Blog Help

The VCU Weblog is available to all students, faculty, and staff. Just login to the blog and your account will be automatically created. If you would like a Departmental or Organizational blog please fill out the Blog Request Form.

General Blog Help

• Adding an entry to your Blog
• Changing the Title of your Blog
• Adding images to your blog
• Customizing the look of your Blog
• Adding additional content areas to your blog (links, calendar, etc)
• Breakdown of the content in your Blog
• Making sure your Blog always has content on the front page

Adding an entry to your Blog

To add a new entry click the New Entry button in the menu on the left side of the page. This will bring you to the form below.

Follow this example noting that Published must be the 'Post Status.' The Entry Body is the short description that will appear under the title. If an Extended Entry is used then the viewer must click on a link to view the Extended Entry. When you are done filling out the form click save and the message will be posted to the Blog.

 

 

 

 

Changing the Title of your Blog

Once you login to your Blog you will most likely want to give it a fun and unique title. To do this click on the Settings button in the left hand menu. A screen with a Weblog Settings heading should appear (if not make sure you are on the General tab). Change the Weblog Name, which is the Title. And the Description is the Sub-Title.

Now scroll to the bottom of the page and click the "Save Changes" button.

 

 

 

 

Adding Images to Your Blog

To add images you can use the Upload File Button in the left menu bar:

Once you click the Upload File button, then click the browse button the locate the desired image on your local computer.

If you would like to put all of your images in a single folder, you can specify a folder name. (This is optional)

Click 'Upload'.

Then select 'Create new entry using this uploaded file.' (You can select to have the image be embedded in the blog or pop up when you click a link)

This will automatically place the html to reference the uploaded image in the Entry Body. You can enter text before the HTML if you want the image to be in the middle or at the bottom of the post. If you want the image in the extended entry then simply highlight the HTML and drag it to the extended entry window.

Be sure to Preview your post to make sure it looks like you intended before publishing it to your blog.

Customizing Your Blog

To customize the look of your Blog you must have at least some knowledge of HTML and XML.

For pre-created templates you can visit the MovableType Style Library. These templates have no affiliation with the University and are not supported by VCU. Use them at your own risk. Simply open the selected Stylesheet copy all of the text. Then open the Stylesheet template in MoveableType and replace all of the text with what you just copied. Be sure to paste it in the Stylesheet template and not one of the other templates. In some cases you may be required to upload some images to make the styles appear properly.

To get started customizing click on the 'Templates' button in the left hand menu. It is a good idea to make a copy of these before you start changing code in case something breaks beyond repair. You can copy and paste these templates into FrontPage or Dreamweaver if you are more comfortable programming that way.

If you want to change back to the default style or mess up any of your templayes you can download the Default Movable Type Templates.

Here is a description of the different pages you can customize (These are the main pages, you can customize the other ones if you want, except the RSS feeds):

• Main Index - This is the page that displays with your most recent posts.
• Master Archive Index - This is the monthly archive that is compiled by Movable Type
• Stylesheet - This is the Cascading Style Sheet that determines fonts and formatting for your pages.
• Individual Entry Archive - This is the complete Blog entry page. (This is shown when an extended entry is entered; the link from the main index page points here)

When you make an entry to your Blog it is formatted into xml. When you view your Blog you are extracting certain values from the xml files. In the code for the pages in the Blog pay special attention to the xml. Be careful not to delete something that is important like the actual Blog message (<$MTEntryBody$>).

You can add, remove, and rearrange the different content pieces of your Blog. For instance, you can remove the Calendar or the search functions. Here is the breakdown of what each content section looks like. If you want the changes to appear on all pages you will need to modify more than one of the moveable type templates.

You can also move the sidebar from the right side of the page to the left side of the page. See the instructions.

Make sure your Blog home page always displays the latest posts

Click on Settings in the menu bar on the left side of the page. Then scroll down to the Default Weblog Display Settings. Here you can select how you want your most recent entries to display on your Blog home page.

You can choose for the blog to display the last entries in term of days or actual entries. It is suggested that you select Entries so that your blog home page could not possibly be empty if you don't update it.