JMSC Blogs

Boris has created a new “CourseBlog” theme in three colors (Red, Blue, and Khaki) which have the functionality reqested by JMSC faculty. Specifically, it enables you to create a text entry that “sticks” to the top of your blog. It also allows you to pick and choose what items you want in your sidebar – as well as in a bar along the bottom of the page (if you want to use that). An example of the result is my New Media Workshop blog:

(The blurb at the top containing my picture and a greeting message are in a part of the site that now “sticks” to the top of the page, while the blog entries below will continue to flow in reverse-chronological order.)

So here’s how it works:

1. In the admin area of your blog, click on the “Presentation” section, and the “Theme” tab within it.

2. Make sure you select one of the CourseBlog themes – the other themes do not support this functionality. In other words, you are free to use those themes if you want but you will not be able to have a box of text that “sticks” to the top of your blog.

3. Then click on the “Sidebar Widgets” tab, which is right next to the “Themes” tab you clicked just before. It will open up the following page:

4. At that point, you will see three boxes labeled “Topbar,” “sidebar_one,” and “Bottombar.” They will be empty.

5. Below those three boxes is another box labeled “Available widgets,” with a whole bunch of little “widgets” in it. Click once on the widget that says Text 1 and drag it into the left-hand box labeled “Topbar.”

6. That “Available widgets” box includes fairly essential elements like “Pages” (which means the right-hand list of pages you create for your syllabus and other info), “Links” (which enables you to display direct links to more resources), “Categories” (if you want people to be able to click quickly to different sections of the blog delineated by categories you create and designate), etc.

There are also a number of other widgets with more advanced features, like RSS feeds of your choice, a calendar, etc. I can explain those later but they’re not terribly mission-critical to get your class blog up and running, at least initially.

7. BE SURE TO CLICK ON THE “Save Changes” BUTTON at this point to make sure your changes get saved!

8. Now you need to put some text in that box that will be “sticking” to the top of your site.

9. In the “Text 1″ widget now sitting in your “Topbar” box, doubleclick on the little square at the right hand side of the widget.

10. That should cause a text box to open up. There is a space for a headline and a space for text.

11. To save this content, just close the text box then click on “Save Changes” in the Sidebar Arrangement area (same button you clicked before).

12. Note that if you want to do anything fancy in this topbar like add a picture or links, you can do so. However that text entry box does not support the easy paste-in coding and photo uploading features that you get in the normal blog-writing area. So there are two solutions. One is you hand-type the HTML code (which is sub-optimal for people who don’t know HTML). Or you first create a draft post in your blog posting area, add the links and picture that you want, get it formatted the way you want in draft, then copy the HTML code over to your topbar text box – copying and pasting the same way you would with a Word document.