(excerpt from Matt Gold post)
The Commons has different types of platforms that individuals and groups can use to communicate and collaborate with one another — groups (with discussion forums), blogs, and wikis. So why use a blog, rather than a group?
Blogs offer:
- A more flexible system of publishing that groups or wikis. The visual appearance of the blog can be altered through the use of themes. The functionality of the blog can be changed by the activation of various plugins
- A way for non-CUNY users to contribute to the conversation through comments (since only members of CUNY can create accounts on the Commons, only members of CUNY can join groups
- A more advanced system of privacy. Whereas groups can currently only have three levels of privacy — public, private, and hidden — blogs have five different levels of privacy, all available from the Settings > Privacy menu of the blog dashboard:
Blog privacy settings available on blog dashboard from Settings > Privacy.
You can choose one of the following five options to adjust your blog’s visibility.
- I would like my blog to be visible to everyone, including search engines (like Google, Bing, Technorati) and archivers;
- I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors
- I would like my blog to be visible only to registered users from the blog community
- I would like my blog to be visible only to registered members of this blog
- I would like my blog to be visible only to administrators of this blog
You may also make individual posts on your blog private and password protected. See Sarah Morgano’s post How To: Set your blog posts to private for more information.
You can create as many WordPress blogs as you want on the Commons. You can decide on the level of privacy, choose a cool theme, and create posts and pages. Your posts will be broadcast on the Commons Home page, or not, depending upon your preferences.
