Here are some instructions for how to add (submit) your book reviews. You will be creating what in WordPress is called a “post”. It’s actually pretty easy and you don’t have to know any fancy web programming or html coding to be able to create very readable, nicely styled posts. I’ve included some screen shots of what you’ll see along the way. I’ve also annotated those screen shots to make it easier. If you click on a screenshot a larger image will appear. Note: you will create a new, separate post for each of your two book reviews. You will also create a separate post for your “essay” assignment in Unit 7.
First, I’m going to assume you’ve read your book and know what you want to say. Next you have a choice: you can write and edit directly in WordPress, including saving drafts and revising them before publishing, — or — you can write your review in a word processor or text editor (such as MS Word or Notepad). Both ways work. You will want to pay close attention to the TIPS below if you want to copy from another word processor into WordPress.
Step 1. Login to compsys.econproph.net.
I assume you know how to do this since you have already been commenting on discussion posts. Just as a reminder, you can either go to any page on compsys.econproph.net and click on “login” or you can point your browser to
compsys.econproph.net/wp-login.php. Enter your username (TUID) and your password. You will now be shown the “dashboard”.
Step 2: From the Dashboard, click on “Add New Post”
The dashboard should look a lot like this at the right. (you can click on these screenshots to enlarge them). Most everything here can be ignored. What you want to do is to go to the “Add New Post” page.
To do that, you need to click on either the “+ New” button at the top black tool bar, OR click on the “Posts” button at the left. I’ve circled both of these options in this screen shot.
When you click on either one, a small drop down box will appear with an option for “Add New Post”. Click it.
Step 3: Create your new post content.
You should now be looking at the “Add New Post” screen. This is where you create your new post for your book review or essay.
There are 4 things you MUST do on this page. I have numbered them in order in the screen shot to the right. They are:
- Type in your title. Any title that you find descriptive is OK. You do not have to worry about formatting. WordPress takes care of that. Just enter your selected text for your title.
- Enter the body of your post. Use the big text area to enter your text. There’s more information in Step 4 below, but basically it works like any word processor. Just type. The enter key (hard return) creates a new paragraph. For the most part, WordPress takes care of formatting things like font selection, font size, etc. All you have to change or specify is any special formatting such as bold for a single word or an indenting or bullets.
- Identify your Post as a Book Review. Be sure the “student book review” item is checked in the lower right of the screen under Categories.
- Publish it. Clicking on the blue Publish button in the upper right will make it visible to everybody else. You can still edit a previously published post, but it’s a good idea to make sure it’s ready to publish. If you are uncertain, click on the “Preview” button first to see how it would look.
That’s it. You’re done. Congratulations, you are now a “blogger”.
TIPS: Editing your post.
- Copying from word-processor or text-editor. As I mentioned earlier, there are two ways to get stuff into your post. You type and edit in WordPress itself, or you can copy-and-paste from another program like MS Word or Notepad. If you copy from another file, it is best to copy what you want in the other program. Then switching to WordPress, click on either the “T” icon button or the “W” icon button on the editor tool bar (see B and C on the screenshot). These buttons will open a small dialog box. Click in the box and type Cntl-V to paste your content. Doing it this way will make sure the formatting is correct. Microsoft Word formatting in particular doesn’t translate well into a web page. This will clean it up. Use the W button if you are coming from MS Word. Use the T button if you’re coming from some test editor.
- Don’t add much formatting in Word or a text-editor. WordPress will take care of font sizes, font styles, etc. Just worry about the words, paragraphing, etc.
- Quotes: If you are quoting something, turn on the quote styling by clicking the ” button. See A in screenshot.
- Copying from the Web: If you are quoting and copying a segment from another web page, just copy the selection you want in your web browser. Then click in the text box in WordPress and type cntrl-V. Be sure to style it as a quote.
- Make Links: When quoting or otherwise referring to something on the Web, it’s a good idea to link to it. Highlight the text you want to become a link, then click the link button (E on the screen shot).
- Jazz up your post.
- You can embed a Youtube video if you think one is relevant. Youtube is now incredibly easy. Just click the Share button on the Youtube video page, copy the embed code, then paste that embed code on it’s own line in WordPress. Or, you can click the Youtube button and enter the URL for the Youtube video. Easy. (F on screenshot)
- Create a table. (H on the screenshot).
- Insert a Google Map. Find your Google map in a browser window. Then copy the URL (it’s available through the chain-link button on the Google map page). Go back to WordPress, position where you want the map to appear, and click the map button. (G on the screenshot). Paste in the URL you had copied.
- Add an image or picture. Click the little camera icon next to “Upload/Insert” just above the toolbar and to the left. A dialog box opens. Choose a tab depending upon whether you want to upload or simply specify a URL on the Web and have WordPress get it. Follow the instructions, answer the settings (most of the defaults are OK), and be sure to finish by clicking Insert.
That should do it.
Saving and Editing Later
If you want to save your work as a draft and not publish it yet, you can do that by clicking “Save as Draft” instead of “Publish” in Step 3.4 above. Then, later when you want to come back and edit it again, you go to the dashboard (step 1 above), but instead of clicking on the Posts button > Add New, you click on Posts button > All Posts. A list of posts will appear. Find yours and click on it to edit it. You’ll be back to step 3.
Finally, here’s a little video about creating and editing a post: