For a short time, it worked out well. Through November 2008, when I first launched this site, to December 2008 I kept up with it. After Christmas break, I started school up again in January 2009, and I just couldn’t keep up… the ironic thing was that I found something that I could write about and attract a whole lot of traffic – Fallout 3. Too bad I’m not younger, or I would just keep playing video games and blogging about them. I think I missed out on that boat when I was an avid gamer 10 years ago…

But, alas, I couldn’t keep playing Fallout 3 enough to write about it, and I didn’t have a lot of steam to write about my other topics either. So, this site and my NaBloPoMo pledge both fell by the wayside.

After starting up Digital Photography How To, I’ve been pretty consistent about posting. There have been some lulls, and I’m not doing as much as I originally thought I would… but I’ve come a long way from July. Recently, I came across a link for NaBloPoMo and I thought I’d try it out again. Maybe this time, I’ll make it through January and actually survive…

As part of NaBloPoMo, you can also create a profile page and mini-blog on their site. As if I needed something else to worry about. But, it is a good place to reflect on the actual process of writing that may not be so relevant for my actual blog.

The past few weeks have been hectic, and I just seem to be getting busier.

At school, we’re backed up against a bunch of deadlines with the yearbook. I wish I could start over on the whole project and have it be September again. I could get it done so much more efficiently, if we just had the time. At this point, we’re behind – and we’ll probably be behind right up until we submit the final version of the book in April.

At home, I’ve been doing a lot of work on the heating system. We switched from gas fireplaces – which were relatively efficient, but not as effective – to the old steam radiator system. It’s much more effective in terms of heating the entire house, but it eats up more energy (gas bills are no fun), and I’ve been doing a lot of maintenance to try and get it working properly.

After the last round of replacements and fixes today, I think I’ve finally got things under control. No more steam or water leaks, and the water hammer has reduced significantly. Thanks to this experience, I’ll also be writing up a series of articles about working on the system. I’ll probably publish them at AC, but I’ll link to them from here afterwards.

To top things off, I finally started class at Rutgers. I managed to wade through the sea of red tape, get registered (late), pay for classes, and attend both of my classes last week. I’m taking an Ed course about the History of African American Education and a History writing course titled Recent American History Seminar. It’s great to be a student again, but it’s something else piling up and sucking time out of my busy weeks.

I’m working on an Ed. D. in Social Studies Education. It looks like the initial coursework will take me a couple years – until the Spring or Summer of 2011. Then I get to dig into the real fun with my dissertation.

Back to Blogging?

With all of this going on, I haven’t had the energy to sit down and write much. The little time that I’ve had at home to relax, I’ve mostly spent watching TV. I always feel guilty afterwards, but sometimes you just need to veg out.

Starting with this weekend, I plan on getting back to my regularly writing schedule. I’m beginning to wonder how feasible it is to keep up with all three topics – it may be time for Nerds at Work to disappear. Or, it may just get trimmed back to a once-a-week topic. I haven’t had a lot of inspiration lately, because I’ve spent most of my online time writing and very little of it developing.

Anyhoo, look forward to some more posts. Throughout the week, I plan on finishing up my “How to Build a Classroom Website” series and promoting it a bit throughout the ‘net. I’ve also got some thoughts from my first week of class that I want to get down. As for gaming, I want to keep track of my painting progress and reflect a bit on my game last week against High Elves.

Stay tuned.

Writing posts – like all administrative tasks on your blog – are performed through the dashboard. This is a private area that only you can access. In the dashboard, you can add/edit/delete posts, re-organize your posts, and change your theme, among other things.

Getting to the Dashboard

First thing we’ll need to do is log in and get to the dashboard.

Navigate to WordPress.com. You’ll see a log-in box to the left labeled, “Already hip?” Fill in your user name and password to log in.

Once you’re logged into WordPress.com, you’ll see a gray bar going across the top of the screen. This has a number of options – “My Account,” “My Dashboard(s),” “New Post.”

If you place the mouse over “My Dashboard(s),” you should see the name of your blog. Click on that to enter your blog’s dashboard.

You can also navigate directly to the dashboard for a particular site. Enter the blog’s domain name (i.e. mysite.wordpress.com) and then add ‘/wp-admin’ at the end. For the mysite domain, the full url would be http://mysite.wordpress.com/wp-admin.

If you bookmark this URL, you can get back to your dashboard quickly in the future. If you aren’t already logged in, it will prompt you to do so when you try to access the wp-admin page.

Creating a New Post

In the dashboard, you’ll see a lot of options. You may want to take some time to poke around and explore. 

When you’re ready to move on, find the Posts option in the column on the left. If you click on the little arrow, it will drop down a few options – Edit, Add New, Tags, and Categories. Click on Add New to bring up a blank post for you to edit.

