WordPress Blogs
Blogs are a way to build relationships and trust with your audience by offering content that they find helpful, valuable, informative or interesting.
Your visitors can subscribe to your blog using RSS or email to receive regular updates. These guidelines, which have been requested by various groups creating blogs, will enable these groups to create blogs that follow an efficient and established setup and management process and which support UND's identity.
Start a Blog
Official UND blogs are set up at blogs.UND.edu using WordPress.
Each blog needs to have a primary blog administrator who will set up and manage access for the blog. Primary blog administrators should use their UND email address to set up the account. Request your WordPress blog by submitting a request ticket. UND maintains a blog directory for internal purposes. Please note training is not provided for blogs.
Blog Design
UND uses the Accelerate theme for blogs.
If you would like to request a theme that isn't already installed or need a plugin, submit a request ticket and the UND Web Team will evaluate the request. Themes and plugins require continuous updates by the Web Team; thus need to be limited.
Writing for Blogs
Each blog should have a specific purpose, point of view and personality. Many blogs have an informal, personable tone, whereas others are more formal. Develop a voice and persona for your blog to carry through each post that is consistent with the strategy, audience needs and communications style of the organization you represent.
Comments
Allowing comments is encouraged on blogs because they allow you to engage with your audience. By default, all comments will require the administrator's approval before posting. If you change this setting to allow comments without approval, please understand that spam may become an issue.
Creating a blog moderation policy is also encouraged. Have a consistent and clearly-stated approach for all comments to help promote trust with your blog's audience. There are a number of online resources you can turn to for information on blog moderation policies.
Frequency of Posts
Fresh content is very important. A good benchmark is one post per week, but it will depend on the type of blog. Ideally, two posts a week will keep your readers up-to-date and coming back.
UND archives all blogs after two years of inactivity.
Etiquette
Since UND is providing this platform, make sure that you preserve the University's integrity and your own.
E-Newsletters
E-newsletters are specifically tailored email content delivered to an email list that is maintained by the primary administrator. Official UND e-newsletters are set up at blogs.UND.edu using the MailPoet WordPress plugin. Similar to blogs, E-newsletters must maintain the same UND standards for design, content and frequency. E-newsletter services are only available for emails that go to lists managed outside of Blackboard.
Request an e-newsletter by submitting a request ticket. UND maintains an e-newsletter directory of all administrators for internal purposes.