This is a reprint of the FAQ sent out on Friday, May 20. Please feel free to comment or email me questions!

Hello, everyone–
We’ve gotten some more questions about running blogs on our new Movable Type blog server, so this week I’ll address them, and say a bit more about some features that may be of interest even though people haven’t asked about them.
* I saved a blog entry but it doesn’t show up when I view my blog! What’s wrong?
Most likely, you saved it as a draft. All entries default to draft status, which means they don’t show up even after you save them; this is useful when don’t have time to finish an entry and want to add more later without posting it right away. When you are ready to add text or change the entry’s status from draft to Publish, you can edit the entry.
* How do I edit a blog entry?
Whenever you save a new entry for the first time, you are automatically taken to the edit page for that entry. You can get back to it later by clicking the “Entries” link on the sidebar of your blog control panel. (Remember, you get to the control panel by clicking on your blog’s name after logging in at https://wou.edu/blogadmin.)
The edit screen is basically like the entry screen, only with a few more fields at the bottom. The most important is Post Status, where you can change the entry from draft to publish, or vice versa. (The Future option in this menu also prevents the entry from being displayed.) The other important ones will be covered below.
* How can I notify people when I have posted something to my blog?
At the bottom of the edit screen for any saved entry, you can choose to send a notification to your predefined notification list. You can type in extra text if you want, and choose to include the entire text of the entry, or just an excerpt. All users in your list will get an email notification when you click the Send button.
* Who is on my notification list?
Click the “Notification” link on your control panel’s sidebar. At first, your list will be empty, but you can use the form on this page to add email addresses. Unfortunately, you can only add them one at a time; we understand that this makes it difficult for professors to add all their students, and are working on a way around this. You might also consider contacting Paul Lambert (lambertp@wou.edu) and getting an email list created, and just entering that address into your notification list.
* What if I want to keep people from commenting on a specific entry?
Near the bottom of either the new entry or edit entry screen, you will see a “Comments” menu. Normally this is set to “Open”, meaning that readers of your blog will be able to both read comments and post their own. “Closed” means that no more comments may be added, but any comments already left are still visible. “None” hides all the comments and prevents any from being added. For a new entry, set this to either “None” or “Closed” to prevent all comments.
Note that there is a way to force people to leave a name and email address when posting comments, and to be notified whenever a comment is left; these and other options will be discussed below.
* How do I delete a comment I find offensive or inappropriate?
When you edit an entry, near the bottom of the edit page you will see a list of all comments that have been made on that entry. From here you can delete any comment.
* How can I post links that stay on my front page?
You can do this by editing your index template. This requires some HTML knowledge; the better you are at HTML, the more things you can change. It is possible to change the look of your blog in almost any way, but that is beyond the scope of these FAQ’s. However, in my blog, I have posted a fairly simple way to add links to your blog’s sidebar. You can see this here or just look for the entry titled “Sidebar Links”.
* How can I change the colors or font of my blog?
This can be done by editing your blog’s stylesheet; again, the more you know about stylesheet code, the more you can change. The possibilities are almost limitless, but I don’t have room to talk about them here; I intend to post some basics in my blog fairly soon, probably early next week.
* How can I change the name of my blog?
After the last two questions, you’ll probably be relieved to hear that this does not require any HTML or CSS knowledge. First, click the “Weblog Config” link in the control panel sidebar. As you might expect, this takes you to the Weblog Config area, which has many options. The first page you will see is “Core Setup”; the first item there is the name of your blog. Please note that it is extremely dangerous to change any other settings on this page! They can completely mess up your blog. (Well, all right, you can change the time zone if you really want, but there’s no reason for it to be anything other than Pacific Time.)
* How can I change the description of my blog?
If you are already in the Weblog config area, just click the “Preferences” link near the top of the page. The Preferences page has many more options than the Core Setup page, and they are much less dangerous; however, you should still not change anything if you don’t understand what it is even after reading the help text.
The very first option is the description of your blog; you can change it to anything you want, but I recommend keeping it fairly short.
* What other preferences can I change here?
Well, any of them, really, but I don’t recommend mucking about in here unless you know what you are doing. If you do change things you aren’t sure about, make sure you make note of the settings that were there before, so you can change things back if they have an effect you don’t like.
One setting that might be useful is the “Default Post Status”; if you find yourself saving entries as drafts too often, and having to go back and edit them to make them visible, you can change this setting. Just remember that this can lead to the opposite problem of saving things in publish mode by mistake when you meant to save them as drafts!
Other useful settings can be found near the bottom of the page, in the Comments section. You can make people leave a name and email address wen commenting on your blog, control the way comments are displayed, and get email notifications whenever someone comments.
* Where can I go for more information?
I already mentioned this last week, but you can find the Movable Type user manual at http://sundown.wou.edu/mtstatic/docs/mtmanual.html. Also, look at my blog at https://wou.edu/~swartzer/blogs; I will post more tips and tricks as I discover them!
That’s it for this week; feel free to post questions as comments on my blog, or just email me at faq@wou.edu.
Thanks as ever for your time and attention!
—-Ron