WordPress for North Elementary: Transition from Posterous

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Training Checklist:

  • Download your Posterous backup, and extract it by double-clicking on the .zip file
  • Create a new WordPress account, using your @ironmail.org email account. Choose the free WordPress.com option by clicking the ‘Create Blog’ button at the bottom of the page.
  • Fine tune your settings
    • Settings –> General from the left menu. Update the time zone to ‘Denver’, pick the date and time format  that you prefer, and save changes at the bottom.
  • Select a theme for your site
    • Appearance –> Themes from the left menu
    • Appearance –> Customize if you’d like to tweak the colors and other settings
    • Appearance –> Widgets to add some cool functions. Add the ‘Links’ widget, and we’ll customize it later. You may also want to add Authors, Calendar, Category (or Tag) Cloud, Follow Blog, & Twitter (if you use that service). You could remove the Recent Posts and Recent Comments if you’d like.
  • Add any other grade level teachers as Administrators to your blog
    • Users –> Invite New from the left menu
  • From your new blog dashboard, let’s import your Posterous content
    • Head to ‘Tools’ on the left side of the page, and choose ‘Import’
    • Click the ‘Posterous’ option
    • Click ‘Choose File’, and then browse to your Posterous back up folder. Select the WordPress export .xml file, then click the ‘Upload file and import’ button
    • Assign users to the proper Posterous posts on the next screen.
    • Wait patiently as your content is brought into your new site!
  • Add new Pages to your site, just as you had in Posterous: Pages –> Add New in the left menu
    • Link back to NES Home – http://north.iron.k12.org/
    • Upcoming Events – We’ll bring in your Google Calendar
    • How to Help
    • Expectations
    • A page for each teacher
  • Add Links
    • Links –> Link Categories and make a new category called ‘Sites I Like’
    • Links –> Add new from the top or left menu, and add links to the sites you’d like your students and parents to have access to. Add them to the ‘Sites I Like’ category
    • in Appearance –> Widgets, change the ‘Links’ widget to display only the ‘Sites I Like’ category.
  • Add your Google Calendar to the Upcoming Events page
  • Add other features you may have used in Posterous
    • Post via Email: Dashboard –> My Blogs from the left menu. Click ‘Screen Options’ on the top right of the window, and make sure that ‘Post by Email’ is checked. Now, click ‘Enable’ under the ‘Post by Email’ heading beneath. Record the email address listed there – this is the address you’ll need to send your new posts to.
    • Publicize: When making a new post, look for the Publicize options within the ‘Publish’ box on the right. To start, it will say ‘Publicize: Not Connected’ Click the ‘Show’ link and connect your blog to the services you’d like to share your updates to. These settings can be changed on a per-post basis.
  • Now that you have a new WordPress site, you may want to add new information to it!
    • Add a new post: Posts –> Add New from the left menu
    • Edit pages: Pages –> All Pages, and click on the name of the page to update

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