Main

October 10, 2007

Welcome to Your Seton Hill Weblog (MT 4.0)

If you've just received an ID and password for a Seton Hill University weblog, this document will help you get started.

You're reading a weblog -- a web page designed so that the user can update it by filling in forms and pushing buttons (no programming skills required). This document is a quick guide to blogging with Movable Type at Seton Hill.

  1. Introduction
  2. Background
  3. Video Instructions
  4. Text Instructions
  5. Final Notes

Continue reading "Welcome to Your Seton Hill Weblog (MT 4.0)" »

April 2, 2006

You Recently Started Using Categories in Your MovableType Blog...

... and now you get errors when adding new entries?

This is a very common problem. It's a shame the MT system doesn't tell you what you should have done first in order to avoid this problem, and the error message you receive doesn't help you solve the problem at all. But it's easily fixed. This version is for MT 3.2.

Continue reading "You Recently Started Using Categories in Your MovableType Blog..." »

October 11, 2005

Configuring Your Blog to Alert You of New Comments

You can set up your SHU blog to e-mail you when someone posts a new comment.

The message will include a link that you can click in order to approve or delete the comment.

(I typically approve batches of course-related comments once or twice a day, but you are welcome to approve those comments yourself, as they arrive, which means discussions on your blog will progress more quickly.)

Continue reading "Configuring Your Blog to Alert You of New Comments" »

December 30, 2004

Color Toy

I just stumbled across this site browsing Eris Design, and I thought that it might be helpful for anyone trying to fiddle with colors on their blog (because we all know that's the only thing I seem to think about...! LOL).

Click here to get to the page, that looks like this:
New Picture (2).bmp

Find the little "window" at the bottom right-hand corner,
New Picture (1).bmp
and click that.

Drag the colors on the left to the "window" on the right to see how colors might look on your blog. For instance, what will white text look like on top of a light blue background...
New Picture 3.bmp

Play around, and have fun :)

May 4, 2004

Welcome to the Seton Hill Blogging Community

If you've just received a new personal weblog at blogs.setonhill.edu, this entry will help you get started. Newbies are welcome to post questions here... veteran bloggers, please feel free to offer your input.

If you're looking at this as part of a class assignment, then your instructor has already set up a blog for you, and you are about to finish the setup process.

If you've found this page on your own, you'll need to ask the site administrator for a blog. Follow the instructions at blogs.setonhill.edu.

Continue reading "Welcome to the Seton Hill Blogging Community" »

December 14, 2003

chameleon blogs: get with the color change

As requested by Dr. Jerz, here is my post on the color changes... This can also be found on my blog, incase you wanted to know. Those interested in changing the from the boring *yawn* ordinary colors that MT uses as default can see the steps below. I did my best to explain it as I went in to do mine over again. If you have any questions, email me or you can leave a comment--I'll try to reply ASAP.

Let me try to explain the color change thing...
Go to blogs.setonhill.edu and log yourself in. Hit the "templates" button on the left side of the screen. That'll bring up a list of templates--the one you want for color changes is the "stylesheet," which should be the last one. Click that. Now, copy and paste what is in the scroll box on the screen into a word document JUST IN CASE. If you screw it up and don't have anything to replace it with... I'm not sure what would happen, but I'm sure it can't be good... To change the colors, you've got to know the codes for the new colors. I had a great site to use, that I couldn't find yesterday when I wanted to change colors again, so I found this one: http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_colors.asp

In the HTML, the numbers like 666 and 003366 are the colors used in the default, which is the set of colors you're displaying right now. To find ALL the numbers to change, use the command CTRL + F (find) and type in the number code of the color you want to change. When you click on the "find" button, the number should be highlighted within the HTML. Click onto the MT page to re-highlight it and replace it with the color of your choice. (The most efficient way to do this is obviously copy and paste.) The easiest way to change colors would be to play around with it for awhile. Certain things in the HTML will change different aspects of your blog. Since I don't know everything about HTML, I've just sort of figured out some of the things and what will change if I play with it. You should, too.

To see what you've done, you have to save the changes in MT and then REBUILD your page. Refresh your page and look at what you've got. Sometimes when you think you've created something beautiful, it's actually really crappy or difficult to read--make sure you check! We want to be able to read what you write. Think not only about what looks nice on the screen, but also consider how you'd feel innocently pulling up a page that was neon yellow to have your retinas burned out due to the glow from the screen... just a thought ;)

hope all that helps.
Happy blogging :-D

October 25, 2003

EL 227: Term Project Proposal

Just a reminder -- on Monday, EL 227 students have a one-page term project proposal due. As I've said in class, I'm expecting more than just "I'd like to do something on popular music." I'd like to see some evidence that you researched your topic and found an area that has not yet been covered. (If you can give me clippings or printouts of articles that are similar to what you want to accomplish, that will help tremendously.)

Here is the relevant section from the syllabus:

Term Project (a well-researched news feature suitable for publication in a news magazine -- this would be more substantial than showing up at a lecture and writing down what the speaker said; or, an issue-driven, academic paper that makes a specific argument about some issue of the practice of journalism (how it is affected by ethics, gender, politics, technology, etc.). 4-6 pages, with an annotated portfolio of research notes (including rough drafts, printouts of web pages or e-mails consulted, interview notes, etc.)

Continue reading "EL 227: Term Project Proposal" »

October 22, 2003

E-mail Links

In "Writing for the Internet," Amanda asked how to create an e-mail link. While this won't work on every computer (the computer on the other end has to be configured properly to load an e-mail program automatically), here's all you do. Select the text you want to turn into the link, and then for the URL, instead of typing "http://www.whatever.com" you would type "mailto:whoever@whatever.com". Example: whoever@whatever.com.

It's a simple as that! (More below...)

Continue reading "E-mail Links" »

October 6, 2003

html

Just in case you want to change the color and some of your fonts on your weblog, here is a great html site you can look at and learn to change the fonts and colors and other things on your blog.

http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp

September 25, 2003

Adding Categories to your MT Blog

First, tell MT you want to archive your entries according to category.

Weblog Config -> Archiving -> Check "Category"

Then, add a bit of code into the template.

Continue reading "Adding Categories to your MT Blog" »

September 24, 2003

Creating your Blogroll

The default Movable Type template has a space where it tells you to add new links. That space (in a side column) is the "blogroll," or a list of sites that you want to recommend to your readers. This short entry describes how to create a blogroll, and includes a bit of sample code.

Continue reading "Creating your Blogroll" »

September 22, 2003

Color Picker

For those of you who have already started personalizing your weblogs, here's a utility that will let you see online color combinations before you try encoding them.