As the blog owner, you will be given the top-level, ‘Administrator’, role in your blog. This enables you to make any changes necessary in your blog. You may, however, wish to add other users in the blog. These users can be given access levels as great as ‘Administrator’, or as low as ‘Subscriber’ (who can only read the blog).
*Before you begin: You will need to know the users’ university usernames (the part before @torontomu.ca in their email address) in order to add them as a user in your blog. These users must already have an account on blog.torontomu.ca before you can add them — see the ‘What if I get an errror?‘ instructions below to find out what to do.
- Blog user roles
- Add users
- What if I get an error?
- Add a class of students (for instructors)
- Change some users’ roles
Blog user roles
Here is a brief description of the access given to each user role in the blog, from the WordPress website. We generally recommend giving students in a class blog the ‘Author’ role.
| Role name | Responsibilities and access |
|---|---|
| Administrator | Somebody who can modify any aspect of the blog, the owner of the blog. CAN see all posts that are “privately” published. |
| Editor | Somebody who can publish ‘posts’, manage all posts (even ones they did not create). These users have a similar access to ‘pages’. CAN see all posts that are “privately” published. |
| Author | Somebody who can publish and manage their own posts, including uploading images. These users have no access to create or manage ‘Pages’. |
| Contributor | Somebody who can write and manage their posts but not publish posts. Also cannot upload files (including images) to the site, nor their individual posts. Posts created by a Contributor must be Published by someone with the Administrator role. These users have no access to create or manage ‘Pages’. |
| Subscriber | Somebody who can view private blog posts and pages, comment, etc. These users have no access to the blog-related features in the Dashboard, and cannot create content (beyond commenting). |
Add users
*Before you begin: You will need to know the users’ university usernames (the part before @torontomu.ca in their email address) in order to add them as a user in your blog. These users must already have an account on blog.torontomu.ca before you can add them — see the ‘What if I get an errror?‘ instructions below to find out what to do.
Add a single user
- Log into the Dashboard of your blog.
- In the sidebar on the left, click the ‘Users’ heading.
- Click ‘Add User’ from the list of options in the resulting submenu.
- Enter the user’s university username in the ‘Username’ field.
- Select an appropriate role for this user to have in your blog. (See the summary of roles below.)
- Click ‘Add User’
Add multiple users at once
Important: students in a shared class blog should *never* be given an Administrator role, as this would give them access to the private information of their classmates. We recommend the use of the ‘Author’ role.
- Log into the Dashboard of your blog.
- In the sidebar on the left, click the ‘Users’ heading.
- Click ‘Add User’ from the list of options in the resulting submenu.
- Go to the ‘Add Bulk Users’ section, in the lower half of the page.
- Here, you can type (or paste) many usernames to be added at the same time, with the same role. Be sure to enter one username per line, and check that there are no spaces hiding before or after each username.
- Select an appropriate role for all of these users to have in your blog. The summary of roles can be found above.
- Click ‘Add User Bulk’
As long as the username you entered was entered correctly (with no spaces at the end), and represents a user with a currently active my.torontomu.ca account, they should now be added to your blog!
What if I get an error?
Users will have to have an account on the blog network before you can add them to your blog.
If you get an error when trying to add them, please fill out the ‘Contact Us’ form and let us know the username of the person you wish to add, the role they should have in your blog, and your blog address.
Add a class of students (Instructors)
If you are an instructor running a group course blog, where the students all need to be added to the blog, you will need to get all of the students’ usernames.
The best place to get this information is from your D2L Brightspace course shell for that course, as the Grades tool stores the students’ usernames.
- Be sure to select to download the ‘username’ (no other information is required).
- You need the usernames to appear one per line, with no spaces or additional characters.
- Be sure to remove any dummy students
Once you have the usernames, proceed to the ‘Adding Multiple Users at Once’ instructions above.
Change some users’ roles
Sometimes it is necessary to change the roles of users that you have already added to your blog.
Be careful to not check the box next to your own name, otherwise you risk taking away your Administrator role — you will not be able to fix this, and must contact our support team to reinstate your access.
To change the role of a single user:
- Login to the dashboard of the blog and click “Users” in the sidebar.
- Check the box next to the name of the person whose role you would like to change.
- Above the list of users, you will see a dropdown menu that says ‘Change role to…’ – click this, and select the role you would like the user to have (like ‘Author’)
- Click the ‘Change’ button.
To change the roles for all users with a particular role:
Please note that this will change all of the selected users’s roles to the same role.
- Login to the dashboard of the blog and click “Users” in the sidebar.
- At the top of the list of users, you will see a list of roles alongside the number of users that have that particular role in the blog. Click the link for the role whose users you wish to change (for example, ‘Subscriber’) This will display a list of all of the users with this role.
- Just above the first user in the list, click the checkbox (next to the word ‘username’) – this will select all of the users listed.
- Above the list of users, you will see a dropdown menu that says ‘Change role to…’ – click this, and select the role you would like the users to all have (like ‘Author’).
- Click the ‘Change’ button.
All of the users selected will now have the new role you selected.