You can customize the appearance of your blog. You can choose one of the available themes‚ or if you know how to edit HTML and style sheets you can customize the look of your blog even more.
To view the available themes‚ select the "Templates" link in the blog administration menu. Select the link "Select a Design using StyleCatcher" located at the bottom of the templates page under the heading Plugin Action.
To customize the look of your blog using HTML and style sheets you can modify the template files named "Stylesheet," and the "Main Index." Other configuration templates can also be modified.
Please Note: It is a good idea to copy and save these files before editing them just in case you make a mistake and need to recover from it.
You can upload files into your blog. Any kind of file can be uploaded. The blog software will automatically create a blog entry which contains the HTML code to link to this uploaded file. Visitors can then click on this link to view or download the file. When you upload a picture, the blog software will create a thumbnail image as well.
You can edit the blog entry to add additional text describing the link. If you know how to enter HTML commands‚ then the entry can do more advanced functions like automatically play movie and sound clips‚ or show the picture in the article.
Podcasting (from iPOD and broadCASTING) is a popular way to distribute audio and other media files on the web. Podcasters publish RSS feeds listing their media files‚ and then listeners or viewers can subscribe to those feeds‚ making it easy to find and download new content.
To make podcasting easier for people at the U of S‚ the MT-Enclosures plugin has been installed on the blogs server.
You can read all about podcasting with Movable Type in the MT-Enclosures documentation.
Here is a brief explanation of what you need to do to become a podcaster:
This template is used to create the index.xml file for your blog. Movable Type already produces this file for you‚ but by default it does not have the <enclosure> elements needed to produce a podcast.
The MT-Enclosures plugin will add <enclosure> tags to your index.xml file‚ turning it into a podcast.
Now all you have to do is tell people about it. The address of your podcast will be something like http://blogs.usask.ca/some_blog/index.xml.
You can enable or disable the ability for visitors to comment on your blog postings. Visitors cannot author their own articles in your blog‚ but can comment on articles already in your blog. It is recommended that you only allow moderated comments on you site to prevent people from posting spam to your blog. The default for the "immediately publish from" setting is "no one" to prevent spam of this type
To adjust your comments settings while in your blog administration area‚ select "Settings" from the left menu and click on "Feedback" in the top menu. You will then be able to adjust the comment settings.
