New sites on our WordPress network are already “live” on production servers; however, there are a few items that you should review and some settings that you should change to make your site ready for visitors.

Delete the sample Page and sample Post

When created, your blog likely had one sample post (“Hello World!”) and one sample page (“Sample Page”). Make sure you Trash those.

University web requirements

It is your responsibility, as a publisher of web content on Princeton University web servers, to be familiar with Rights, Rules, Responsibilities; Princeton University Information Technology Policy; and the University Website Requirements, as published by the Office of Communications. Pay special attention to the requirements that deal with creating content that is accessible to the disabled.

Settings → Privacy

By default, your site is set to “block search engines, but allow normal visitors.” You would likely want to change that so that your site is “visible to everyone, including search engines (like Google, Bing, Technorati) and archivers.”

Settings → Discussion

By default, only registered members of the site network (those with Princeton netIDs) can leave a comment. Additionally, all comments are moderated and must be approved by a site administrator before they are visible to other site visitors. If you want to facilitate discussion on your site, you will likely want to change these settings. If you turn off automatic moderation, your organization must designate an individual to actively monitor all incoming comments for your site and remove or edit any comments that are abusive, harassing, of a purely commercial nature (spam), or are otherwise harmful to the image and reputation of Princeton University. Settings that you might want to uncheck include:

• Users must be registered and logged in to comment (Signup has been disabled. Only members of this site can comment.)
• Before a comment appears
  • An administrator must always approve the comment
  • Comment author must have a previously approved comment

blogs-preview.princeton.edu

If your site was a Movable Type migration, it likely has a temporary URL that starts with blogs-preview. Please email , and we will change the URL settings and perform any necessary find and replace operations.

WordPress sites directory

Once the number of new WordPress sites reaches a “critical mass,” we plan to create a listing of sites in the blogs.princeton.edu network. When you take your site live, please send a note to  to update us on your site’s status, and also indicate whether you would like your site to be added to this central listing.