FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

To get started on UCC Blogs you will need a valid UCC Staff I.D Card and an official UCC Staff Email Address. You get to the Directorate of Information and Communication Technology and a Blog Site will be created for you.

UCC Blogs runs on WordPress. WordPress is a state-of-the-art, open source, semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. Often associated with a blog, WordPress is much more than a blog- it is a simple and easy-to-use web publishing platform that can allow you to build a web presence with little or no fuss!

The limit is 100MB per blog but we can move this up by request

To make an individual blog or site private, click on ‘Site Admin’ at the META block of the sidebar. Click on the Reading link under the Settings tab on the left hand side of the dashboard. From here, click on one of the the five options for controlling external access to your space, located under Site Visibility.

Password protecting a specific blog post or page is quite simple. On the edit post page, look for “visibility” in the publish box on the right hand side. Click “edit”, select “password protected” and enter a value into the text field. This value can be whatever you want it to be, but if you want others to see what is in this page or post, you will have to share the password with them.

Usernames are unique identifiers in your profile, and in URLs. Display Names are customizable account names (usually your first and last name) that show up in all activity on the UCC Blogs platform. For example, your Display Name is published when you leave a comment on a blog, if you author a blog post, or if you send a private message. Display names are not unique (for example, two people named John Doe may use “John Doe” as their Display Name).

Most WordPress themes use the Gravatar service to generate user avatars in areas such as the comments section.

To set up your Gravatar account simply:

1. Go to http://en.gravatar.com/
2. Sign up by clicking on the sign up link and providing the email that is tied to your WordPress account
   • NOTE: Make sure that you provide the correct email
3. Upload (or paste the URL of) the image you wish to use

That’s it! You should now be able to view your “Gravatar” on all your WordPress blogs.

1. Using the dark gray bar at the top of the screen, select: My Account > Profile > Edit Profile and Privacy Settings
2. To change your display name, re-write your preferred name in the ‘Name (required)’ field
3. Select Save Changes

1. Using the dark gray navigation menu at the left side of the Admin Page, click on Settings > General
2. To change your email, re-write your preferred email in the ‘Email Address’ field
3. Select Save Changes

Open a browser, type in https://blogs.ucc.edu.gh. Append a “/” forward slash to it and add the unique username given you to the address. Example, if the unique username given is rgraham, the url that will be typed into the browser will now read like this; https://blogs.ucc.edu.gh/rgraham.

You then move to the META block at the sidebar where you will find the LOGIN link that will enable you to insert your unique username and password.

Click the login button when done to take you to your dashboard

To change the title of your blog go to the Settings > General > tab in the administrative back-end and you will see a field for blog title as well as a field for the site tagline, which is a space for a brief description of your site. Just type in a new title or tagline and save the changes.

UCC Blogs is a Multi User install of WordPress the same as WordPress.com all themes and plugins are shared across the UCC Blogs network therefore we must evaluate each theme before it is added to the system. We are open to adding new themes on request some things we look for are:

• Is it compatible with the recent version of WordPress
• Would it be useful to other users on the system.
• How are the ratings based on comments are others having problems with it.
• Does it support the WordPress menu system, threaded comments that most users expect in a theme.

If you have found a theme that meets the above criteria let us know about it by sending a request to bloghelp@ucc.edu.gh and we will take a look.

You can change the look and feel of your blog going to Appearance->Themes.

This is an important terminological/conceptual distinction to grasp, as posts and pages serve radically different functions. A post is an article that shows up in the chronology of your blog. In other words, posts appear in your blog, most recent at the top of the page.

A page is what most folks may be more familiar with. This is a static space that is not part of the chronological logic (try saying that five times fast) of the blog. A page sits outside of this inverted time line, and often features more static content like information about the site, the author, a syllabus, readings, etc.

Part of the logic of a blog is allowing people to comment on your work. Comments are often associated with posts (as opposed to pages- see an explanation of this distinction above) and offer a way to have a discussion about a particular post.

Often times, initial comments are placed in a moderation queue until you approve them. Once you approve a comment from a user, he or she should be able to comment freely thereafter. You can view the comments on your blog as well as those awaiting moderation in the Comments tab in the back-end of your blog. If you want to change the permissions for your comments- say allow anyone to comment without moderating- see the Settings tab and look for the Discussion subtab. This is where you can control the comment settings.

Additionally, when writing a post, you can turn off the comments on a post-by-post basis by first ensuring that the Discussion section is enabled from the Screen Options menu in the top-right of the screen. Once the Discussion section is enabled, you will be able to disable comments by un-checking the Allow comments checkbox.

