Blogs at UMass

Introducing Blogs at UMass Amherst

OIT is pleased to announce our new blogging service – Blogs at UMass Amherst. All UMass Amherst faculty, students, and staff can create their very own UMass Amherst blog. Just go to http://blogs.umass.edu, log in using your NetID and UMail password, and start blogging.

This service is a BETA version. This means:

* OIT Help Services can only help you if you are having trouble logging in to the software. If you need help setting up or using your blog, see the WordPress documentation.
* We’ll be making changes over the course of spring and summer of 2007 based upon what we hear from you. Use our feedback form to give us your blogging wish list (we’re especially interested in hearing about widgets or themes you’d like us to install).
* Although we’ll make every attempt to provide a stable environment for the Blogs at UMass Amherst service, we cannot guarantee it will be up-and-running 24/7, and/or that certain tools and/or themes are bug-free.

Blogs at UMass Amherst is powered by WordPress Multi-user (MU), an open source blogging platform in use at other universities, including Arizona State, Harvard Law School and University California San Diego. For more information about WordPress, see www.wordpress.org.

This service is the result of an ongoing initiative to make it easier for the campus community to create and maintain Web sites. We hope that students, faculty, and staff will use blogs to create simple personal and course Web sites, like those currently hosted on our OITUNIX servers.
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Although this isn't a legal issue exactly, I thought it was interesting that UMass is setting up a blogging system. I wonder if this would be enticing for students to have a blogging network through UMass or a deterrent because oftentimes a blog is like an online journal. Either way, it would seem that this would create a lot more work for OIT.- E. Decker