University of St. Thomas Blogs

Blog Guidelines and Request Form

Blog Guidelines and Request Form

Background

  • ITS provides a hosted version of WordPress blogging software for use by active UST organizations and groups.
  • Faculty or staff members are eligible to register for the Blog Service by contacting the Tech Desk. An active UST ID is required.
  • At this time, the Blog Service is not available to individual students.
  • Requests should be reviewed in ten (10) business days.

Guidelines

  • Use of the Blog service is subject to all applicable University policies including the ITS Responsible Use Policy and the Social Media Electronic Communications Policy.
  • You must not publish content that is obscene, defamatory, threatening, confidential, proprietary, infringing of intellectual property rights, invasive of privacy, or otherwise illegal. We reserve the right to remove at any time, at our sole discretion, any content that we deem in violation of University, local, state, or federal laws, rules, or regulations.
  • If you choose to permit reader comments, you are responsible for moderating comments to ensure they are relevant to the blog’s content and that they meet University web page guidelines.
  • You are not permitted to sell or advertise for non-University entities and the blog cannot be used for your personal gain.
  • As a blogger you should strive to update your content often to encourage a loyal following of readers. If you decide to stop blogging please notify ITS so we can decommission your blog.
  • Because your blog will be University-approved and representative of your individual unit, proper spelling and grammar is of utmost importance. Leave plenty of time for writing and editing your posts.

 

Technology

  • ITS provides a hosted version of WordPress blogging software, using the Florence theme and a minimal plugin set.
  • Our goal is to update the software frequently to minimize security issues. To accomplish this we need to make minimal customizations to the theme and will only be using network versions of the software rather than stand-alone instances.
  • If the version of the software that we provide does not suit your needs, we recommend the free version you can setup through the WordPress.com site, or for more customizable (but not free) blogs the recommended hosts through WordPress.com. If you choose to host externally ITS is not able to provide support for you or your blog.