Blogs
The word ‘blog’ is a contraction of ‘web log’. Blogs are a form of online journal used by millions of people around the world for self-expression and communicating with family and friends. Blogs are usually organized as a chronological series of postings created by the author of the blog. Blogs usually are written by one person, although some blogs can be authored by groups of people.
Blogs in Moodle are user based – each user has their own Blog. Admins, teachers, and students can create Tags – Admins can create site level tags, teachers can create Course level tags, and students can create their own list of tags.
When a blog entry is created, a user can select which tags they wish to associate with their new entry. Multiple tags can be selected. Users can also select who they want the blog entry to be available to (depending on the blog visibility site setting).
Blog visibility
Site-wide blog visibility is set by an administrator via the bloglevel setting in Administration > Security > Site policies.
By default, all site users can see all blogs. Blog visibility may be restricted so that users can only see blogs for people whom they share a course with or whom they share a group with. A further option is to disable blogs completely.
Note: Blog visibility is different from the options a user can publish their blog entry to. For example, if the blog visibility is set to “Users can only see blogs for people who share a course”, then a user will have two publish options – “yourself” or “anyone on this site”. If they select “anyone on this site” then, because of the blog visibility setting, only other course members will be able to view their entry.
Adding a blog entry
- Click on the Blog tab in your profile page.
- Click on the “Add a new entry” link.
- Write your entry and give it a title.
- If you want to attach a file (in Moodle 1.8 onwards), click the Browse button, find the file on your computer, and click Open. Be sure your document is smaller than the maximum attachment size.
- Choose who you wish to publish the entry to i.e. who may see the entry. There are three options:
- Yourself i.e. your blog entry is a draft
- Anyone on your site
- Anyone in the world
- Select appropriate official tags for your entry and/or add one or more user defined tags. If you add more then one, they should be comma separated.
- Click on the “Save changes” button.
Editing a blog entry
You may edit your blog entry at any time, perhaps changing the publish option from yourself to anyone on your site, via the edit link at the bottom of the entry. You may also delete the blog entry if you wish.
Blog preferences
The “Blog preferences” link in the Blog Menu block allows you to choose how many blog entries are displayed on a page. The default number of entries is 10.
Add/delete blog tags
A tag is a relevant keyword or term associated with a blog entry, describing it and enabling keyword-based classification of information for the purpose of retrieval. Typically, a blog entry will have one or more tags associated with it.
You may add new blog tags when adding or editing a blog entry or via the “Add/delete tags” link in the Blog Menu block.
Tag types
There are two types of tag:
- User defined tags – personal tags that any user may add
- Official tags – added by an administrator and available for any site user. Official tags are added in the Website-Administration Block under Appearence -> Manage Tags (Moodle 1.9). In former versions admins added official tags while editing a blog post in a separate field.