Edublogs Help and Support » Categories http://help.edublogs.org Wed, 08 Feb 2012 21:10:01 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Here’s a summary of the Edublogs Widgets and what they’re used for http://help.edublogs.org/2009/08/06/widgets-available-to-different-edublogs-blog-users/ http://help.edublogs.org/2009/08/06/widgets-available-to-different-edublogs-blog-users/#comments Fri, 07 Aug 2009 04:55:48 +0000 Sue Waters http://help.edublogs.org/?p=497 The term widget refers to any tool or content that you add, arrange or remove from the sidebar(s) of your blog — these are the blocks that make up your sidebar.

Video

Watch this video to learn more about widgets

Below’s an overview of the Edublogs Widgets.

Akismet Widget

The Akismet widget displays the number of spam comments caught over the life of your blog by Akismet.

It is added to the available widget area when the Akismet plugin is activated in Plugins

Archives Widget

The Archive widget is used to organise your previously published posts by month.

Bloggers use the archives widget in their sidebar so they and their readers can easily access previous months or years posts. For example, clicking on a May 2011 archive link displays all your posts written in that month.

To save space change the configuration to ‘Display as a dropdown’.

Blog Avatar Widget

The Blog Avatar is used to display your blog avatar (uploaded via Settings > Blog Avatar).

Calendar Widget

The calendar widget creates a calendar in your sidebar with clickable links to your blogs posts for particular dates. Dates that appear in bold type indicate dates you’ve posted.

It doesn’t let you setup a calendar of events.  It’s only use is to display links to your posts by date.

Categories Widget

The Categories widget displays a list of the categories that you’ve assigned to posts.

It helps your readers quickly see what topics you write about.

If you want to display your categories in a specific order, you can build a custom menu then add your categories to your sidebar using the Custom menu widget instead.

ClustrMaps  Widget

The ClustrMaps widget is a simple  tool for quickly adding a ClustrMaps to your blog sidebar.

It is added to the available widget area when the Widget plugin is activated in Plugins.

Custom Menu

The Custom menu widget allows you to display pages, categories, and custom links with a single widget.

To use you first need to set up your custom menu in Appearance > Menu (refer to these instructions).

Delicious Widget

The Delicious widget is used to display your latest bookmarks from delicious in your sidebar.

It is added to Appearance > Widgets when the Widget plugin is activated in Plugins.

Email subscription Widget

The Email subscription widget is used to add email subscription to your blog.

It is automatically added to Appearance > Widgets when a blog is upgraded to Edublogs Pro blogs or if a blog has had extra features enabled on it by an Edublogs Pro blog.

When readers subscribe they are notify latest posts by email.

For more advanced options use Feedburner email subscription.

Please note:

  • The email subscription widget on an Edublogs Campus blog is the Subscribe by Email widget
  • The Subscribe by Email feature on a Campus blogs is a more advanced email notification system than the email subscription widget on an Edublogs Pro blog.

Flickr Widget

The Flickr Widget makes it eay to show thumbnails of your latest Flickr photos in your sidebar. To work your photos must be set to public on Flickr.

It is added to Appearance > Widgets when the Widget plugin is activated in Plugins.

Formidable Entries list Widget

The Formidable Entries list widget displays a list of Formidable entries.

It is added to Appearance > Widgets when the Formidable Pro plugin is activated in Plugins.

Formidable Form Widget

The Formidable Form widget is used to displays a Formidable Form.

It is added to Appearance > Widgets when the Formidable Pro plugin is activated in Plugins.

Global Site Tags Widget

The Global Site Tags widget displays a list of top tags and categories that have been assigned to posts across an entire Edublogs Campus site.

The larger the size of the tag, the more the tag has been assigned to posts.

It helps your community quickly locate posts on topics across an entire Edublogs Campus site.

Google Maps Widget

Google Maps Widget is used to display Google Maps in your sidebar.

It is added to Appearance > Widgets when the Google Maps plugin is activated in Plugins.

Google Search Widget

The Google Search Widget adds a Google search field to your sidebar.

Your blog’s privacy needs to be set to ‘I would like my Blog to be visible to everyone, including search engines (like Google, Bing, Technorati) and archivers’ in Settings > Privacy for it to be able to search content on your blog.