To publish a basic post, fill in the Title box and type up your assignment in the main text area underneath the title. In the screenshot to the right, I just typed up a quick note that the students had a basic homework assignment.

When you’re satisfied with your work, click on the Publish button to the right. You’ll end up back on the same screen, but there will be a message up top that says, “Post published. View post.”

Click on the “View post“ link and you’ll see your brand new post!

Formatting Your Post

Although you could manually create the HTML to format your post, WordPress does all of the hard work for you. By default, it just presents the information as plain text.

You can spice things up a bit with some extra formatting. Underneath the Title field are a handful of buttons to do so. These buttons make up the WYSIWYG (“What You See Is What You Get”) editor for WordPress.

For example, you can make a phrase boldface by highlighting the phrase and clicking the big “B” button. Hmm… does that seem familiar?

For the most part, these basic formatting options (Bold, Italic, Underline, Listing, etc) are done as if you were using a word processor. It should be fairly straightforward.

One button you’ll definitely want to take note of is the one that looks like a chain link. By highlighting a phrase and clicking this button, you can add a hyperlink to another webpage. All you have to do is copy the URL of the target page into the dialog box, and WordPress automatically formats the link for you.

Uploading and Inserting Files

Next, let’s upload a file to include in our post.

Look at the four buttons labeled Upload/Insert. From left to right, these allow you to upload a picture, a video file, a music file, “other” files (i.e. Word Documents, Excel Spreadsheets, pdf files, Power Point slideshows), and polls.

I’m going to add a Power Point slideshow, so I’ll click the fourth button from the left – the pointy sunburst icon.

This brings up an interactive form that lets me upload and label the file.

Click on the “Select File” button and find the file on your computer using the standard Windows Open File dialog box.

You’ll definitely want to fill in the “Title” and “Caption” fields. The “Title” will be the text that WordPress uses when it creates a link to the file.

You can leave the “Description” box empty and leave the Link URL field alone. It defaults to “File URL,” which is what we want.

When you’re done, click “Insert into Post,” and a link will be created to your Power Point file (or other document).

Don’t worry about conserving space with these files. WordPress gives you 3gb of storage on the server. That’s enough to hold a lifetime’s worth of Power Point slides and Word documents. Halfway through the year, I haven’t even come close to using 1% of that allowance (30mb).

Organizing Posts

There’s one last thing we’ll take a look at before we wrap up for the day: organizing your posts. 

You could just publish information on a daily basis without any organization. A patient student would be able to follow your archives backwards (or use the search box) and eventually find the right piece of information.

Or, you could use ome standard WordPress features to help organize your information. The most important tool you have at your disposal for this is Categories.

While you’re writing up a post, there’s a box to the right labeled “Categories.” By default, there’s one category: Uncategorized.

You can create as many categories as you want to organize your posts, and you can put posts into multiple categories. Students can then view posts that are only in a selected category.

For example, you might want to create a category for your different types of assignments – Homework, Classwork, Projects, etc. You also might want to create a category for each Chapter or Unit.

Play Around. Explore.

We just explored some of the basic aspects of making a new post. However, you should play around with some of the other options – adding special formatting, embedding video files (like YouTube videos), uploading pictures, etc.

I’d also give some thought to how you want to organize your posts. Creating that organization structure ahead of time will help you stay organized later on.

When you done, move on to the next step and play around with the layout of your site.

Navigation Links

• Start Over: Table of Contents
• Next: Design Studio: Changing the Layout and Appearance of Your Site
• Previous: Creating a Site: Using WordPress to Build Your Class Website

The site that we’re going to create will be both simple and flexible. We’ll start with some basic goals – giving students and parents access to information about the course – and you can build on that concept later.

As an example, take a look at the class website that I’m using for my US History course this year – Rockin’ American History. I created the site with a few goals in mind:

1. Provide a record of past assignments, for students that are absent or need to make up work.
2. Provide access to useful materials (test review, power point notes, assignment sheets, etc).
3. Provide an easy launching pad for computer-based activities, like webquests.
4. Provide parents with an alternate way to contact me and “check up” on their children.

The easiest system that allows me to achieve these goals quickly and efficiently is a blog. You can create and host a free blog at WordPress.com – that’s the home of my class site.

If you’re feeling brave, you can hop over to WordPress and just play around with the site. If not, let’s take a closer look at how my site works. Then we’ll get into how you can easily build your own.

What Is a Blog?

If you’re new to the Web 2.0 scene, you might be thinking, “What is a blog?”

The simplest definition is that a blog is a collection of posts or articles that are displayed sequentially – according to the date that they are published. If the basic goal for our class website is to keep a record of past assignments – and allow students to easily access those records – this is perfect.

