If you are an administrator of a Humanities Commons group, creating a site or blog is a great way to share information with group members as well as with other readers.

This post will walk you through the steps of creating a site or blog for your group. (A blog usually refers to a type of Web site that lists posts in reverse chronological order.)

To begin, click Manage on the left-hand menu of your group’s home page to access the administrative settings for your group:

On the Manage page, click Site to activate your group’s site and control its settings:

This takes you to the screen pictured below, where you’ll check the box beside Enable Group Site. Next, click the circle beside the option that allows you to create a new site. Then, enter a title in the Blog Title field. Finally, enter an address in the Blog Address field. This is the text that appears in front of “hcommons.org” in the site’s URL, and it can be different from the blog or site title. You may want to use a shortened version of your site title for this.

There are a few things to keep in mind when selecting your site address. First, the address can’t contain spaces or punctuation (except for hyphens). Second, it has to be unique. Third, you will not be able to change it later!

Decide on your site’s privacy settings. Your site will be visible to the public unless you select one of the options shown below. To make it a visible public site do not mark any of the options below. Although you can restrict your site, most blogs and sites on Humanities Commons are publicly visible. Note that after marking one of the options here, you cannot uncheck it in this area. You can, however, change these settings in the Admin area of your WordPress site later.

Scroll down to Member Options. If Enable Member Posting is checked, other people in your group will be able to write posts on your group site. If it’s not checked, only you can do this. Next, decide on the roles that will be assigned to your members. The defaults suit the purposes of most groups, but you can read more about these different roles here.

Remember to click Save Changes, and you’re done! Now that your group has a site, you might want to check out the guide to Managing Your Site.