To add users to your Classcaster blog:

1. Visit your blog’s homepage and make sure that there is a login link available on the homepage.
   1. In the default theme, the login link is under the ‘Misc.’ section in the right hand column.
   2. If you are using another theme and there is no login link available on the home page you will need to activate the ‘Meta’ widget as follows:
      1. Go to your blog’s dashboard and click on ‘Appearance’ and then ‘Widgets’.
      2. On the widgets page drag the ‘Meta’ widget from the left into one of the available areas on the right.
      3. This adds the ‘Meta’ widget with a login link to your blog’s homepage.
2. Once the login link is visible on your homepage, have folks who are going to help with the blog visit your blog’s homepage and login using their CALI username and password. This will associate their account with your blog.
   1. Please Note: They should not login to classcaster.net or www.classcaster.net until AFTER they have logged in to your blog or else they will not be associated with your blog.
   2. If one or more of your prospective authors already have a Classcaster blog or are associated with another Classcaster blog, this will not work. To add existing Classcaster users to your blog please email their names to emastersATcali.org and Elmer will add them to your blog.
3. Once they have logged in to your account or had their accounts associated with your blog their names will appear in your blog’s ‘Users’ list which is visible by clicking on the ‘Users’ link on your dashboard.
4. To assign a role to a listed user, check the box by their name and select the role you would like to assign from the ‘Change role to’ drop down and click the ‘Change’ button.
   1. Available roles and their capabilities are:
      • Administrator – Somebody who has access to all the administration features
      • Editor – Somebody who can publish and manage posts and pages as well as manage other users’ posts, etc.
      • Author – Somebody who can publish and manage their own posts
      • Contributor – Somebody who can write and manage their posts but not publish them
      • Subscriber – Somebody who can only manage their profile
5. Now when your authors, etc. login in to Classcaster, they will have access to your blog according to the role you have assigned.

1. Just login to your dashboard, on the left menu look for the ‘Users’ link, click on it.
2. Click on ‘Your profile’. On the profile form enter your first and last name.
3. Find the ‘Display name publicly as’ line and select your name from the drop down list.
4. On the bottom of the page click the ‘Update profile’ button to save the changes.

Now if you look at your blogs (this changes all your blogs) you will notice that your name shows up instead of your email address at the top of the posts. Updating your profile changes the author field your blogs RSS feeds also, making the feeds easier to find

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If you want to add an MP3 audio file to a post to create a podcast, Classcaster gives you a couple of options. You may either upload the MP3 file you want to include in the post before you create or edit the post or you may add the file as you are creating or editing the post.In either case, follow these directions:

1. Go to your blog’s Dashboard and click on ‘Posts’ in the left hand menu.
2. Select a post to edit or click ‘Add new’ to create a new post.
3. Edit or add the information for the post.
4. In the editor place the cursor where you want to add the file link and click on the ‘Add Audio’ icon  in the ‘Add media’ toolbar at the top of the editor box.
5. Either upload a file or select one from your Media Library.
6. Once a file is selected click on ‘Insert into post’ to add a link to the file into your post. The text of the link will be the title of your file.
7. This inserts a link to the file at the cursor position.  Please be sure that your MP3 file is the first linked file in a post so it gets included in the blog’s feed.
8. Remember to hit the ‘Publish’ or ‘Update’ button to send your post out to your audience.

To add an audio player to your post so visitors can listen to your MP3 file see ‘How do I use the ‘Play It Now’ button with MP3 files I have uploaded?‘.

1. From the Dashboard click on ‘Plugins’ and verify that the ‘Audio Player’ plugin is activated.
   1. Once activated the ‘Audio Player’ plugin allows to you add a short code of the format

      [ audio:URL-to-your-MP3 ]

      to any post at the point where you want the player to appear.

2. When creating or editing a post at the point where you want to insert the audio player select ‘Add Audio’ from the ‘Add media’ bar at the top of the editor.
3. You may either upload a new audio file or choose one from your Media Library. Once an audio file is selected, click on the ‘Audio Player’ button and then the ‘Insert into post’ button to insert the audio player code into your blog post.

   

4. Once you have added the audio player to your post, you can use the ‘Preview’ button to make sure it is working properly.

To add a download link for your MP3 file see “How do I add an MP3 file to my post to create a podcast?”.

Now when you create a new post or edit an existing one you can assign it to that category.  Note that any given post can be assigend to more than one category.

1. Surf on over to www.classcaster.net and click on ‘Create a blog here‘.
2. Login with your CALI username and password if necessary. If you’re already logged in you won’t see the login page.
3. On the get-a-blog page, add a bog domain and blog title and hit the ‘Create blog’ button.
4. That’s it. You are ready to configure your blog and start blogging.

You can find the URL by logging into Classcaster and going to your Dashboard page and selecting the ‘My Blogs’ link on the left hand menu. Then check the ‘Primary Blog’ line for your blog’s URL. If you have more than one blog, use the drop down list to see the URL.

Allowed file types: docx pptx xlsx wpd odt odp ods jpg jpeg png gif mp3 mov avi wmv wma midi mid pdf doc ppt xls rtf txt mp4 m4v

If you need to upload another type of file or if you need to have more storage space just use the form below to let us know.

1. When adding or editing a post, locate the ‘Visibility’ setting in the ‘Publish’ area in the right hand column and click on the ‘Edit’ link.
2. Select the ‘Password protected’ button and enter a password for the post. You may use the same password for multiple posts.
3. Click ‘OK’ to save the visibility settings.
4. When you are finishing editing the post and click the ‘Publish’ or ‘Update’ button to save the post with password protection.

1. Go to your blog’s Dashboard and Select ‘Media’ from the left hand menu to open your media library.
2. Click on ‘Add New’ to open the media upload page.
3. Select ‘Select Files’ to add a file to your Library.  Use ‘Browse’ to locate the file on your hard drive and click ‘Open’ to upload the file.
   1. Note that once you click ‘Open’ the upload happens automatically.
4. Enter a title and brief description of your MP3 in the space provided then click ‘Save all changes’.

That’s it. The file is now available in your Media Library and is ready to add to a post on your blog.  See ‘How do I add an MP3 file to my post to create a podcast‘ for information on how to include the file in a blog post and create a podcast.