For a quick run through of how to use the blog system, check out these videos or the Cheat Sheet. Or just login and experiment.

More detailed documentation below.

Contents 1 Blog@Case HowTo's 1.1 How do I customize my blog 1.2 How do I upload pictures 1.3 How do I use other blogging clients 1.3.1 How do I use Flock to Post to my Blog 1.4 How do I post to my LiveJournal blog from Blog@Case 1.5 How do people subscribe to my blog via email 1.6 How do I get a group blog 1.7 How do I make a linkblog 1.8 How do I create links to Wiki@Case pages from blog entries 1.9 How do I access my blog via WebDAV 1.10 How do I use del.icio.us as my linkblog 1.11 How do I post my Flickr photos on my blog 1.12 How do I despam my Comments 1.13 How do I despam my Trackbacks 1.14 How do I Include Content from a Blog@Case Web Page on www.case.edu Web Page 1.15 How do I publish to my blog remotely 1.15.1 Using Performancing for Firefox 1.16 How do I Add Authors to a Weblog 1.17 How do I Delete My Weblog

[edit] Blog@Case HowTo's

[edit] How do I customize my blog

We're working on creating an easier way to do this. But for right now, login to your blog and click on your blog's name to enter the administrative web panel. On the left in the navigational menu, one of the options is "Templates." Click on that link to enter in to your template management area. In there is a listing of the templates that create the look and feel of your blog. You're going to have to be comfortable with HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and Cascading Stylesheets (CSS), and you're going to have to acquaint yourself with the template tags MovableType, the blogging software, uses. There is help documentation located here.

[edit] How do I upload pictures

Yes, of course! In the left-hand side navigational menu og your blog administrator web interface, click on the "Upload File" button.

[edit] How do I use other blogging clients

Yes! The Blogger XML-RPC API is supported and the MetaWeblog API is supported. You can use popular blogging clients like MarsEdit for the Mac OS X or ecto for Windows.

To use the blogging clients, you will need to know the location of Blog@Case's XML-RPC interface and the ID of your blog. The XML-RPC interface is location at http://blog.case.edu/mt/mt-xmlrpc.cgi. To find the ID of your blog, you should log in to the service and click on your blog. When you are at the main screen, you should see in the URL a parameter that specifies your blog id. In the following example with appropriate highlighting https://blog.case.edu/mt/mt-ldap.cgi?__mode=menu&blog_id=28 you can see that the blog ID is 28.

There are a lot of popular blog clients and most will be supported.

• blogBuddy
• slug
• w.bloggar
• BlogJet
• SharpMT
• Zempt

[edit] How do I use Flock to Post to my Blog

Flock is a "free, open source web browser." From their page:

We believe that it should be easy for everyone to contribute to and participate on the web. To that end, we've started with integrating tools that make it easier to blog, publish your photos and share and discover things that are interesting to you.

As an example of configuring a different client to post to your blog here are instructions on how to configure Flock to post to your Blog@Case blog.

[edit] How do I post to my LiveJournal blog from Blog@Case

Filler

[edit] How do people subscribe to my blog via email

Filler

[edit] How do I get a group blog

Your group, organization, department, etc. wants a group blog? That's great! We handle group blogs on a case-by-case basis. Just email us at blog-admin@case.edu with your request. Tell us what URL you want and who should be the owner of the blog. Also, check out Heidi's run down on integrating a blog into your group's web presence.

[edit] How do I make a linkblog

A linkblog is a blog or section of a blog reserved for posting links. To create a linkblog, you first need to create a category reserved for linkblog posts. You can do this by going to the Categories section in the admin interface for your blog (click on the Configuration link next to your blog when you log in). Let's assume that your category is named LinkBlog. Adding links to your linkblog is just creating entries assigned to the LinkBlog category.

Some individuals have opted to add their linkblog to their template. This can be done by editing the Index template. In it, you could place something like the following to include a list of recent linkblog entries:

<h3>LinkBlog</h3>
<ul>
<MTEntries category="linkblog" lastn="5">
<li><a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>" title"<$MTEntryTitle$>"><$MTEntryTitle$></a></li>
</MTEntries>
</ul>

Change the value of lastn to change the number of recent entries to display.

[edit] How do I create links to Wiki@Case pages from blog entries

To create a link from a blog entry to a wiki page, just surround the word you want to link in double square brackets like:

[[EECS]]

That will end up creating a link like EECS.

You can, also, change the text that is displayed in the link by separating the name of the wiki topic and the text to be displayed by the vertical pipe character |. So, including the following text in a blog entry:

[[EECS|Computer Engineering]]

Will end up creating the link Computer Engineering.

More information on creating Wiki links can be found at CaseWiki Help.

[edit] How do I access my blog via WebDAV

Two useful links that are "basically" what one would do:

• Connecting with Windows XP (If this fails, try performing the steps outlined at Windows XP SP2 disables Basic authentication in the Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) Redirector - work around this behavior by enabling Basic authentication
• Using MacOS X to connect to WebDAV

Also, additional information on setting up WebDAV on Windows, Mac, and Unix OSes can be found at this reference page for Case Filer. Simply follow the instructions listed, but replace the Site Address/URL listed on that page with this one: https://blog.case.edu/<your_account_name>. The page also has a link to download NetDrive for WebDAV access in Windows.

