Frequently Asked Questions

This FAQ is provides quick and clear answers to some of the most common questions we’re asked.

Please take the time to read the responses because they are most likely your questions also!

1. I was testing a student username and now when I log into my dashboard it shows me as logged in with their username not mine. How can I log back into my account?
2. I changed my password and now I can’t log into my account. I can’t log in with my new password and the password I was sent using the ‘forgot password’ link doesn’t won’t!
3. I’ve forgotten my passsword!  How do I get a new password?
4. I’m trying to reset my student passwords by clicking on Edit on the Author and user page and it says I don’t have high enough permission. Why can’t I do this?
5. Why are my students being sent login details for their new student blogs that don’t include a password?
6. My students don’t have email addresses, what can I do?
7. I forgot to add myself to my student blogs.  How can I add myself to their blogs as an administrator?
8. Can I upgrade my current free blog to an Edublogs Pro blog? I don’t want to start a new blog I just want to upgrade my current blog.
9. Why are there ads on my blog! How do I remove them?
10. Now I am an Edublogs Pro how do I turn off ads on my blog?
11. Why can’t I embed Videos, SlideShare, VoiceThreads, Vokis into posts and pages?  Why can’t I add embed code into widgets in my sidebar?
12. Why can’t I change privacy settings on my student blogs?
13. How do I password protect my blog?
14. How do I change the title of my blog?
15. How do I change my blog URL?
16. What’s the difference between Edublogs.org and Edublogs Campus?
17. Why hasn’t my blog been upgraded to an Edublogs Pro? I paid using PayPal!
18. Can I share the storage space on my Edublogs Pro blog with my other blogs or student blogs?
19. How do I create blogs for my students?
20. How do I add students as users to my class blogs?
21. I can’t upload any photos, word documents, audio or videos to posts or pages. It says that “it is full”?

Q #1:  I was testing a student username and now when I log into my dashboard it shows me as logged in with their username not mine.

How can I log back into my account?

What you need to do is go to the Edublogs homepage and click on the Log out link in the admin bar at the top of the page.

This will log you out fully from that username and you will be able to log in immediately with the correct username.

Q #2:  I changed my password and now I can’t log into my account.

I can’t log in with my new password and the password I was sent using the ‘forgot password’ link doesn’t won’t!

What is happening is your web browser is remembering your old stored password and stopping you from logging into your account.

You need to clear your private data in your web browser and then log into your account using your latest password.

Here is how you do it:

1. Clearing private data in FireFox
2. Clearing private data in Flock
3. Clearing private date in Chrome
4. Clearing private data in Internet Explorer
5. Clearing private data in Safari

Getting a new passsword is as simple as:

1.  Click on the ‘Lost password’ link on the login page or the ‘Forgot password’ link in the admin bar at the top of the Edublogs homepage.
2.  Add your username or email address attached to your username
3.  Click Get New Password
4.  Now check your email for a confirmation email — this should arrive within 30 minutes.

• Make sure you check your spam folder just in case it is marked as spam.

5.  Click on the link in the confirmation email to reset your password.
6.  Now check your email for a second email that contains your new password — this should arrive within 30 minutes.

Why can’t I do this?

You can’t change your student passwords by clicking on edit a user’s information on the Author & Users page because you don’t have high enough access level.

A blog administrator doesn’t have the ability to a person’s profile page and change details like passwords, email addresses etc.  The reason why is otherwise you could  have administrators changing passwords and/or email addresses of other admininstrators.

If you are wanting this level of functionality for managing students you need to be a site owner of Edublogs Campus.

To reset student passwords you need to use the lost password link by following these instructions.  Alternatively, your students can change their own passwords.

If a user has an existing username they will be sent an email for their blog that doesn’t include a password.  For example, if you have already added student to a class blog previously.

This is because they need to log into their blog using their existing username and password.

Your best option is to set up their usernames and/or blogs using the gmail+ method.

How it works is you create an gmail account for your class e.g. room16@gmail.com.

Gmail ignores any letters and numbers you add after a + sign and sends all emails to the one account while our system thinks each is a unique email.

So for example, you might use room16+seanp@gmail.com, room16+davep@gmail.com for creating their usernames and gmail will send all emails to the class gmail account room16@gmail.com

This way Edublogs will think that each email is a new one, and all email usernames and password are sent to the one gmail account where you can easily manage them.

You need to have yourself added as a user to each student blog as follows:

1. Log into the student blog using the student username and password
2. Go to Users > Add New in their blog dashboard
3. Add your current username, the email address attached to your username, select the role administrator and click Add User.

You will receive a confirmation email and you have 48 hours to click on the link in the email. You won’t be added to each student blog until you have clicked on this link.

1.  Log into the dashboard of the blog you want to upgrade
2.  Go to the Pro tab
3.  Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on Subscribe next to your preferred subscription option (i.e. monthly, every three months or yearly)
4.  This takes you to our secure payment site where you need to either:

• Sign into your PayPal Account
• Or add your credit card details and create a new PayPal Account

All free Edublogs blogs have advertisements on them.  These are Kontera content linked ads and the ad at the top of a post.  Only education appropriate ads are used.

To remove the ads you either need to:

1. Upgrade your blog to Edublogs Pro
2. Have the ads disabled by an Edublogs Pro blog

For more information refer to:

• How to upgrade your blog to Edublogs Pro
• How to disable ads on a free blog using an Edublogs Pro blog

Ads are automatically disable on your blog once your Edublogs Pro subscription has been processed.

