user’s role ranging from subscriber to administrator.

* '''Tools''' Menu 
Use this menu to import posts or comments from another blog. You can also export your own blog as an XML file, which contains your posts, pages, comments, custom fields, categories, and tags.

* '''Settings''' Menu

''General''
Controls the most basic configuration settings for your website: website title and tagline (brief description), timezone, and how dates and times are calculated and displayed.

''Writing'' 
Controls the size of the post editing page, how formatting is applied, default settings for the post and link categories, and the option to include remote publishing (post to your blog from a remote client).

''Reading''
Controls whether posts or a ‘static’ page is displayed as your blog's main page, how many posts are displayed on that main page, how many posts are how much information is included in your RSS feed, and the character encoding for your choice of languages (use the default).

''Discussion'' 
Controls the options concerning comments (also called discussion). This includes the default comment settings, additional settings, e-mail notification options and pre-approval options.Comment moderation may also be set and a comment blacklist created. Options regarding the display of avatars are also set here. NB: An avatar is an image that follows you from blog to blog appearing beside your name when you comment on avatar enabled sites.

''Media''
Controls the various size settings related to images that are used in pages.

''Privacy''
Controls your website's visibility to search engines, such as Google and Technorati. You can also choose to block the search engines but allow normal visitors to see your site.

''Permalinks''
Controls the URL structure for your permalinks allowing you to choose from different settings or create your own custom setting. This can improve the aesthetics, usability, and forward-compatibility of your links. A permalink is the URL address for each individual blog post.

'''NB:''' Further menu options will appear as you enable extra plugins for your blog.