Create an Edublog

Edublogs are completely free, and come with 20MB of free upload space (easily extended to 5 GB as a Edublogs Pro) and a heap of great features designed specifically to support the educational community.

Sign up for an Edublogs blog:

1. Go to Edublogs.org

2. Click on the ‘Free’ or “Pro’ image

3. This takes you to the Edublogs sign up page where you need to enter your desired username, email address, tick you agree to TOS (terms of Service) and then click Next.

Tips:

  • You will be sent an activation email once your account is created. This email normally arrives within 30 minutes.
  • You have 48 hours to click on the link in the email to activate your blog otherwise you will need to reset up your account.
  • Spam filters, especially strict ones for institutional email addresses, often block these activation emails. If unsure use free webmail accounts such as gmail, hotmail that don’t block these activation emails.
  • Use only lowercase letters and numbers, with no spaces, in your username
  • Your username is what you use to sign into your blog dashboard and is displayed on posts and comments you write. You can’t change your username, you can change what name is displayed.

4. On the next page enter your blog domain (i.e. blog URL), blog title, select your preferred privacy and language, enter the Captcha word and click Signup.

Tips:

  • Use only lowercase letters and numbers, with no spaces, in your blog URL
  • Blog URLs can’t be changed once created
  • Use a blog URL that reflects what your blog is about and is unique
  • Keep in mind people need to be able to remember and easily type your blog URL into their browser – where possible try to keep your blog URL short but meaningful
  • Don’t stress too much about your blog title as this can be changed any time.

5. Next you should see a page with your blog title and instructions to check your email inbox. This email should arrive within 30 minutes.

6. Click on the link in the email to activate your account.

7. This activates your account and takes you to the activation page on Edublogs.

8. You should also receive another email with your username, password and login details which you use to log into your blog dashboard.

Your blog dashboard is the administration area of your blog where you write posts, pages, manage comments, change your blog design, add widget etc.

There are three options for logging into your blog dashboard:

A. Your login page

1. Go to your login page

For example the login page for is located at

2. Enter your username and password then click Log In.

Changing your personal settings in Your Profile

You can customise global settings for your username in the Your Profile screen. Any changes to these settings apply to all blogs accessed with that username.

Your user profile is quickly accessed in your dashboard via the Users > Your Profile menu option. Remember to click Update Profile after making any changes on Your Profile screen.

Your Profile screen has quite a few options, so lets explain them one at a time.

1.Name

You can’t change your username but you can use the options here to change your name that is publicly displayed when you write posts or comments on Edublogs.org. Here’s how you do it:

Add your first name, last name or change your Nickname (by default your nickname is always your username unless you change it).

2. Click Update Profile

3. Click on the drop down arrow to select your preferred publicly displayed name

4. Click Update Profile again

5. Now every post or comment you write on Edublogs.org will display that name.

2. Contact Info

The email address is only required information in the Contact info section. Currently AIM, Yahoo, Jabber and Google Talk displays only inside Your Profile inside your dashboard — there is no need to complete this details.

Email

Your email address is required. You may change this, but you can only use one e-mail address per username. This email address must be valid because to confirm that change anemail will be sent to this address and it won’t be changed until you click on the link in the email.

Website

This is the URL that will be linked to your username when leaving comments on Edublogs.org

About Yourself

The Biographical Info displays only inside Your Profile inside your dashboard — You may add your information here. It is optional.

Changing Your Blog’s Look

Every newly created blog has the same default theme (as shown below). This is what visitors to your blog see.

  • In your blog dashboard, go to Appearance > Themes
  • Your ‘Current theme’ is shown near the top of the screen.

All “Available themes’ are shown at the bottom of the screen with 15 themes per page. To view all themes you need to check each page.

To preview any of the available themes just click on the screenshot of the theme or click on Preview.

This loads a preview window where you scroll down the page to see what that theme looks like on your blog. Clicking on links such as comments, page links, categories and tags takes you to that area of the blog so you can see how the theme looks without having to activate the theme.

If you like the theme, and want to use the theme, just click Activate on the top right hand side of the preview window. Click the X on the top left side to close the Preview window and continue browsing the theme repository.

To activate any of the available themes, without previewing, just click on the Activate.

Once your themes has been activated you can visit your blog site from inside the administration area of your blog by clicking on Visit Site.

Tip: If you hold the Ctrl key and then click Visit Site this loads your blog in another tab in your web browser.

Upload a Custom Header:

  1. To upload a blog header, go to “Custom Header” option on your dashboard.
  2. Browse the desired file from “Choose an image from your computer” and click “upload”.
  3. Your header has been uploaded. To view it, visit your site.

Writing Your First Post:

Every newly created blog is the same default lay out with posts displayed on its front page (’Home’) with a ‘Hello World’ post and an ‘About’ page. When you publish posts they are displayed in reverse chronological order with your most recent post at the top of your post page.

There are two main ways to write a new post:

  • The Add New Post Screen
  • The QuickPress Module on your Dashboard

Using the Add New Post Screen to Write Posts:

The Add New Post Screen is a more advance post editor compared to using the QuickPress and is the main screen where you’ll write most posts. Besides providing more post options it is better suited to writing longer posts.

There are two options for accessing your Add New Post screen:

  1. Post Add New
  2. New Post button in the upper corner of your blog’s admin screens

Brief Overview of Your Add New Post Screen

The area where you write your post is by default in Visual Editing mode which uses WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) option for formating.

It works similar to any Word processing software. Simply write your post, highlight any text you want to format and then click the appropriate button in the toolbar to add formating such as bold, italics, number list.

The Show/Hide Kitchen Sink button is used to view the advanced formating options including heading styles, underlining, font color, custom characters, undo, redo.

Now all you need to do to write a post is:

  1. Give your post a Title
  2. Add your content
  3. Add your tags and categories
  4. When finished writing click Publish.

TIP :

New bloggers often struggle with the concept of tags and categories but its important to start using them well when you first start blogging. See Tags and Categories to understand their key differences.

Previewing your Draft

Before you publish your post it is a good idea to use the Preview option to see what it looks like to your readers.
You preview a post by clicking on Save Draft and then Preview. This opens up a draft version of your post in a new tab. To make edits just go back to your Add New Post screen.

Using the QuickPress module on your blog Dashboard

The QuickPress module is a mini-post editor that lets you quickly write a post including title, add media files and add tags directly from your dashboard. It also gives you the option of saving it as a draft or publishing immediately.

For more post options such as adding categories, scheduling future publish dates you should use the Add New Post screen.

Uploading an Image from Your Computer

You insert an image from your hard drive into a blog post as follows:

1. Click on Add an Image icon

2. In the Add an Image window click on the Select Files button

3. Locate the images on your hard drive (use your Shift or Crtl key to select more than one image).

4. Click Open to start uploading the images.

5. While your images are uploading you will see a progress bar.

  • If you upload more than one image you will need to click on the Show link to edit the image details and insert an image into a post (see below for instructions for inserting a photo gallery).


6. In the image option screen you need to (see below for more details on each of these option):

  • type a title for the image
  • choose how you want the image align (None, Left, Center or Right)
  • select size of image you want to insert (Thumbnail, Medium, Large or Full Size)
  • and then click Insert into Post

7. Your Add an Image window should be closed and your image should now be inserted in your post.

Linking to an Image onthe Internet

You insert an image from a location on the Internet into a blog post as follows:

1. Click on Add an Image icon

2. In the Add an Image window click on the From URL tab.
3. Add the image URL, image title, select the image alignment, select if you want image linked to a URL (i.e. when reader clicks on the image they will be taken to that URL) and then click Insert Into Post
4. Your Add an Image window should be closed and your image should now be inserted in your post.

Inserting a Video from Video Sharing website

  1. Completely write your post including adding title, text, images, tags and categories.
  2. Click on Save Draft, previewed your post and make all necessary edits.
  1. Locate video you want to embed from the Video Sharing website e.g. Google Video or YouTube
  2. Copy the embed code for the video
  1. Click on HTML Tab

  2. Paste the embed code for the video into your post where you want it to appear then click Publish

  3. When you view your blog you should now see the video embedded in your blog post.

Controlling who can comment on posts

In your Administration panel, you have full control over:

  1. Who can and can’t leave a comment.
  2. Whether comments are or aren’t allowed for the entire blog, or on a per post or page basis
  3. Whether comments are appear immediately or comments are moderated and need to be approved by an administrator before appearing on the blog.

There is a “Discussion” area in the Settings menu of your Administration panel for controlling comments:

Changing comment settings is as simple as:

  1. Selecting the comment settings that you can use
  2. Once selected click Save Changes at the bottom of the screen

The Most Comment Settings Used

There is a wide range of comment settings that you can use.

Options used depend on factors such as comfort level, type of blog and school, District or organization’s blogging guidelines. For example, an educator might allow any one to comment on their personal blog, with no comment moderation, while their student blogs might require all comments to be moderated to prevent inappropriate comment from being published.

Most bloggers choose one of these three options
Option 1:

Comments can be posted by anyone and appear immediately

Option 2

Any visitors that have had a comment approved on the blog in the past will have their comment immediately posted and only comments from new visitors go into moderation.

Option 3

All comments are moderated and need to be approved by an administrator before appearing on the blog

Other comment settings

The two main other comment settings you need to understand are:

  1. Comment author must fill out name and e-mail: Enabled by default, this option requires the commenter to fill out their name and e-mail in order to leave a comment. Most situations you really don’t want this disabled because it’s not a good idea to allow anonymous comments.
  2. Users must be registered and logged in to comment: When selected only logged in Edublogs users can leave a comment. Normally a blogger wouldn’t select this option because it restricts who can comment on their posts.

Email me whenever settings

The email me whenever option controls whether you receive emails any time anyone leaves a comment on your blog and any time a comment is held for moderation.

The email for:

  1. Anyone posts a comment: is sent to email address of the person who wrote the post (i.e. the post author)
  2. A comment is held for moderation: is sent to blog’s admin email address (SettingGeneral)

Normally you would keep both these settings enabled so you’re notified of all comments.

Comment Moderation

The comment moderation options are used to control spam comments.

Normally spam comments include a large number of hyperlinks. The default setting is 2; you can adjust this to your needs. For example, educators who require their students to include hyperlinks in comments may choose to make this higher.

Another option for controlling spam comments is to add specific words, name , URL, email address or IP into the comment moderation box. You use this comment moderation option where you have repeat spam comment offenders.