blog@USF » FAQ

What’s a “Weblog?”

Weblogs, or blogs, are a way of publishing to the web one idea at a time. By simplifying the process of publishing, letting authors create posts easily, and making it simple to link to related ideas on the web, blogs make it easy to update a website while still making sure your words retain a clear, personal voice.

The simplicity and immediacy of weblogs has made them extremely popular in a very short period of time, and they’re being used today by everyone from media outlets wanting to spread their message to ordinary citizens wanting to keep in touch with friends and family around the world.

As the weblog medium has evolved, it’s become evident that the collective posts which make up the millions of existing weblogs, along with the links that they provide to each other and to other relevant content on the web, represent an important new outlet for expression and communication. Best of all, it’s easy for anyone with basic internet skills to create a blog or to add one to an existing site.

What’s a “Trackback?”

Trackback is a means for one Web page to let another Web page know that it’s been linked to. Confusing? Yes. Trackback is one of those things that is hard to understand until you use it. But, once used, it’s potential is quickly realized.

Think of Trackback as a way to comment on your blog about another blog’s entry.

And, the greatest part is, there should be no extra work on your part. You merely include a link in your blog entry back to the original blog entry you are commenting on, and the Trackback occurs automatically.

What’s an RSS feed?

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” or “Rich Site Summary” (depending on who you ask). It is a way to include your blog’s content and general description into a machine readable XML format. There are a lot of uses for RSS; the most common being to feed news aggregators such as Bloglines and NewsMonster.

What’s Structured Blogging?

Structured Blogging allows you to make your blog entries look differently based on their content. If you review a movie (or a book, CD, performance, etc) on your blog, you can use a standard format which gives the reader more information about the item you are reviewing and presents it in an attractive way. For examples of Structured Blogging content, vist the Structured Blogging website.

What’s Podcasting?

from Wikipedia:

Podcasting is a way of publishing sound files to the Internet, allowing users to subscribe to a feed and receive new audio files automatically. Podcasting is distinct from other types of audio content delivery because it uses the RSS 2.0 file format. This technique has enabled many producers to create self-published, syndicated radio shows. Users subscribe to podcasts using “podcatching” software (also called “aggregator” software) which periodically checks for and downloads new content. It can then sync the content to the user’s portable music player, hence the portmanteau of Apple’s “iPod” and “broadcasting”. Podcasting does not require an iPod; any digital audio player or computer with the appropriate software can play podcasts.

What’s del.icio.us?

From del.icio.us: del.icio.us is a social bookmarks manager. It allows you to easily add sites you like to your personal collection of links, to categorize those sites with keywords, and to share your collection not only between your own browsers and machines, but also with others.

What’s Flickr?

Flickr is on online digital photo management service. What separates Flickr is its focus on collaboration, its added features, and the ease with which the contents of your Flickr profile can be integrated with other applications (like your blog). Flickr comes with tools that let you organize your photos, perform basic editing procedures, tag/label/categorize your photos, let your friends and family label or comment on your photos, and more. They even have some very nice desktop software that make it easy to upload your photos. Sign up for a Flickr account and give it a try!

What’s Technorati?

Technorati is a search engine focused on blogging. From the technorati site: A few years ago, Web search was revolutionized by a simple but profound idea — that the relevance of a site can be determined by the number of other sites that link to it, and thus consider it ‘important.’ In the world of blogs, hyperlinks are even more significant, since bloggers frequently link to and comment on other blogs, which creates the sense of timeliness and connectedness one would have in a conversation. So Technorati tracks the number of links, and the perceived relevance of blogs, as well as the real-time nature of blogging. Because Technorati automatically receives notification from weblogs as soon as they are updated, it can track the thousands of updates per hour that occur in the blogosphere, and monitor the communities (who’s linking to whom) underlying these conversations.

How do I customize my blog?

We’ve installed several visual “themes” for you to use. To change the look of your blog, log in to admin panel (click on Login or Site Admin on the side bar). Click on Presentation. Select any of the themes on that page and your blog will have a new look. You can also create your own themes or add themes that have been created by someone else. To install a new theme, copy it into your public_html/blogUSF/wp-content/themes directory using a SFTP client.

Can I upload digital pictures?

Yes! You can include your digital pictures with your blog in two ways. You can use a service like Flickr and then link to your photo album from your blog or you can use the integrated photo album based on Gallery.

What’s the WordPress Bookmarklet?

The bookmarklet is a bookmark you include in your web browser that makes it easy to post to your blog. All you need to do is click on the bookmark you created for the bookmarklet, and a separate window pops up allowing you to immediately post to your weblog. As an extra benefit, the bookmarklet analyses the web page you are currently reading and includes a link back to that post in your blog entry. This makes it easy to comment on other web pages.

Interested in whatever web page you are reading? Hit your bookmarklet bookmark and immediately create a blog entry pointing back to the article.

To set up the bookmarklet bookmark, log in to your blog and drag the “Press It - [Blog Title]” link to you bookmarks bar or add it your bookmarks.