Think of a blog as an “Assignment Log” or “Assignment Notebook” on the Internet. And on steroids.

When you look around the sample site you’ll notice three main sections: the main content area, a sidebar, and a header.

Main Content Area

The main content area is simply a list of all the posts that I’ve made to the site – displayed in reverse chronological order. The post that appears first is the post that I added last. More often than not, the first post on the list is therefore the most recent day of class.

Within these posts, you can include basic information as well as electronic documents. Do you have a pdf file or a slideshow you want to share with your students? You can upload that and include it in your daily post. Your students can then download the file later on.

This is more or less the backbone of the site. You type up information for the students, it’s published in this list, and the students can access it.

We could stop right here and achieve all four of our goals outlined above. Everything else (the sidebar and header) is just there to help you navigate this content.

Sidebar

The second most important part of our blog is the sidebar. In my case, it’s a thin band of information to the right of the main content area.

The sidebar includes a bunch of links and resources to help students navigate the site and find the information that they’re looking for.

The first item in the sidebar is a search box. If the student types in some information (like an assignment number), the search box will usually be able to bring up the information he or she is looking for.

The second item is probably the most useful item in the sidebar. It’s a custom list that I’ve created with links to a summary for each chapter. The link takes the student to a page that lists, succinctly, every assignment that should have been completed.

One of my colleagues asked me why I do this if all of the assignments are already in the Main Content Area. Because it makes things easier to find! The entire point of the class site is to make information more accessible to the students, so it only makes sense to take a few extra steps to make that information accessible with as few clicks as possible.

Other things in the sidebar include my contact information, a list of the most recent posts, a calendar so that students can find posts by a specific date, and a list of categories to help students sort through the information.

Header

The Header is pretty sparse on my site, but it has it’s own role to play. Besides being home to a pretty logo, it also contains a list of pages. In my case, that means “Home” and “About This Site.”

In case you didn’t pick up on that slight variation, a “page” is different from a “post.” Not a huge difference, but an important one nonetheless.

For the moment, we’ll explain the difference as this: a post appears in the list in the main content area, while a page does not. Instead, pages are usually listed somewhere near the top of the site. When you create a new page, the website automatically creates a new link and adds it to that list.

Pages are great for sharing information that isn’t tied to a specific point in time. For example, you might include a general page about writing research papers – links to academic sources, information about MLA citations, and tips for editing.

Let’s Start Building!

With that, we conclude our guided tour of the Rockin’ American History website. I hope it’s been informative.

All this techno-babble is probably boring you anyway, so let’s get to the good stuff. In the next step, we’ll create your very own website.

I promise it’ll be quick, easy, and painless.

Navigation Links

• Start Over: Table of Contents
• Next: Creating a Site: Using WordPress to Build Your Class Website

If you’re lucky enough to still be in college, you may have gobs of time to waste. Those of us that have moved on to the real world don’t have that luxury. Blogging and publishing on the ‘net needs to fit into an already busy schedule.

With that in mind, it’s definitely worthwhile to take stock of your blogging habits and make sure you’re working efficiently. If you don’t budget your time effectively, you’ll either burn out quickly or fail to meet your goals.

I found some tips for budgeting your blogging time in a recent post on Problogger. It’s got some great tips, but there’s one I’d like to point out in particular: don’t waste your time on social networking sites.

But Don’t Social Networking Sites Bring Traffic?

Yes and no.

Digg and StumbleUpon can definitely bring in big numbers, but that’s not going to happen just because you submit your article. If you submit the article, it won’t be very long before it drops off the page of recent entries – and it’ll be lost in oblivion forever.

In order for your article to get rated well, move up the rankings a bit, and draw some real traffic, you’re going to need other people to submit your post and/or review it. That probably means that people are coming to your post by another means (search engine traffic, RSS subscribers, links) and then Digging or Stumbling your article.

In other words, write a good article and wait for other people to Digg it. If you spend a lot of time Digging and Stumbling your own articles you’ll probably end up at best wasting your time and at worst being labeled a spammer.

What About Making Networks on Social Networking Sites?

You might be thinking, “What if I make a deep network on a social networking site? Won’t that help drive a lot of traffic when I submit an article?”

If you can rise to be one of the top users of the site, then sure. But be prepared to spend a lot of time Digging, Stumbling, Redit-ing, or whatever. Chances are you don’t have that much time (if you still want to blog, wake up for your real job, and keep your family), so focus on the things that are realistically attainable.

There’s a nice quote in the ProBlogger post that sums this up:

A better use of your time is to write a Digg-worthy post, or a post that will spread like wildfire on StumbleUpon or Delicious — not because you’re friends with lots of the users, but because it’s insanely useful, interesting, controversial, or what have you.