Keep in mind that comments are extremely vulnerable to spammers. UCC has activated two plugins prevent spam one being reCaptcha and the other being Akismet. reCaptha will force users to enter a randomly generated captcha code to post a comment. Akismet will filter spam that may get through this method. This will be placed under Comments->Akismet Spam for you approval or disapproval.

Yes, go to the left panel -> Settings -> Discussion -> Other comment settings ->

Comments should be displayed with the (select option: older or newer) comments at the top of each page

You can easily upload documents, such as a course calendar or syllabus, into a post or page. Doing this is relatively straightforward. Go to Write → Post (or Page) and look for the “Add media” button that looks like a gray asterisk.

When you click on that button, a dialog box will appear offering you the option to upload a file from your hard drive, or to link directly to a file that is already online. Once you have located your file (whether on your hard drive or online) click on the “Upload” button or “Insert into Post” button, respectively.

If uploading a file from your hard drive, you will get a dialog box asking you to title the document, as well as to provide a caption and description (both of which are optional). Once you are done, click on the “Insert into Post” button and you are done.

As with documents, you can easily upload and insert an image from your hard drive into a post or page. Go to Write → Post (or Page) and look for the “Add Image” button that looks like a picture canvas immediately following the “Add Media” title as pictured below .

When you click on that button, a dialog box will appear offering you the option to upload an image from your hard drive, or to link directly to a image that is already online. Once you have located your file (whether on your hard drive or online) click on the “Upload” button or the “Insert into Post” button, respectively.

If uploading an image from your hard drive, you will get a dialog box asking you to title the image, as well as to provide a caption and description (both of which are optional). Once you are done, click on the “Insert into Post” button and you are done.

To make your front page a static page rather than a blog you need to create a static page that you would like as your front page. Then go into the Options tab and then click on the Reading subtab. Once you do this you will see the following:

Instead of having the front page display your latest posts, select the radio button that says “static page” and select the page you created for the front page. Additionally, you can create another page where you would like your blog posts to appear. This is extremely useful when you would like to create a resource more akin to a traditional page rather than a blog, while maintaining the functionality of both.

WordPress supports oEmbed. Just copy and paste the URL of the video to the post and WordPress will display the player. WordPress also supports oEmbed for the following sites:

• YouTube
• VimeoDaily
• Motion
• blip.tv
• Flickr (both videos and images)
• Viddler
• Hulu
• Qik
• Revision3
• Scribd
• Photobucket
• PollDaddy
• Google Video
• WordPress.tv (only VideoPress-type videos for the time being)
• SmugMug (WordPress 3.0+)
• FunnyOrDie.com (WordPress 3.0+)

You can embed a Google map in your blog posts and pages. To do this, follow these simple steps:

1. Go to Google Maps
2. Search for the location that you’d like to display and decide on your zoom level and other preferences
3. Click on the “Link” button – presented as a chain icon – in the top right corner
   • If you wish to customize the map you can click on the “Customize and preview embedded map” link and select your size and default view
4. Copy the HTML embed code (should start with “<iframe”)
5. Go to the edit screen for the post that you wish the map to appear in
6. Make sure that the “HTML” tab is selected for the content field
   • This tab is located at the top right of the post content field next to the “Visual” tab
7. Paste the HTML embed code in the post content field in the area you wish the map to appear (before or after text etc.)
8. Click on the “Publish” button

You should now have the desired Google map embedded on your site.

“Widgets” is just a buzzword for the functionality built into WordPress that allows you to customize the sidebar of your WordPress site without knowing HTML. You can use widgets to add a list of recent photos, comments, flickr photos, del.icio.us links, and much more. You can find your widgets in the Design → Widgets subtab. You may also get access to more widgets as you activate new plugins, for many of the plugins available have an associated widget.

Your internet browser’s cache stores certain information (snapshots) of webpages you visit on your computer or mobile device so that they’ll load more quickly upon future visits and while navigating through websites that use the same images on multiple pages so that you do not download the same image multiple times. Occasionally, however your cache can prevent you from seeing updated content, or cause functional problems when stored content conflicts with live content. You can fix many browser problems simply by clearing your cache. This article contains instructions with screenshots on how to clear the cache for all major browsers.

– Multiple Authors. “How to Clear Your Browser’s Cache.” WikiHow. WikiHow, 01 Jan. 2013. Web. 09 Jan. 2015. http://www.wikihow.com/Clear-Your-Browser%27s-Cache.

Learn more on how to clear your browser’s cache (multiple browsers).

Cookies contain information that websites have gathered about you and stored on your computer as small text files.

– Multiple Authors. “How to Clear Your Browser’s Cookies.” WikiHow. WikiHow, 01 Jan. 2013. Web. 09 Jan. 2015. http://www.wikihow.com/Clear-Your-Browser%27s-Cookies.

Learn more on how to clear your browse’s cookies (multiple browsers).