While no longer the new kid on the block, Twitter has gained momentum. It doesn’t have the same user base as Facebook and the way people use it is very different. Twitter has focused on the short status message from the start, before Facebook even integrated the idea into their platform. Users are limited to 280 characters. It’s a conversational platform for interacting with people. It’s used heavily at conferences and many choose this as a social network for really networking with peers and others in their community as well as people they might not ever meet in real life. You can follow as many people as you want and it’s a great way of having a stream of information about “what’s happening” with people and groups you’re interested in. One powerful development of Twitter is that celebrities have begun to embrace it as a way to speak directly to their fans without having the message interpreted through other media and journalism with a slant. The ability to search various topics or hashtags (keywords) and see a running stream of what people are saying about that topic is also a very powerful way of gauging reaction to ideas and events. It’s a great idea to experiment with a Twitter account by signing up, adding a profile picture and information about yourself, following a group of people, and interacting with it daily. While the gratification may not be immediate, it’s one of those social networks where the more you put into it the more you will get out of it.

Embedding a Tweet 

In WordPress, you can embed a tweet into a blog post. The tweet will be automatically formatted to match what it looks like on Twitter. In addition, viewers of your blog can interact with an embedded tweet, and even “like” it if they are logged into their Twitter account.

See the video tutorial below to learn how to embed a tweet into your post.

Embedding a Twitter Timeline

WordPress allows users to embed their Twitter timeline directly into a website in the form of a widget. Widgets can be placed in several areas of a site, and are easy for viewers to see and interact with from the site’s front page. 

See the video below to learn how to embed a Twitter Timeline into a site. 

LinkedIn is the professional resumé of social networks. It mixes the ability to keep an updated resume of where you work and what your accomplishments are with a social aspect of having people recommend you and comment on your work. Most users find LinkedIn helpful not as a day-to-day network they use, but rather when they’re searching for a new job and want to find people they know that might have connections. The old saying “It’s who you know” when finding a job or making a connection is particularly relevant here where those connections can be exposed to you (You know this person who works for the company of one of Bill Gate’s sons, and the VP went to high school with you).

As mentioned in the opening paragraph, talking about social media is an ever-changing and moving target and this article can never be truly comprehensive. The goal of Create Digital is to have you thinking more critically about where you put your content, not that you don’t participate in these networks which still have a lot of value, but rather that you own the work you create. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others all have different audiences and the more places you push your content to, the more opportunities for discussion and feedback you’ll receive. The ability to network with an increased amount of people that isn’t reliant on face-to-face meetings is a powerful change in how we interact on the web and the value of it. As you begin to explore social media the best recommendation would be to choose a space you want to explore and really dive in. Follow as many people as possible, talk to them, respond to their work, and you’re more likely to get responses in return that start to build that sense of community for you.

On a WordPress site, you may want to add a Creative Commons license. Creative Commons licenses will allow others to share your work, making it more open and accessible. The amount of freedom that others have with your work is dependent on the type of license you select.  

The Creative Commons “Choose a License” feature allows users to take a quick quiz to determine what license is best for them. For example, a license that Creative Commons offers is the CC Attribution License (CC BY 4.0). This license will allow others to share and adapt your work if attribution is provided.  

Once a license is selected using the “Choose a License” feature, Creative Commons will generate code that can be embedded into WordPress. You can apply a Creative Commons license to a WordPress post or page, or you can apply a Creative Commons license to your entire site. 

Adding a Creative Commons License to a Single Work 

To add a Creative Commons license to a post on your WordPress site, you will need to embed the license HTML into a block on the post editing screen. To learn how to embed Creative Commons license into a post, see the following tutorial video.

Adding a Creative Commons License to an Entire Site 

A widget at the footer of your site is the best way to apply a Creative Commons license. A widget will appear at the foot of every webpage that a viewer navigates to. See the following tutorial video to learn how to place a Creative Commons license into a widget at the footer of your site.

Public domain works are free from copyright restrictions. This means that the work can be used by the public in any way and has no attribution requirement.  