Use Social Networking Sites Passively

My advice would be to use social networking sites passively.

Write great articles and then include a bookmarking bar under the title and at the end. If people think it’s Digg-worthy, they’ll Digg. If they don’t, it won’t matter if you Digg it.

Digg seems to me to be a tool for content consumers, and as a blogger you fill the role of a content producer. There’s just no efficient, feasible way for you to manipulate a social networking site into sending you traffic – you need to rely on the consumers to promote it for you.

Are blogrolls a good idea? Do they instill confidence in your readers, or do they just bleed search engine juice from your site?

The Positives: An Informed Author is a Trusted Author

There certainly is something to be said for a blogroll of sorts. When a new user finds your site, he may want to poke around and see who you are.

One place to look is the About page. This should give the reader some information. Another place to look is the blog roll. If you’re supposed to be an authority on the topic, who else do you read?

You can’t possibly keep up with the times if you work in a vacuum, so it’s of interest to the reader how you keep up with things.

A blogroll can also be useful for someone looking for more information.

For example, I’m always looking for more education blogs to follow. I’ve found a ton of tech-related blogs (duh), but very few that are written by Social Studies teachers. Whenever I stumble on a new education blog, I browse through the blogroll looking for something written by a Socials Studies teacher.

The Negatives: Sitewide Links Are Bad for SEO

There are definitely some downsides to blogrolls, though. Some people might not care so much, but if you worry about SEO then you should be worried about that giant list of sitewide links.

You see, sitewide links are like a giant drain on your search engine juice. Each page contains a certain amount of page rank worthiness, and each link on that page spreads the page rank love around.

Sitewide links within your site are great, because they help redistribute that link love. Since every one of your pages links back to the front page, it’ll have a higher pagerank than the individual pages in your site. Likewise, pages like category indexes – linked to by many of your individual pages – will have greater search engine visibility.

Sitewide links going out of your site aren’t so good, though. Each one is a trickle of pagerank going down the drain. One or two sitewide links aren’t going to kill you – but what if you have a dozen pages in your blogroll? Consider how many pages of content you have (hundreds, thousands even?) and multiply that by the number of links in your blogroll.

Even a short list of links – six or seven – could easily work out to thousands of outbound links. Yowza.

To authors who are blogging for a smaller audience and aren’t concerned with search engine traffic, this isn’t a big deal. If you’re in the market to monetize your blog, though, that should concern you a great deal.

I also think that sidebars can easily get over-crowded. With other necessary items (recent posts, categories, archive links, ads, etc) there just isn’t a lot of real estate to give up for that a list of links.

What to Do? Compromise.

I’ve decided to go with a compromise of sorts.

For the sake of my readers, I want to have a blogroll available. I want people to know what I read, and I want to reward those sites that I read regularly with some link love.

However, I don’t want to have a dozen or so sitewide links bleeding my search engine juice. I’d like to keep some of that for myself, so people actually find the site!

Instead, I decided to create a separate blogroll page. In actuality, it’s just another post in my index, but you could consider it a static page of sorts.

On the blogroll page, I include a link to a handful of sites that I regularly read. This is likely to change over time as I change my subscriptions, but I’d say that on any given day you’ll find 6-12 sites that I read. This also gives me a chance to add a comment (a sentence or two) about each site, so the reader knows what to expect.

Then, to make sure that readers can easily find it, I put a prominent link to the blogroll page in my header. Along with the About page, I think this provides some good information about me and my site without hurting my search engine placement.

What do you do think? Are you concerned about all those outbound links, or do you just include a blogroll anyway?

National Blog Posting Month. You might think it’s only one month out of the year. Turns out it’s every month.

I read about it at Tech Savvy Educator.  I originally thought it was a one month thing – help you commit to blogging daily for a month to establish a rhythm. Turns out it repeats every month, with an optional theme, and you’re still expected to blog daily.

NaBloPoMo is also a social networking tool of sorts. By signing up, you get a blog there… seems kind of strange for a community of bloggers.

Anyhow, I’ve found a somewhat useful purpose for it. At one of the Tech blogs I read (Chris Hope’s LAMP Blog), the author does a weekly and monthly round-up of all the posts that he writes and some statistics about his site. Seems like a good way to reflect on what’s working, what isn’t, and what you may not notice is going wrong.

I’m not sure if that type of thing would appeal to the average reader, so for now I’m writing those weekly/monthly posts over at my NaBloPoMo blog. If you’re interested in some random thoughts and reflections on my posts for the week, head over there. Otherwise, there’s not much you’ll find interesting.

NaBloPomo itself may be of interest though. Check it out.