WordPress

Here’s what you need to do to set up a free WordPress account for this course.

• Go to WordPress.com (not WordPress.org).
• You will be asked to pay money. Do not. Select the un-highlighted Free option right beneath the boldly highlighted pay options.
• Follow the instructions to create a new WordPress account.

• You will be asked again to pay money. Do not. Select “Start with a free site” in red above the various pay options.

• You will be asked to create a new website with a title. Don’t fret over this. Consider what you are doing as creating a place-holder site. You can change it all later. For example, I’ve just written “R&CFall2020” below. Then I’d hit the red Save Settings button. Then . . .

• Once you’ve saved your Site Title, I want you to go rogue. Rather than clicking on Continue or Return to My Home, please navigate up to the little cameo in a circle in the upper right-hand corner and click on that. Doing so will bring up a menu for your User Profile, which is actually fairly important for our purposes.
• WordPress has three different names for you: (1) Your User Name, which is the email that you used to sign up with, (2) Your Profile Name (which I’ve filled in as “Joe D Harris” below”, and (3) your Display Name, which will serve as the “signature” of your posts. It is useful to have a Display Name/signature that identifies you to the other members of the seminar (as opposed to, say, “Cherry Champagne” or E110Fall2020″). But I also understand that you may not want to identify yourself to the rest of the googled world. Somy advice is: Use your first name and last initial as a Display Name. It’s your call. In my example below, I use “Joe H”.
• This is also your chance to identify yourself to people whom you won’t have the chance to meet in person but will nonetheless be working with for the next semester. Observe my attempt to be cute and friendly in the About Me section below.

• Next, c’mon, be a sport, give us an image to associate you with. It doesn’t have to be a headshot, although it can be. For this mock profile, I’m giving you a photo of my good boy Abe (although the Gravatar for my actual WordPress account is indeed a headshot).

• Finally, and this will actually be important for the smooth workings of our seminar, please send me the email address you used to set up your account. If you already have a WordPress account that you’d like to use for this course, that’s fine, please just send me the email address associated with it. But I imagine that most of your will use your new Udel account. Either way, please send this to me right now. Once I receive your WordPress email, I will invite you to be an “Author” on this site. You’ll get an email from me from WordPress. Please accept this invitation. You’ll then be able to post to this site—which you will need to do by next Tuesday (9/08)—and your Gravatar image will appear in the right-hand column of this site—right along with those handsome guys, “Joe Harris” and Joe H”!

If you get confused, or if something doesn’t seem to be working, text or email me. I’ll walk you through it. WordPress is not always intuitive, but it’s not really all that hard either. Good luck!