Through Creative Commons, a work can be placed into the public domain through the “No Rights Reserved” (CC0) license. This license is used by copyright holders who wish to release a work from copyright restrictions. For WordPress, this will typically be the most appropriate license for placing content in the public domain.  

It should be added that there is another Public Domain license that Creative Commons offers. This is known as “No Known Copyright,” or public domain mark. This license should not be used by creators who wish to release their own works from copyright restrictions. For that purpose, use the CC0 license.  

Adding a “CC0” License to WordPress

To use the “No Rights Reserved” (CC0) license, navigate to the Creative Commons Public Domain page. Under the “CC0” heading, select “use this tool.” This will bring you to a form that will generate code for your WordPress site.

You will lose access to your Create Digital domain as early as six months after you graduate (or otherwise discontinue) from the University of South Carolina, so it’s essential that you back up your site content prior to leaving campus. You have a number of options: pay Reclaim Hosting $30/year to keep everything and migrate to your own domain, download your entire site to store on your computer, or move everything over to another hosting provider.

Using Reclaim Hosting

Create Digital is hosted through Reclaim Hosting, a company that started out of the University of Mary Washington. Through our special partnership with them, you’re eligible to have your domain and content automatically migrated to a full hosting account at a 10% discount. Just sign up for your own domain and they’ll do the migration for you. You won’t have to provide any login information since they control the servers on both sides. We have this migration option built right in to Create Digital, but you can check out their website for more information: Reclaim Hosting Migrations

To sign up for your own Reclaim Hosting domain:

1. Login to usccreate.org

2.  In the top navigation menu, go to  Manage Your Account, then Migration Information

3. Click Get Started in the Migration Offer box.

4. You will be given the option to 1) register a new domain, 2) transfer your domain from another registrar, or 3) use your existing domain and update your nameservers.

If you haven’t purchased hosting from somewhere else, the Register a new domain option allows you to get your own personal domain with Reclaim Hosting (outside of Create Digital). Your site will no longer be located at “yoursite.uofscreate.org” and you’ll be able to purchase a new URL.

If you have purchased (or intend to purchase) a URL from a different hosting company, but still want your site to be hosted with Reclaim Hosting, select the I will use my existing domain and update my nameservers option. Your site will be migrated to a personal Reclaim Hosting account, but then you will have to update the information that tells the other hosting company (that you got your URL from) where your site is located. It’s possible to get your hosting and URL from two separate companies, but it’s often easier and cheaper to get them together.

If you already have a site that’s hosted somewhere else, and want to transfer everything to a personal Reclaim Hosting account, select Transfer your domain from another registrar.

5. Once you select an available domain (consider using your name for a professional site), we recommend adding on ID Protect by checking the ID Protection checkbox.

6. On the next page, you’ll see an order confirmation and you’ll then be required to enter your account details to officially purchase your hosting plan.

Downloading a Backup of Your Site

If you’re not sure what you’d like to do with your website or content, you can download a full backup directly from your cPanel. This would also be the route to take if you’re migrating your site to a hosting provider other than Reclaim.

1. Log into cPanel.

2. Head to the Files section of cPanel, click on the Backup icon.

3. Under Full Backup, click Generate/ Download a Full Website Backup.

4. On the next page, select the Home Directory option from the Backup Destination drop-down menu.

5. For Email Address, select whether or not you wish to receive an email notification once the backup is complete. (You may also change the notification email address in the provided field if you wish.) Click Generate Backup.

6. Consider storing your backup in multiple places, like on a flash drive, on your computer’s hard drive, and also in a cloud-based account.

7. Contact your new hosting provider for instructions on how to transfer your content.

WordPress

If you would like to move your WordPress site from your Create Digital account to either a free WordPress.com account or a different paid host, you can do so with the export system built into WordPress. Please see Exporting from WordPress.

The best way to know your audience is through your traffic stats, and this is what Google Analytics provide for free. Google Analytics will help you make data-driven decisions by showing you the stats that matter most.

