WordPress for North Elementary: Transition from Posterous

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Apr 232013
 

Permalink: http://goo.gl/ZRrzu

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

So Long Posterous… Hello WordPress!

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Mar 132013
 

I’ve been a strong supporter of Posterous ever since I sent my first email to create my Posterous site way back in 2008. It was just about the most amazing thing I’d seen at the time. Super simple site creation and updating – an amazing tool. I’ve trained more teachers that I can remember how to use it to create an easy-to-update and maintain teacher web site, and now this service is going away as of April 30 due to the purchase of Posterous by Twitter. This saddens me quite a bit, because I have 5+ years of content on my Posterous site that I just can’t loose.

My blog has moved to the WordPress platform. I’m using the self-hosted version that is downloadable from WordPress.org, but I think that a free WordPress.com site is more than sufficient for most teachers. The main reason for the move is because I was able to import ALL of my Posterous posts and images to my new site with the help of an import tool. Also, with the help of some good tools and plugins detailed below, I can get my new WP dog to do the same tricks I loved in Posterous. Unfortunately, my embedded videos and documents that I’ve uploaded did not come over, so I’ll loose some of these until I go back and fix each effected post, which could take some time.

To help other teachers in this circumstance, I’ll point you to some good help to make the transition as easy and painless as possible.

  • Import from Posterous to WordPress – these instructions will walk you through how to backup your Posterous site data (which you should do regardless!) and then import it to a new WordPress.com blog or site. The WordPress Importer PlugIn worked for me on my hosted site.
  • Post by Email – this was one of my favorite features of the Posterous platform, and you can do this with a WordPress site as well.
  • Publicize – One of the features of Posterous that I really liked was that it would automatically update my Twitter account and Facebook Fan Page when I published a new post. The Publicize tool can be configured to do this on a WordPress.com blog. If you are self-hosting, the Jetpack plugin will add this feature and much more.
  • Ultimate Follow Me – this is an easy to set up plugin that will give you a sidebar module with quick links to any or all of the social sites you may use to make it quick and easy for people to follow you.

I will update this post with more of the tools and plugins that I’m using and liking on my new site. Now, back to work!