General guidance and good practice for staff members and research students who want to set up and maintain blogs at the University.

What is a blog?

Do you want to inform, share enthusiasm or ask your readers’ questions? If yes, then you may need a blog.

A blog is a site that consisting of posts and pages. A blog is easy to use, professional looking and uses ready-made templates, so no coding experience is needed. It also looks great on any device!

• Don’t set-up a blog as an alternative to the main university website.
• Don’t publish anything on a blog which is confidential information.
• Don’t publish course information on a blog – this content should always be contained on the main university website.

Nb. By requesting the setting up of a blog you are committing to updating it. Blogs that are not updated regularly will be archived.

Top tips

• Plan – What will you blog about and how often? Think about the length, presentation and quality (of content, writing and spelling) of your posts.
• Content is king – Writing for a blog is like writing for a website and is different from traditional academic writing. To sustain content it is better to bring several authors together.
• Make it interactive – Blog posts may contain video and images.
• Regularly update – Blogs should be updated regularly (at least once a fortnight). A blog with just a few posts that are out of date gives a negative impression. Consider writing a content plan.
• Make it interesting – A blog should stay relevant and interesting to the expected audience.

Requesting a blog

When requesting a blog we will need to know the required name of the blog, menu names for the blog (if required), who will be responsible for adding content to the blog and what level of access they require.

When you have this information, email it to the ILS Service Desk who will put you in touch with the Web Team.

What happens next?

Once the blog has been set up (using an approved template that suits your needs) you will be advised of the url for the blog based on the name you have provided together with instructions on setting up your password to access the blog.