OK, so you’ve decided to take on blogging with your students and/or colleagues and you think WordPress might be the answer… How do you actually get your own blog?

Here are your options:

1. Use WordPress’s free blog hosting site. You can set up a free blog, accessible by anyone anywhere, and can customize the blog to a certain extent.

2. Contact a tech person in your district. See if district server resources meet WordPress’s requirement of PHP and MySQL. If your resources match, most tech persons can set up WordPress with minimal hassle. Many techie types can also set up a server just to be used by a WordPress installation. If you or your district is interested in offering a large number of teachers (or even students) their own blogs based on a single installation of WordPress on the district serve, the WordPress MU (“multi-user”) is the way to go.

3. Host your own WordPress blog or blogs on an external hosting site. This web page is hosted on a site external to my district. I don’t use it with students, only to share info with other teachers. Although this site is hosted by BlueHost, there are many web hosting companies that offer easy WordPress installations.

4. Trickiest of all, you can set up a server on a computer in your classroom. Depending upon how your district manages it’s servers, you could run a WordPress blog or blogs from a computer connected to the district’s network. Only people within your district (or possibly just within your school) can access the blog. I’ve done this several times (a few times with Moodle and Drupal), and in each case I used XAMPP to set up the server, and then set up a WordPress installation on that server. Some people like the privacy of a school or district-only server.

For more information, see Installing WordPressMu – The E-Book and my district’s strategies for getting multiple teachers and students involved through WordPressMU.

 

Mar 11th by admin