What is WordPress?
Wordpress is a website creation and publication tool. You can create your own website using "blocks" to organize content and uploaded media (no coding experience required).
WordPress.org is the main version of WordPress, but we have our own Bucknell WordPress that you can use for free (with no ads on your websites) to create Bucknell-related sites. That can include course department blogs, course sites, lab sites, on-campus conferences/symposia, or personal portfolio sites.
How do I get access to WordPress?
If you have a Bucknell login, you already have access to the Bucknell instance of WordPress! Go to the main Bucknell Blogs page, click the "Login" button, and log in with your Bucknell credentials.
If you are an instructor who would like a WordPress site for your course, you can request one through the Course Request Form.
There is no limit to the number of sites you can create, but each domain name must be unique. Learn more in our article about how to create a new WordPress site.
How do I log in to WordPress and edit my sites?
To log in to WordPress at Bucknell, go to the main Bucknell Blogs page, click the "Login" button, and log in with your Bucknell credentials.
You will see a screen that says, "You attempted to access the "Bucknell Blogs" dashboard, but you do not currently have privileges on this site." This is a standard error message and you can disregard it. After that message, there will be a list of all of the WordPress at Bucknell sites that you have access to.
To edit a site from this list, click on the "Visit Dashboard" link next to the name of the site. This will take you to the editing dashboard where you can make changes.
How do I learn how to use WordPress?
To get started creating a site and learning WordPress on your own, you can use our other WordPress Knowledge Base articles:
You can also watch the LinkedIn Learning tutorial videos in WordPress 5 Essential Training or look at the help articles from WordPress.org.
If you would like assistance with creating a site and learning WordPress, please email dps@bucknell.edu to schedule an appointment.
How do I get a WordPress site for my course?
Digital Pedagogy & Scholarship can create a course site for you and make you the administrator so that you can edit and manage the site. If you would like for students to have edit access in order to create pages or posts, your site can be synchronized with your class' roster.
To request a course site, please fill out the Course Request Form with your class' information.
If you don't have a specific need for using WordPress for your course site, consider managing your course in Moodle for consistency across students' many courses. See the Moodle quick start guide for more information about how to set up your course.
What's the difference between Blogs, Scholar, Courses?
When you create a new site, there are three different networks to choose from:
Bucknell Blogs
Blogs is used for general-purpose sites. You can use this WordPress site for anything you choose, it does not have to be a blog or include blog posts. your site URL will end in ".blogs.bucknell.edu"
Bucknell Scholar
Scholar is used for scholarly sites like professional portfolios, digital scholarship projects, or sites to share the work of your lab. Your site URL will end in ".scholar.bucknell.edu"
Bucknell Courses
Courses are sites for classes at Bucknell. To request a Bucknell Courses site, fill out the Course Request form. Your site URL will end in ".courses.bucknell.edu"
Are the site domain, site title, and privacy settings I choose permanent?
Your site domain is the part of the URL that appears before ".blogs.bucknell.edu" and cannot be changed. It must be all one word and all lowercase letters.
The site title and privacy level can easily be changed later in the settings of your site.
Learn more in our article about how to create a new WordPress site.
How do I invite collaborators or students to contribute to my site?
If you are adding students as part of a course request, Digital Pedagogy & Scholarship will synchronize your roster to the site when it is created.
For other sites, you will need to add collaborators to your site as users and assign them a role.
To add a new user:
- Open the dashboard of your WordPress site.
- Find the "Users" tab in the menu on the left of the screen.
- Click "Add New"
- Use "Add Existing User" at the top of the page to add the person's email address.
- Assign them the appropriate role (see below).
- Click "Add Existing User."
Once you have added them as a user, the person will receive an email from WordPress asking them to confirm the invitation. This email will likely be sent to spam, make sure to check the spam folder in your email if you didn't receive the email.
Learn more about the different roles you can assign a user in the Roles and Capabilities, WordPress.org Forums.
Can I invite collaborators from outside Bucknell?
No, to maintain account security, external collaborators cannot create or edit Wordpress sites on blogs.bucknell.edu. They will be able to view your site (if you have chosen those settings), but cannot access the dashboard.
If you need to create a site with collaborators from outside Bucknell, there are several alternatives:
- Google Sites
- Working in a shared document or spreadsheet, then someone with a Bucknell account transferring the materials into WordPress
- Wordpress.com (limited L&IT support available for external WordPress sites)
How do I embed media in my site?
To embed media into a WordPress site, you should use the shortcode block. In the block, you should copy and paste the iframe code or shortcode, which can usually be found in the "share" options for media. It will look similar to this:
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NekZ-6X3VTM" title="YouTube video player"></iframe>
When you publish or preview the page, the media will be embedded. For some commonly embedded media, like YouTube videos, you can simply copy and paste the link to the video into a new paragraph block for the same result. Similarly, some common media, like Twitter or YouTube, will have their own blocks for you to use to access your content directly.
Please note: if you are using a Blogs site, you will need to contact DP&S at dps@bucknell.edu to enable this feature before you are able to embed media.
Where can I get help with WordPress?
For general WordPress questions, email techdesk@bucknell.edu or stop by the Tech Desk on the first floor of Bertrand Library.
From there, Digital Pedagogy & Scholarship can help you with your WordPress site. We offer consultations to help you get started with a WordPress site, discuss site structure and usability, offer plugin options, or troubleshoot with the WordPress interface. Contact our department directly using our main email: dps@bucknell.edu
Due to time constraints, we are not able to update or manage your WordPress site.
If you would like to learn more about how WordPress works and the specifics of creating and editing blocks, LinkedIn Learning provides lots of helpful video tutorials:
Read more about WordPress in our other Knowledge Base articles: