1. Open up your Google Reader. In a separate tab to go blogpulse’s advanced search option.

2. In the “search for” line choose “exact phrase” and enter in the theme of your blog.

3. Click go.

4. Click on the orange XML rectangle (get feed for this search) that appears above the search results.

5. Copy the URL from the address bar.

6. In Google Reader click on “add subscription” and paste in the URL. The results of the search should appear in your Google Reader.

7. Go to Google News.

8. Click on the Advanced news search link (toward the right side of the screen).

9. In the exact phrase line enter the theme of your blog.

10. Click on Google search, and when you get your results, click on the RSS link at the left-hand side of the screen.

11. Follow steps 5 – 6.

(You can also add these resources to your blogroll if you want. To do this: from your dashboard click on blogroll. Choose to add a link. Give it a title and paste in the URL from the site. Click on add link.)

**For those of you who have already written an introductory post, you can either reframe your topic in a second introductory post (what might you add to your approach to this blog that you didn’t include in the first post?) or you can just begin blogging on your topic.

1. Most Important: Make sure the time-stamp on your blog is accurate. Here’s how: Go to options (from your dashboard); scroll down to Date and Time; in the box next to where it reads — Times in the weblog should differ by — it should say -4 or -5 (just substract from the standard/default time listed there in order to make your timestamp accurate).

2. Housekeeping — cleaning up your blog: You might want to make some changes to make your blog more “official” by getting rid of the “hello world” or any sort of test posts you might have that aren’t actually a part of your collection of posts. To do this: Go to manage (from your dashboard); make sure “Posts” is chosen. You should see a list of all your posts and to the right side of the screen you have the option to view, edit, or delete. Simply delete any posts you don’t want. Also, this is where you will go if you want to edit or make changes to any of your posts after you’ve saved them (as draft) or published them (posts them to the web).

3. It has come to my attention that depending on what view of the textbox you’re in, you might not see a button that reads “link.” This has made it a bit confusing for some people to create links, as suggested by my previous guidelines. If you don’t have words (letters) above your textbox, you have little pictures. To create a link, the one your are looking for has a little chain link on it. Use that. Be sure that you are also breaking your link in the proper place (you might need to use the little broken chain icon button to do this). Some of you have blog entries that are linked in their entirety. Part of writing effective blog entries is choosing when and where to link, which words make the most sense and are most appropriate to act as a link. See, for example, above, when I referenced my previous entry, I mentioned it and created a link out of that reference. Notice that the rest of the words are not links — only the words I chose.

4. Also regarding linking — as you read blogs (including this one), you will probably note that blog writers don’t include the whole long URL in the midst of their writing. This is disruptive to the reading of the text. This goes back to #2 and the idea of choosing specific word(s) to act as the link. The URL only gets pasted into the box after you’ve highlighted your word(s) of choice and clicked on the link button. Also, try to embed the links into your writing, as I’ve done here in this sentence with the word “links” — the links are a part of your writing, not separate from it.

5. Extra Credit: Create an “about me” section. To do this choose “manage” and “pages” (from your dashboard). You should see an About page listed there. Choose edit on the right side of the screen. Get rid of the default text that is there (something about this being a wordpress blog) and get creative. Remember this is a public blog, so you might want to filter/limit the information you include in this section. Ideas for this include (but are certainly not limited to):

• Write an autobiography in fourteen lines, starting from the present moment.
• List ten random bits of information about you
• Describe why you are blogging
• Explain what brought you to the point where you are now in your life

Find one online news source and one blog (NOT a classmate’s blog) that interest you–create a brief (one to five sentences) description of the site and put a link to it in your blog. If you find something that you want to read (and write about) regularly, subscribe to it–that is, add it to your google reader.

To create a link:

* Type the name of the site and highlight it or highlight any part of the text that you want to be “clickable”
* Click on the icon at the top of your text box that shows a little chain link or simply reads “link”
* Enter the web address/URL of the site (For this you might want a second tab open with the site you are linking to; copy and paste the URL out of the address bar); click ok

A couple of sites that might help you with this assignment:

technorati: tracks blogs on the web and what people are blogging about; check out “Rising Blog Posts” for currently popular blogs

salon : a news source that also includes links to blogs at the end of their articles.

1. Go to wordpress.com

2. Click on “Get a Wordpress Blog now”

3. Choose a username. Please note that this username will become part of the URL for your blog. For example, the username for this blog is eng105, and the URL is www.eng105.edublogs.org. In other words choose something that isn’t overly complex, is easy to remember, and is a little bit unique and/or “catchy.”

4. Enter email address; check yes to “the terms of service;” and choose “gimme a blog!”

5. On the next screen, create a title for your blog and click Signup.

6. Go to your email and activate your blog.

7. Login; click on your blog name/link on the right-hand side of your screen. This will take you to what is called your “Dashboard”–this is the place from which you control your blog–writing posts, making edits, changing the look of your blog, etc.

8. Click on “Presentation” and then choose a theme. This is what your blog will look like.

9. You now have a blog, and I need the URL or blog address. Again, this should look like www.username.wordpress.com. Your blog address appears at the top of browser screen in the Address or URL line. Please copy this address and email it to me (by Tuesday at 5pm). Remember to follow the guidelines for emails as stated in the syllabus — include your section in the subject line of the e-mail.

For a brief tour of/tutorial on your new wordpress blog, click here

10. To change your password go to Users and Update password.