WordPress

Acceptance of Terms

When you use a York St John blog (the Blog) you are agreeing to the Terms and Conditions of Use (Terms of Use) set out below. Please note that the University may amend these Terms of Use without notice at any time, so please ensure you review them regularly.

1. The University’s Acceptable Use Policy for University ICT systems apply to Blogs.
2. yorksj.ac.uk hosts blogs related to official University business, including but not limited to blogs for research groups, professional services offices and individual academics and their students.
3. Blogs are the responsibility of their owner/administrator.
4. You agree not to use the Blog to:
   
   1. advertise material information relating to the structure or content of courses
   2. provide information to prospective students that could form part of the contract between the University and the student
5. Blogs on this server may be removed if they have been inactive for six months or more.
6. The University does not exercise proactive editorial control over blog content; in particular, comments posted about blog entries express only the individual views of the person posting those comments.
7. Blog-owners should monitor comments added to their posts and respond in a timely fashion.
8. The University will not actively monitor blog content, but will act where alerted to activities on our blogs which breach these guidelines; in the case of a complaint, we would typically contact the blog’s owner in the first instance, except where a breach is clear and it is judged that immediate action is required, in which case a blog entry may be suspended pending further investigation.
9. Copyright laws apply to Blogs, and no material (including text, images and other media) may be posted to the Blog unless the author is certain that all necessary copyright clearance has been given. Comprehensive Copyright guidance is available from ILS.
10. Disaster Recovery: in the event of Server Hardware Failure a system restore will follow and the risk of lost items could be incurred. No out of hours support will be provided.
11. Any queries about this service should be addressed to support@yorksj.ac.uk.

Further Support

Support, and basic training in the use of Blogs, for students and professional services, will be provided by DigitalTraining@yorksj.ac.uk.

Pedagogic advice and guidance on using Blogs for learning, teaching and assessment, will be provided by TEL@yorksj.ac.uk.

University website policies and guidelines, including York St John's brand guidelines, also apply to blogs. For guidance on how to apply these guidelines, contact website@yorksj.ac.uk.

The blogging service is available to academics, students, schools, departments, research groups, centres and other bodies, but it is not a blogging service for personal usage. 

There is no longer a need to request a blog for individuals, programmes, departments, projects etc.  Just log in to the blog page and create your blog.

Themes control the appearance of your WordPress site on the front-end, so what people see when they visit your site.

At YSJ, WordPress websites come with certain pre-installed Themes available for any sites to use.

Help

Lynda.com: Changing the appearance of your site

For guidance on aligning your blog theme with the York St John brand guidelines, contact website@yorksj.ac.uk. 

Themes decide how your content is presented on the front end of your WordPress site. Plugins are extensions that quite literally plug in to WordPress to add new features and new functionality. While WordPress is great and powerful out of the box, with plugins, you can make WordPress into so much more. They range from simple, like adding image galleries, to the complex like turning WordPress into a social network.

The downside to plugins is that there are so many of them and many plugins do the exact same thing just in slightly different ways. So, here at YSJ, WordPress websites come with certain pre-installed Plugins available for any sites to use (see below for help with each one). 

Help

Lynda.com: Extending WordPress with Plugins

• Akismet
• Jetpack 
• NextGEN Gallery
• bbPress
• BuddyPress
• Contact Form 7
• TinyMCE Advanced
• Duplicate Post
• Page Builder

If you’re new to WordPress or the University blogs, there are a few ways that you can find help and support:

Online

• Extensive help is available on the WordPress Codex
• There is a contextual ‘Help’ button in the top-right corner of every WordPress administration page.
• Read First Steps With WordPress
• Read the WordPress community documentation about each of the administration panels
• Watch WordPressTV 
• Contact IT Helpdesk (support@yorksj.ac.uk) 

In Person

• Support, and basic training in the use of Blogs, for students and professional services, will be provided by DigitalTraining@yorksj.ac.uk.
• Pedagogic advice and guidance for academics on using Blogs for learning, teaching and assessment, will be provided by TEL@yorksj.ac.uk.
• University website policies and guidelines, including York St John's brand guidelines, also apply to blogs. For guidance on how to apply these guidelines, contact website@yorksj.ac.uk.