To add Google Analytics to your WordPress site:

1.The first step is to create an account on the Google Analytics site.

2. You will be asked to log in to your Google account.

3. Then, click the sign up button to get started

4. Fill out the form with your information— make sure that your website URL is entered correctly.

5. Read through the optional settings (checking all is recommended). Then, click “Get Tracking ID”

6. Read through Google Analytics Terms of Service Agreement, and click “I Accept”

7. On the next page, your Tracking ID will be displayed along with a disclaimer that you still need to set up Google Analytics on your website. Leave this tab open so you have the Google Analytics information readily available. 

8. So that you can view your Google Analytics right in your WordPress dashboard, the next step is to install a plugin called “Monster Insights.” To get started, click on Plugins, then Add New from the WP menu.

9. In the search bar, enter “Monster Insights,” and once you find the plugin, click the Install Now button. Once installed, click the Activate button.

10. Click on Plugins in your WP menu, and you should see the newly activated Monster Insights plugin. Click “Settings” to begin configuring the plugin.

11. Click “Authenticate with your Google Account.”

12. Next you’ll either login or the select the Google account you used to set up your Analytics account. Then agree to the Google settings.

13. Select “All Web Site Data,” tell Google you’re not a robot, and click Complete Authentication.

14. You’ll be taken back into Monster Insights in your WP account. Click Save changes.

15. You can now view basic data in the Dashboard or Reports view of Monster Insights. Remember that you can also go to analytics.google.com to view your full analytics (real-time reports, locations, traffic sources, etc.)

WordPress Plugins

Exporting

If you would like to move your WordPress site from your Create Digital account to either a free WordPress.com account or a different paid host, you can do so with the export system built into WordPress.

From the Dashboard navigate to Tools>Export

It’s probably a good idea to download all your content, but there are reasons you may want to download a partial archive. In some cases, if you will be importing your content into a new site using WordPress.org, your new hosting provider may have a file size limit on uploads. If your export file is too big, you can download a set of partial archives by using the following filters:

• Content published within a time frame – set a Start Date and/or an End Date
• Content authored by specific users. Use the Authors drop-down menu.
• Posts belonging to a specific Category or Tag.
• Only posts or only pages, using the Content Types filter.
• Specific posts Statuses

This process will generate an XML file of your blog’s content. This format, which WordPress calls WordPress eXtended RSS or WXR, will contain your posts, pages, comments, categories, and tags.

Note: This will ONLY export your posts, pages, comments, categories, and tags; uploads and images may need to be manually transferred to the new blog. The current version of the WordPress.org installation gives you the option to import uploaded files, but the blog you are importing from must be live and serving images properly in order for it to work. So, do not delete your blog until after media files have successfully been imported into the new blog.

If you are planning to export your content to another blog platform, it’s best to manually download and save your images from your WordPress.com Media Library to  before trying to import/upload them into the new blog.

This information has been adapted from the WordPress support material on exporting a WordPress site.  For more information on exporting your WordPress site, please go to the WordPress Support site.

Importing

Once you have exported your posts, pages, etc., you will import them into your new WordPress site.

Login to your new WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress site and go to the Dashboard. From there navigate to Tools>Import

Choose the WordPress option at the bottom of the list of the services.  Next you will see a screen that prompts you to upload the WXR file you generated through the export process.

Choose and upload your file.  You will then be prompted to assign an author to the posts that you are importing.  You can use this function to assign one author to all posts, or you can manually set the author for each post in the posts menu.

You will also need to reinstall your themes and any plugins that you would like to continue to use.

This information has been adapted from the WordPress support material on importing a WordPress site.  For more information on importing your WordPress site, please go to the WordPress Support site.

If you would like to export your data from your Create Digital account, either because you are migrating your data or because you are closing your account, there are several options.

If you are leaving the university, you can migrate your domain from Create Digital to Reclaim Hosting.

You can also find information on how to export the data from a WordPress installation in order to move it to another WordPress installation or move it to WordPress.com.