[edit] How do I use del.icio.us as my linkblog

At the Demo Blog, there is an entry describing how to do exactly this -- How to Create a LinkBlog with del.icio.us.

[edit] How do I post my Flickr photos on my blog

Filler

[edit] How do I despam my Comments

Comments are very nice... until someone uses them to spam your blog. The reason they do this is to increase the originating site's search indexes... i.e. make their page the first hit on Google for certain search terms.

Luckily, Blog@Case has several tools that, in the best case, stops comment spam outright before it even makes it into your blog or, at least, let's you quickly and easily remove the offending comments and guarantee that those specific one's never come back again. To perform this de-spamming operation enter in to the main administration area of your weblog. On the right in the navigational links, click on the one labelled "Comments". That should take you to a list of all of the comments on the blog. Next to each listing on the right is a little checkbox. Check all those comments that are spam. At the very bottom of that page is a link that reads "MT-Blacklist: De-spam checked comments." After having checked the spammy comments, click on that link. Then, just follow along to the short wizard which will handle the necessary steps to de-spam your weblog:

1. Delete the comments from the system.
2. Analyze the offending comments to determine what URL is trying to be promoted.
3. Ask you if you would like to block all comments that include those URLs in the future.

That should do it.

[edit] How do I despam my Trackbacks

Trackbacks are very nice... until someone uses Trackbacks to spam your blog. The reason they do this is to increase the originating site's search indexes... i.e. make their page the first hit on Google for certain search terms.

Luckily, Blog@Case has several tools that, in the best case, stops Trackback spam outright before it even makes it into your blog or, at least, let's you quickly and easily remove the offending Trackbacks and guarantee that those specific one's never come back again. To perform this de-spamming operation enter in to the main administration area of your weblog. On the right in the navigational links, click on the one labelled "Trackbacks". That should take you to a list of all of the Trackbacks sent to you. Next to each listing on the right is a little checkbox. Check all those Trackbacks that are spam. At the very bottom of that page is a link that reads "MT-Blacklist: De-spam checked pings." After having checked the spammy Trackbacks, click on that link. Then, just follow along to the short wizard which will handle the necessary steps to de-spam your weblog:

1. Delete the Trackbacks from the system.
2. Analyze the offending Trackback to determine where it came from.
3. Ask you if you would like to block all Trackbacks from that site forever more.
4. Add that person to the Blacklist if you selected to do so.

That should do it.

[edit] How do I Include Content from a Blog@Case Web Page on www.case.edu Web Page

There are two methods for doing this:

1. Use an inline frame
2. Use Grayden MacLennan's remoteSSI.cgi just like one would use an SSI (Server Side Include). Note: this functionality is not yet supported on www.case.edu, but should work on other servers with the proper Perl modules installed.

[edit] How do I publish to my blog remotely

Movable Type supports the Blogger API. The URL for the API is

http://blog.case.edu/mt/mt-xmlrpc.cgi

[edit] Using Performancing for Firefox

Performancing for Firefox is an extension for Firefox that lets you compose blog entries directly in the browser without having to go through the Blog@Case web interface. The extension can be configured by doing the following while in Firefox:

• Open the Performancing fore Firefox application (press F8 or click the notepad located in the Firefox status bar)
• On the right side of the window will be a list of blogs. Press the Add button below this list.
• When asked what blogging service you want to add, select Custom Blog.
• Select the blog system type as Movable Type and enter the API URL as http://blog.case.edu/mt/mt-xmlrpc.cgi
• When asked for your user name and password, enter your Case ID and password.
• If everything works, you will see a list of blogs to which you can publish

[edit] How do I Add Authors to a Weblog

When you first login to the system and you are at the listing of all of the weblogs you have access to, on the right, there is a box with a link entitled "Add/Edit Weblog authors". Clicking on that link will take you to an area where you can provide others access to your blog, revoke access, make someone (in addition to yourself) an owner, etc.

Please note, only users who have signed into the system at least once will be listed as available authors to assign permissions to. This is because the account provisioning is done via LDAP at the moment a user first logs in. So, users that haven't ever loggged into the system haven't had their accounts provisioned and won't be listed as an available author to assign permissions to. To assign permissions to them, please contact them and have them sign in to the system. Once they have done that, their account will be available from the menu; and you can assign permissions to them normally.

Once you've chosen which user you want to grant access to, you will see a table of permissions this user already has with blogs under your control.

Choose a blog under your control you want to add the user to. There is a drop-down list at the bottom of the page that lists your blogs. Pick from there.

Hit save and the user should now have rudimentary access to the blog (post only access). To assign the user more permission to the specified blog, click the checkboxes to add those specific permissions. After modifying the permissions, hit "Save."

[edit] How do I Delete My Weblog

Send an email to blog-admin@case.edu indicating the URL of the blog you want deleted.