Tuesday, Jan. 19 marks the start of the spring semester at the University of Massachusetts, and I’ll be taking the reins of DailyCollegian.com once again as its managing editor.
I’ve got a few specific goals for the semester, among them setting up an infrastructure so we can remotely share content with our media partners at WMUA and UVC-TV 19 and getting a lot more of the staff contributing to the Collegian blogs throughout the day.
I’ve found throughout my collegiate-level evangelizing for new media that, much like in newswriting, you can’t assume anyone knows anything. So I’m in the process of drafting a pretty comprehensive guide to blogging for DailyCollegian.com, bringing together basic how-to-use-Wordpress instructions, a brief introduction to search engine optimization, Collegian and AP style tips, and my own catch-all rule for interacting with your audience on the Web: Don’t be a jerk.
[Note: the guide is a draft-in-progress, so feedback is not only welcomed, but requested.]
But because some people are better visual learners, and my nonfiction writing professor Norm Sims always told me to show, not tell, I put together this quick, very basic how-to video on posting to DailyCollegian.com using our WordPress CMS:
The video is itself a draft; I put it together pretty quickly using the free screencasting software ScreenToaster, which pretty much gives you what you pay for: It’s difficult to read the smaller text on the screen, and although I used a condenser mic for the voice, I still had to boost the audio levels in iMovie 200 percent. The cursor in the video is also slightly off from where it actually was on my screen, which I’m concerned makes things confusing when I’m pushing the little buttons in the CMS.
I tried to think like a neophyte and make sure I covered all the basic questions someone new to WordPress might have: How to I make a new post? How do I add an image? A video? What are categories? Tags? How can I check my work? And so on.
So that’s where you come in, dear reader: What do you wish someone told you your first time using WordPress? If you’ve never used it, does the video give you an idea of how to start?
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