JMSC Blogs

We’ve now disabled this function for security reasons so the short answer  is:  you can’t.

This system is for faculty and staff only. If you want a blog accessible by students – you’ll need to set it up on our other server (jmsc.asia).

Please e-mail Kevin Lau and ask him to set up the blog on the jmsc.asia server. He’ll do that and generate an automatic e-mail that will send your account details to you.

You need to give them access. This page explains how.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The instructions below will only work if you are given “administrator” access to the entire system. This access will be given on a case by case basis to faculty and staff who definitely plan to add students as authors on their course blogs. Not all instructors will want to have their students posting work directly and publicly on the official class blog – it depends on what kind of work they’re doing and whether you deem the public blogging format to be appropriate for student work in your class. If you have any questions about this please contact Rebecca to discuss.

So. Once you’ve determined that you want your students to be authors on your blog and you have been given admin access, these are the steps to follow:

1. First, you go into the admin area of your blog and navigate to the “Users” tab under “Site Admin,” like so:

2. When you scroll down on that page you’ll see an area that says “Add User.” That’s where you add your students, which needs to be done one by one, I’m afraid. Give them a “username” – I suggest whatever goes before the “@” on their e-mail address; they can always change the way their name appears on their posts later. Then type their e-mail address in guess what which box?

Then click on “Add User.”

3. Upon doing, that user will be saved. However you need to give that user a status before he or she can actually post anything. In order to do so, click on the “edit” link on the right-hand side that corresponds with that particular user name.

You will then find yourself on a page called “Edit User.”

If you want the student to be able to write posts and save them as draft (but not be able to publish directly without your review), select “Contributor” from the drop-down menu.
(Authors can post directly to your blog without your review and I don’t recommend that for students on a public blog. It is definitely a bad idea to make them Editor as that enables them to change other people’s content including yours.)

4. Meanwhile, your student will have received the following e-mails, notifying him/her that an account has been created and assigning a temporary password:

Upon logging in, the student will be able to change his/her user information and write draft posts (if you have assigned “Contributor” status).

5. After the students write their posts you will be able to review them by going to the “Posts” tab under “Manage.”

6. Click on the “Edit” link associated with the post you want to review and you will see their draft post:

That post will not be visible on the site until you click “Publish” (the student will be unable to access the “Publish” button directly). It will appear in his or her name. It is also possible to edit or change the student’s post if needed.

Note that when a student saves a new post that you have not yet reviewed, the system will not automatically notify you. You need to go in and check for it or ideally they ought to inform you that they have saved a post that is ready for you to review and publish.