It is added to Appearance > Widgets when the Widget plugin is activated in Plugins.

Links Widget

The Links widget is used to display any links you’ve added via Links > Add New.

A blogroll is a list of your favorite blogs in your blog sidebar. One of the reasons for adding a blogroll is so your readers can use this list to locate other blogs worth reading — you are saying “these are some blogs I like – which are worth checking out!”

There is a wide range of configuration options (as shown below) but in most cases bloggers use ‘show link name’ only.

Meta Widget

The Meta widget is a simple widget for:

  1. Your blog dashboard (click on Site Admin when you are logged into your account)
  2. Log in/out
  3. Entries RSS (your post RSS feed URL)
  4. Comments RSS (your comment RSS feed URL)

Pages Widget

The Pages widget displays a list of your pages in the sidebar.

It is commonly used for themes that don’t have page links in the top navigation.

The alternative is to create a custom navigation menu (refer to these instructions).

You can customise the Page widget to list pages by:

  • Page title – this displays the pages in alphabetical order
  • Page order – use this option to display pages your preferred order
  • Page ID – this displays the pages in the pages were first created in your Dashboard

The Exclude option is used to if you want to keep certain pages from being listed in the widget.

You exclude pages as follows:

1.  Locate the Page ID you want to exclude by going to Pages > Edit

2.  Hover over the title of the page you want to exclude.

3.  The status bar of your browser will display a URL with a numeric ID. This is the page ID.

4.  Enter the Page IDs; separated by commas if more than one Page ID and click Save.

Pro Badge Widget

The Pro Badge widget add a badge to your sidebar to show that you are using an Edublogs Pro blog.

Recent Comments Widget

The Recent Comments Widget displays the most recent comments left on your blog by readers.

Educators use this widget because seeing recently approved comments in the sidebar can be very motivating for students.

Recent Posts Widget

The Recent Posts widget displays the most recent posts you have published.

It makes it easier for readers to see what’s new on your blog.

RSS Widget

The RSS Widget allows you to add an RSS or Atom feed to your sidebar.

RSS Just Better Widget

The RSS Just Better widget allows you to add a customised list of RSS feeds to your sidebar.

It is added to Appearance > Widgets when the RSS Just Better plugin is activated in Plugins.

Search Widget

The Search Widget adds a search box to your sidebar.

It makes it easier for readers to search the contents of your blog.

Subscribe by Email Widget

The Subscribe by Email widget is used to add email subscription to your blog on an Edublogs Campus site.

When readers subscribe they are notify latest posts by email.

Your email subscriptions are managed under your Subscriptions menu item:

  • You can check your email subscribers in Subscriptions > Subscriptions and add/remove subscribers.
  • You can control who is subscribed and the type of email sent via Subscriptions > Settings.

Tag Cloud Widget

The Tag Cloud widget displays a list of your top 45 tags that you’ve assigned to posts. The larger the size of the tag, the more often you’ve assigned the tag to a post

It helps your readers quickly see what topics you write about the most.

Text Widget

The text widget is the most popular widget because you can use it for lots of different purposes. It allows you to add simple text, display links, insert images, embed HTML code.

You can use as many text widgets in your sidebars, each with different content.

It’s one of the most useful widget because you can use it to add content from other sources to your sidebar using their embed code.

Twitters Widget

The Twitters widget displays the most recent updates from your twitter account in your sidebar.

Vod:Pod Videos Widget

The Vod:Pod Videos Widget is used to display your VodPod videos in your sidebar.

It is added to Appearance > Widgets when the Widget plugin is activated in Plugins.

Wiki Widget

The Wiki widget is used to display links to your wiki pages in your sidebar.

WP-Cumulus Widget

WP-Cumulus Widget creates a beautiful rotating and animated representation of all your tags and categories which visitors can then click on to visit archives.

It is added to Appearance > Widgets when the 3D Rotating Tag Cloud plugin is activated in Plugins.

WP PayPal Payment Widget

The WP PayPal Payment adds a PayPal donation widget to your sidebar.

It is added to Appearance > Widgets when the Accept PayPal Donations plugin is activated in Plugins.