Can I use blogging clients other than the web based one?

Yes! The Blogger XML-RPC API is supported.You can use popular blogging clients like MarsEdit for the Mac OS X or ecto for Windows.

To use the blogging clients, you will need to know the location of your blog’s XML-RPC interface. The XML-RPC interface is located at http://NETID.blog.usf.edu/xmlrpc.php. (Replace NETID with your USF NetID) If your blogging client asks for a “Blog ID” just enter 0 (zero).

There are a lot of popular blog clients and most will be supported.

How do I integrate del.icio.us with my blog?

It’s simple. We’ve already integrated del.icio.us with your blog, you just have to give it your del.icio.us username. To edit your username:

Login to the admin page for your blog (click on Login on the side bar of the front page)
Click on Presentation.
Click on Theme Editor.
Select SideBar Template from the list of templates on the right.
Look for this line:

<?php delicious("usfblog"); ?> 
Change usfblog to your del.icio.us username.
Because of URL caching, it may take up to an hour before your links are visible on your blog.

How do I integrate Flickr with my blog?

When you create or edit a posting, click on the “Flickit” button. A window will pop up that allows you to search Flickr by username or Tag. When the results of your search are shown, find the picture you want and click on the size you want to include in your post. Here are the sizes that are available:

SQ — Square — 75 x 75 Pixels
T — Thumbnail — 100 x 75 Pixels
SM — Small — 240 x 180 Pixels
M — Medium — 500 x 375 Pixels
O — Original — Original Dimensions (Not available with most Flickr images)

How do I use Technorati Tags in my blog?

Whenever you write a new post, take a look at the text-box just below the “Publish” and “Save” buttons. It’s marked KeyWords. Type in all the tags that you want to use, separated by spaces — if you want to use a multi-word tag, surround it with quotes. That’s it! When you publish you’re post, Technorati will be notified and your post should show up on their pages within seconds.

How do I “Podcast” using my blog?

Podcasting is really easy. Just link to an audio file in one of your posts and Blog@USF will automatically add the necessary tag to your RSS2 feed to make it useable as a podcast.
Important: Use an absolute URI when linking to the audio file.
Wrong: <a href=”my-podcast.mp3“>My podcast</a> Right: <a href=”http://example.com/my-podcast.mp3“>My podcast</a>
That’s it — just link to an audio file and it gets taken care of. Your podcasts will now be available from your blog’s RSS2 feed : http://NETID.blog.usf.edu/wp-rss2.php

I’m graduating/leaving the University, can I export the contents of my blog?

Yes, you can export your blog to the following formats:

Movable Type (MTImport) format — Can be used by Movable Type, WordPress, Drupal and many other blogging systems
SQL — Mysqldump of your database, can be used as a backup or imported into another WordPress installation
Blogger — If you have an account with Blogger, you can export all Blog@USF postings to that blog
File Archive — Saves an archive of your entire blog.usf.edu account — including all digital photos in your gallery

To access the export feature:

Login to the admin interface of your blog and click on Options
Click on Export
Select the way you wish to export your data

How do I create a photo album?

First, you need to login. On the main Gallery page, click “[login]”. Use your USF NetID and password to login.

To create a new album, just click “[new album]”. The new album is created. You should see the message “Hey! Add some photos” However, before adding photos, it’s usually a good idea to modify some of the album properties, such as title, description, and name.

Go back to the main Gallery page by clicking the link in the top right by the up arrow. You should see the new album on the main page. To edit the title of the new album, click “[edit title]” by the current title (for new albums, it defaults to “Untitled”). To edit the description, do the same thing by clicking on “[edit description]”. Finally, rename the album. Click on the link in the sentence “Hey! Rename this album so that the URL is not so generic”. Once you’ve done this, you’re ready to add photos.

How do I add photos to a photo album?

To add photos in an album, navigate to the album and click “[add photos]”. You can now browse your computer and upload photos, adding an optional caption with each image. You can also change the number of file upload boxes displayed by using the select box.

Another option is to upload files to your server and then specify the path on the server (the directory must be readable by the webserver user ).

Finally, you can specify a URL (e.g. http://www.example.com) to “grab” images from. Note that you cannot specify the direct URL of the image, only a page to a webpage that contains images. Click “Upload Now” or “Submit URL or directory” and you’re on your way.

How do I get my photos onto my blog?

Once you post pictures to your phot albums, you will notice that one picture from each album (the “highlighted” photo), will show up in the top-right hand corner of your blog. That area on your blog will always display the four most recently updated photo albums in your gallery. Each of these photos are also a link to the photo album it came from.

Who writes this stuff?

Blog@USF is based on WordPress and was modified for USF by the Unix Systems Group. Most of this page was donated by the wonderful folks over at Case Western Reserve University’s Blog@Case. Other documentation was written by the Unix Systems Group

I have some more questions. Who can I contact?

Send us an email! We welcome all feedback, questions, comments, and concerns.

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