Here’s how you remove ads on up to 50 other blogs:

1. Go to your Pro Tab > Upgrade up to 50 Student blogs
2. Enter name of the blog, for example http://theedublogger.edublogs.org/ would be entered as theedublogger.edublogs.org and click search.
3. Once the correct blog is found select that blog and click disable ads.

You can change which blogs you disable ads on at any time by going to Pro Tab > Upgrade up to 50 Student blogs

Sploggers, who create lots of blogs to promote products, were using the JavaScript for redirects on free blogs.  ‘No’ other blog hosts powered by WordPress allows embedding like we have done so far and we’ve been forced to limit it due to this abuse by sloggers.

If you are using a free Edublogs blogs this is why you are now longer able to embed code into posts, pages or text widgets on  your blog.

The key is we still want our users to have this ability but we had to provide it in such a way that the sploggers can’t use it.

So what we have done is made it so an Edublogs Pro blog is:

1. Automatically able to embed all code including Voicethreads, Teachertube
2. Able to enable exatra features on up to 50 other blogs so these blogs can also embed code, access premium themes and have their ads are disabled

Ability to change the privacy settings of a blog via Setting > Privacy is a feature of Edublogs Pro and Edublogs Campus blogs only.

If you want your student blogs to be private you will need to either:

1. Purchase a bulk upgrade of Edublogs Pro to make all them all Edublogs Pro blogs
2. Use an Edublogs Campus site

The two options for password protecting your blog are:

1. Change your Privacy settings (via Settings > Privacy) so that only logged in users can see the contents of your blog.   Ability to change the privacy settings is a feature of Edublogs Pro and Edublogs Campus blogs only.
2. Use password protected posts and pages.  How this works is people can see your blog but can’t view the contents of a post unless they know the password.  This is an easy option if you just want to give parents one word to view posts.

Please note:

• If you make your blog “I would like only logged in users who are registered subscribers to see my blog.” you need to give usernames to all people who you want to view the contents of your blog by creating them using Users > Add New Users

You can change your blog title by going to Settings > General.

There’s two options to change the blog URL:

1. Use domain mapping
2. Create a new blog with the preferred blog URL and import the contents from your existing blog

Domain Mapping
How this works is you keep the blog URL the same but map to a domain so it looks like it has been changed.

You will need to be using an Edublogs Pro blog to use domain mapping

For example,  http://aquaculturepda.edublogs.org/ has used domain mapping to achieve http://suewaters.com/

This only works if you have purchased a new domain from a domain registrar such as GoDaddy.com and won’t let you map to a new Edublogs blog.

Create a new blog with the preferred blog URL

Here is how you do it:

1. Create a new blog – follow these instructions
2. Log into your original edublogs.org blog dashboard
3. Click on Tools > Export
4. Click on Download Export file and save onto your hard drive
5. Log into your new blog
6. Click on Tools > Import
7. Click on WordPress
8. Browse to locate Download Export file
9. Click on upload file and import

This will import all pages, posts,  comments, files.   But you will need to manually set up your blog theme and widgets.

We recommend that you have both blogs open in separate browser tabs or windows and work between the two blogs to change the theme and add the widgets.

Edublogs Campus provides the greatest control over how much access and level of responsibility you assign students. As the person in charge of the site you are able to log into any blog, change how visible any post is, approve or delete comments, change user access, update their passwords and email addresses etc. It also makes it considerably easier to set up and manage a large number of blogs.

You don’t have this same level of control with standard Edublogs blogs.

The most likely reasons are:

1. You are checking the wrong blog. Pro status is on a per blog basis not per user. Which blog becomes a Pro blog depends on which blog dashboard you were in when you signed up to be Pro
2. You didn’t complete the entire subscription process. Make sure if you pay by Credit Card that you complete the final step by signing up for a PayPal account.
3. PayPal is taking time to process your payment. How long it takes to activate your Edublogs Pro status depends on which PayPal payment option is used. Normally it is almost instanteous however Echecks can take several days.

No. Storage space can’t be shared across different blogs however you can upload images, audio, videos and documents to the Pro blog and link to their location from the other blogs.

If you are an Edublogs Pro you can create as many blogs as you like for your students, in batches of 15, using the Blog & User Creator inside your dashboard (Click on Users > Blog & User Creator).

Free Edublog users need to create student blogs using the Edublogs signup page. Remember to log out of your account before creating each blog.

See Also: What Are The Different Roles Of Users?

If you only want your students to comment on posts you don’t need them to be added as users. They just need to add their name and email address when they write comments.

However if you want them to also be able to write posts on the blog they will need to be added as users.

To add users to your blog log into your dashboard and:

1. For Edublogs Pro users – Click on Users > Add New Users
2. For Free Edublogs users – Click on User > Add New

See Also: What Are The Different Roles Of Users?

It’s full” indicates you have used up your storage space. If you check on the left hand side of the main page of your blog dashboard it shows your ‘Total Storage space available’ and your ‘Upload space used’. If your ‘Upload space used’ is close to or greater than your ‘Total Storage space available’ then you won’t be able to upload anything.

Once you have used up your storages space deleting images, documents, audio or video in your media library won’t free up new storage space.

If you need more storage space you need to upgrade your blog to Edublogs Pro.