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WordPress

Create open, connected spaces for student learning and engagement, beyond the confines of the VLE.

Frequently Asked Questions

YSJ has an installation of WordPress, meaning all staff and students have the ability to (individually or collaboratively) create websites and blogs at blog.yorksj.ac.uk.

You can request a blog using the blog request form.

 

 

 

 

WordPress

WordPress allows you to create open, connected spaces for student learning and engagement, beyond the confines of the VLE. WordPress can be used to support teaching, learning and assessment in face-to-face, blended, and online modules.

YSJ has an installation of WordPress, meaning all staff and students have the ability to (individually or collaboratively) create websites and blogs at blog.yorksj.ac.uk.

Guides

Getting Started with WordPress

WordPress - How to Create a New Site

WordPress - How to Create a New Blog Post

WordPress - How to Create a New Page

WordPress - How to Add a Menu

WordPress - How to Change the Theme

Below are some examples of how WordPress can be used in conjunction with the 3E element of the TEL Quality Framework:

 

 

 

 

Some of the ways in which blogs can be used in Teaching, Learning & Assessment include:

  • Online learning spaces (as a supplement to Moodle)
  • Collaborative class websites & blogs
  • Online textbooks / class publications
  • Online Portfolios / reflective writing
  • Collaborative authoring or assessment
  • Placement journals
  • Commentary and Expert Analysis
  • News and Announcements
  • Supporting Research Projects
  • Soft marketing tool – share course insights to prospective students & parents
  • Create websites for clubs, students groups, events, sports teams or just about any other type of group

Ask students to create a blog to reflect on their learning journey, or on their work placement.

Have students write guest posts for a collaborative class blog, and encourage students to comment on or peer review posts.

Allow students to plan, create, and share a website or blog related to their specific research questions, interests, or projects.

Help, Information & Advice

Read up on our WordPress Terms of Use, as well as how to request a blog/site for academics, students, schools, departments, and research groups. Learn how to create and publish posts and pages; customise your site with themes, widgets, and custom menus; and extend WordPress even further with plugins.

 

 

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

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

Online

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.

Other Blogging Platforms

Blogger and Tumblr provide similar blogging capabilities and are similar but simpler alternatives to WordPress (and can be supported on a best-endeavours basis).

DrupalJoomla and Typo3 are more complex content management systems (CMS) that provide a similar but wider level of functionality at the expense of being more complex to set up and support (but are not supported at YSJ).

 

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