Domain

Syndication is working!

I’m now using FeedWordPress to syndicate all of your blog posts. What this means is that when you write a post on your blog, it will automagically get sucked in and reposted here onto this site. That means this page becomes a one-stop shop for y’all to find the posts from your classmates.

A couple of notes, followed by a question. If you are going to comment on one of your classmates’ blogs, when you click on the title link for the post, you’ll be redirected to that students’ post on his or her page, which is where you should leave your comment. I encourage you to read and comment on each others’ posts. (At times, I might require it, even!)

If you are planning to write posts that are unrelated to this class on the domain you’re using for this class, that’s okay, but we’ll want to make arrangements for that. (You’ll need to use a category that designates some posts as needing to syndicate here onto this page, while other posts have different categories and aren’t. Or you can set up a subdomain that is designated for posts for this class.) If this is an issue for you now, or if it becomes an issue for you at any point this semester, just let me know and we’ll work out a solution.

If you look over at the top of the right-hand sidebar, you will see a pull-down menu called “Categories.” All the posts that I write will be categorized as “David’s posts,” so if you choose that line from the pull down list you’ll go to a separate page that lists only posts by me. All the posts pulled in from your sites will be designated with the category “Student posts,” so you can see those separately too.

[FYI, once you start putting up the group blog posts, you’ll categorize them with “readers,” “responders,” or “historians” as appropriate and then those will show up as categories too. Is it okay if I admit that I’m looking forward, at the end of the semester, to pulling up the category page for the historians’ posts and seeing a reverse-chronological narrative describing where we’ve gone as a class all semester?]

So here’s the question: Does this feel too unwieldy for you? If you would prefer it, I can replace the link to this page in the navigation bar up above to links the pages for my posts and your posts separately. To me, that seems unnecessary, but if the blog space feels too crazy and chaotic for you, I can. Scroll down this page, check out your classmates’ posts embedded amongst mine and let me know any feedback you have.

Student sites

I will put together a page with links to all of your sites and link to them from the navigation bar up top soon. In the meantime, here are links to all of the student sites for this course:

Updating some stuff

I’ve updated the Calendar page. As I announced during the last class session, I moved the Understanding Comics reading around just a little bit, but no major changes. (Whenever I make changes to the calendar, I’ll post an update here to let you know to double-check the schedule.)

I will be adding a resources page soon. In the meantime, here are some links to resources that should be helpful for you:

University of Mary Washington is also running a Domain of One’s Own program. All of their students sign up with accounts through essentially the same service as Reclaim Hosting.

  • They have a documentation wiki with lots of good information. If you’re still having trouble with getting WordPress set up, you might pay particular attention to the page on installing WordPress (once you log in to Reclaim Hosting, instead the UMW Domains page that documents shows, from there it’s the same process for us).
  • The page on choosing a theme should be helpful for you as you begin to customize your site.
  • Check out the other help pages on WordPress they’ve published. There’s lots of good information there.

How to sign up for a Domain

Reclaim Hosting: Domain and WordPress

You are building your own website in this class to which you will publish a variety of major and minor assignments as static pages, blog posts, and audio/video files.

  • You are required to pay $12.00 for a domain name through Reclaim Hosting.
  • Reclaim Hosting hosts your domain and provides you with a variety of one-click software installations such as WordPress, MediaWiki, Drupal, etc.
  • The majority of the web authoring you are required to perform will be through WordPress.org.
  • From the second day the class meets we will spend time developing Domains. Though the tools are an important component, the course is designed to develop writing skills.

Getting started is really, really easy:

  1. Go to Reclaim Hosting. Click on the big blue “Sign Up!” button.
  2. Enter the domain name you want in the box (i.e., janestudent) and then choose the “top-level domain” designation from the pull-down menu (you’ll probably want .net or .com). The system will check that the domain you want is available, and if it is then click on the continue button. If not, try to come up with variations of the name to find something that is available.
  3. I advise against choosing to pay more for “ID protect,” but you can if you want to. Either way, decide and click “Update cart.”
  4. Provide credit card info to purchase your domain.

You will receive a pair of confirmation emails from info@reclaimhosting.com. One is a simple invoice that shows the charge to your account. The other (which should have the subject line “New account information”) includes very important information that you need to have in order to make use of your domain. Make certain that you save that email in a place that you can get to.

It is especially important that you note the login details that are kind of hidden in the middle of that email. It should look something like this (click to embiggen):

New_Account_Information_-_dmorgen_gmail_com_-_Gmail

See that box in the middle labeled important? I’ve blurred out the Username and Password on that email, but yours should include your unique information. You will need both of those pieces of information in order to access your CPanel and install WordPress (don’t worry, that’s really easy too!)