]]> http://help.edublogs.org/2009/08/06/widgets-available-to-different-edublogs-blog-users/feed/ 0 Adding Tags and Categories to a Post http://help.edublogs.org/2009/07/29/adding-tags-and-categories-to-a-post/ http://help.edublogs.org/2009/07/29/adding-tags-and-categories-to-a-post/#comments Thu, 30 Jul 2009 00:39:08 +0000 Sue Waters http://help.edublogs.org/?p=231 Tags and categories on posts are used to help readers locate information in different ways.

Categories are like chapters of a book; they provide a general overview of the topics you blog about. Whereas tags are more like the index at the back of the book and explode the topic into a million bits.

On a post you can add as many tags and categories as you need to make the post easier to locate.

The categories and tags you use are displayed in your blog sidebar using the categories widget and tag widget (via Appearance > Widgets).

When your readers click on a categories or tag link on a post or in your sidebar it loads a page with all posts that use that tag or category.

Categories

Categories can have unique names and be wordy; you want them sufficiently descriptive so your reader understands the type of subject matter they will find when they click on the link.

As a general rule you tend to limit the total number of categories you use on a blog.

Below are the categories used on The Edublogger.

Add Categories

Categories are added when you write posts by either:

A.  Select the checkbox next to a category you want to use

B.  Creating a new category

  1. Click on the + Add New Category link.
  2. Type your new category in the Add New Category text box
  3. Click Add New Category

To remove a category from a post just unselect the checkbox to the left of that category.

Tags

Tags are displayed on your blog attached to posts or as a tag cloud in your sidebar.  Clicking on a tag name will take your readers to all posts tagged with that term.

Tags are normally short, one or two words, and are generally keywords (i.e. terms readers would be likely to use if they searched your site); terms that your readers will understand.

Below are the tags used on The Edublogger.

The larger the size of the word in the tag cloud the more posts that have been tagged using that term.

Adding Tags

Tags are added when you write posts by typing your desired tags in the Add New Tag text box and then clicking Add.

Each tag needs to be separated with a comma otherwise the system considers the words to be one tag.

To remove a tag from a post just click the X to the left of that tag.

 

]]> http://help.edublogs.org/2009/07/29/adding-tags-and-categories-to-a-post/feed/ 0 What Are The Properties Of A Post? http://help.edublogs.org/2009/02/13/what-are-the-properties-of-a-post/ http://help.edublogs.org/2009/02/13/what-are-the-properties-of-a-post/#comments Fri, 13 Feb 2009 06:42:08 +0000 Sue Waters http://help.edublogs.org/?p=28 There are key differences between pages and posts that are important to understand when working with them.

Properties of posts are:

  • Blog posts appear in reverse chronological order so that the most recent post is the first post that your readers see
  • Posts are dynamic (updated regularly) and have time stamps i.e. display the date posted
  • You can assign tags and categories to organise blog posts
  • Posts appear in RSS feeds i.e. your readers who subscribe to your blog will receive your latest post in their feed reader

See Also: What Are The Properties of A Page?

]]> http://help.edublogs.org/2009/02/13/what-are-the-properties-of-a-post/feed/ 0 What Are The Properties of A Page? http://help.edublogs.org/2009/02/13/what-are-the-properties-of-a-page/ http://help.edublogs.org/2009/02/13/what-are-the-properties-of-a-page/#comments Fri, 13 Feb 2009 06:38:11 +0000 Sue Waters http://help.edublogs.org/?p=35 They are key differences between pages and posts that are important to understand when working with them.

Properties of pages are:

  • Blog pages are displayed independently of post history and are more static i.e. remain the same from day to day since they are rarely updated
  • You normally use pages for information that you want to share with your readers but don’t expect to update frequently. e.g. Edublogs Info! on The Edublogger is a page
  • Pages don’t have time stamps i.e. don’t show the date they were posted
  • Blog pages can appear anywhere on your blog depending on your blog theme
  • You can change the order pages appear. Pages are normally displayed in alphabetical order but their order can be changed using Page Order
  • You can’t assign tags and categories to pages
  • Pages don’t appear in RSS feeds so readers need to visit your site to view the latest updates to pages
  • You can’t embed posts into a page
  • You can create sub-pages which you assign to a parent page to build a more complex site

See Also:  What Are The Properties of A Post?

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