Blogs

Service Description

The blogging service provides users the ability to record their thoughts, opinions or news on a publically viewable web space without the need for any technical knowledge.

Blogs are commonly used to share information, useful links, media, examples or experiences in relation to targeted subjects (or given a personal blog whatever the user wishes) to interested persons or the world in general.

Features

  • Based around the popular WordPress blogging platform
  • User-friendly dashboard interface for managing blogs posts and media files
  • Spam-filtered commenting (choice of guest or registered user commenting)
  • The ability to publish/link
    • Text
    • Links
    • Pictures (also supports Flickr, Picasa galleries)
    • Video (including embedding of YouTube, Vimeo and Helix content)
  • Directory of existing registered blogs (private blogs are excluded)
  • A view of popular categories and tags as well as most recent posts
  • Group blogs, allowing a group of people to view/maintain a shared blog
  • Social media integration allowing blog posts to be shared on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn
  • Full mobile device support through the customisable WPtouch plugin

Users

Any member (or group of members) of the University can register for, view, comment on and post to their blog.

Blogs are readable by anyone in the world.

Service Hours

24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The ISS “at risk” period is 07:00-09:00 every Tuesday. Further planned maintenance times will be publicised in advance if there will be a disruption to the service.

Level of Service

All blog entries and the customised system workings are backed up on a daily basis. In the event of a significant hardware failure, restoration of the service should be within three working days.

Support and Documentation

A user guide for the service can be found here: https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/help

Additional support is available via the ISS Service Desk on 5999 or it.servicedesk@ncl.ac.uk.

All incidents relating to this service will be handled according to the ISS Incident Management and Major Incident Management processes.

Request Process

To register for a personal blog:

  1. Go to https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk
  2. Click the 'Login' link on the right menu
  3. Enter your campus login ID
  4. Click 'My Sites' at the top left of the page
  5. Choose the 'Create a New Site' option
  6. Enter a title for your blog, then click the 'Create Blog' button

To request a group blog:

  1. Email it.servicedesk@ncl.ac.uk with the following information:
  • Blog title
  • Preferred blog address (e.g. https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/myteamblog)
  • The email addresses of users who will require access to the blog

Requests for any other aspect of the service should be made via the ISS Service Desk on 5999 or it.servicedesk@ncl.ac.uk.

All requests relating to this service will be handled according to the ISS Request Fulfilment process.

User Responsibility

Users are expected to make use of the documentation before contacting the Service Desk for help.

Users are expected to comply with the standard rules of using campus computing facilities: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/itservice/rules/

Costs

N/A