Who can see your VIUBlogs site is largely determined by the settings on your site. Depending on your settings, your blog may be visible to anyone who can find it with the URL, to anyone who has the URL and a VIU Computer Account, or only to people you add to your site. You can also attach additional limits to specific pages in your site.
Your Site Visibility Settings
When you first created your VIUBlog site, you were given the option to select the visibility settings for your site. You can edit and change these site visibility settings at any point by following these steps:
- While logged into VIUBlogs, navigate to the dashboard of your VIUBlog site.
- Hover your mouse over Settings in the navigation menu on the left hand side of the screen. Select Reading from the dropdown menu.
- Underneath the Site Visibility heading, select one of the 5 available options:
- Allow search engines to index this site: Your site will be visible and accessible to anyone in the world who happens to find it. Your site may also appear as a result in Internet search engines such as Google Chrome. This option does not guarantee that your site will appear as a result in search engines. It is up to the search engines to honor this request.
- Discourage search engines from indexing this site: Your site will be visible and accessible to anyone in the world who happens to find it. However, Internet search engines such as Google Chrome will be discouraged from showing your site as an available result. This option does not completely prevent your site from appearing as a result in search engines. It is up to the search engines to honor this request.
- Visible to only registered users of this network: Your site will only be visible and accessible to VIU community members who have signed into VIUBlogs and have the link to your site. Your site will not be publicly available and will not appear in search engines.
- Visible to only registered users of this site: Your site will only be visible and accessible to VIU community members who have been added as Users to your site. Your site will not be publicly available and will not appear in search engines.
- Visible only to administrators of this site: Your site will only be visible to you, and any other administrators that have been added to your site. Your site will not be publicly available and will not appear in search engines.
- Once you have finished editing your Site Visibility settings, click the blue Save Changes button.
Change Your Post/Page Visibility Settings
All Posts and Pages on your VIUBlog site also have their own visibility settings. There are three different types of visibility settings:
Public: The Post/Page will be visible to anyone who has access to the site.
Private: The Post/Page will only be visible to you, and any other administrators or editors that have been added to your site.
Password Protected: The Post/Page will only be visible after the user who has access to your site has entered the customized password you have set for that Post/Page.
- While logged into VIUBlogs, navigate to the dashboard of your VIUBlog site.
- Click on either the Posts or Pages option in the navigation sidebar.
- Click on the name of the Post or Page you wish to edit.
- Click on the blue text beside the Visibility heading. Select your preferred visibility setting.
- Once you have finished, click the blue Update button to save your changes.
Add Users to Your VIUBlog Site
If you have set your Site Visibility settings to Visible only to registered users of this site or if you would like another user to be able to create content on your site, you will need to add them as a user to your site.
- While logged into VIUBlogs, navigate to the dashboard of your VIUBlog site.
- Click Users in the navigation sidebar.
- Click the Add New button.
- There are two ways you can add a user to your site:
- Add Existing User: This method will allow you to add an existing VIUBlog user to your site by inputting their email address into the Email field. This method is recommended for adding current VIU students and employees to your blog. The student or employee will need to have logged into VIUBlogs at least once using their VIU Computer Account credentials. If the user is a student, they will also need to have inserted and confirmed an email address in their Profile Settings in order for you to be able to add them to your site using this method.
- Add New User: This method will allow you to create a new VIUBlog account for the user you wish to add to your site. You can do so by creating the user a username in the Username field and by inputting an Email address that this account creation request will be sent to. This method is recommended for adding external VIU community members to your blog.
- Select the Role you wish to assign to the user:
- Administrator: has access to all the administration features within a single site.
- Editor: can publish and manage posts including the posts of other users.
- Author: can publish and manage their own posts.
- Contributor: can write and manage their own posts but cannot publish them.
- Subscriber: can only manage their profile and view the site.
- Click either the Add Existing User or Add New User button.
- An invitation email request will be sent to your user. That user will need to click on the link in this invitation email request before they are added to your VIUBlog site.
- If your user has not received this email after a few hours, please prompt them to check their spam and junk folders.