Creating a class subdomain

I’ve updated the Build a Homestead assignment page to include more detailed instructions for creating a subdomain. Expand the tab called “Adding a Main Hall” and there’s a detailed walkthrough for how to create the subdomain for this class.

I have a naming convention where I create subdomains with the course title and then a designation for semester and year, but I only use that convention because I teach classes with the same course number repeatedly and I need to distinguish them–you will only take ENG181 once, though, so it is probably perfectly reasonable for you to just call your course subdomain eng181.

Try to create the course subdomain by class Tuesday. We’ll spend that class period talking about podcasts and won’t address the subdomains, so if it takes you a little longer that’s okay.

Welcome to Read | Write | Play

Your homework to complete before we meet again on Thursday:

  • Read over this website very carefully as it constitutes the syllabus for this course. Note that the Syllabus page includes a number of subpages, covering such topics as: how to contact me and course objectives; the texts you need to buy; attendance, participation, and other policies; how you will be graded; and how Domain of One’s Own will impact your experience in this class. There is also a calendar of reading and assignments; and pages describing the major and minor assignments this semester.
  • Add this site to your bookmarks. Make certain that you can find your way back here, because you’ll be spending a lot of time visiting these pages over the course of this semester.
  • Reply to this survey form, which both asks some basic information I’ll need in order to manage communications with you and also asks some questions that will help me get to know you a little bit better.

Once you’ve completed those tasks, begin to establish your home base for this class:

On Choosing a Domain Name

You are not purchasing a web site! You are registering a domain name and server space, upon which you can build many other web sites, amongst other things. Therefore, you need a domain name that will continue to work for you after this semester is finished, maybe even after you have graduated from Emory.

The preference is for your domain to be some version of your name (i.e., janestudent.net or davidmorgen.org or johndoe.com) but if you have a very common name you might have to be a little creative.

It is also perfectly acceptable for your domain name to be a short word or phrase that is easy to remember and spell, and which speaks to some interest of yours or an aspect of your character (i.e., my friend Audrey Watters publishes a site called hackeducation.com; Kin Lane spends his careers working with APIs and his domain is apievangelist.com; or Tanine Allison, a professor of Media Studies here at Emory who is finishing her first book entitled Destructive Sublime: World War II in American Media, uses destructivesublime.com as her domain name; or one of my favorite art and design blogs, which is called thisiscolossal.com). If you’re going to choose a title or phrase as your domain name, make sure you think about it very carefully so you don’t show up on one of those lists of the most unfortunate domain names ever, like the design firm called Speed of Art that ended up with a domain name that sounds like it’s about flatulence in a swimsuit.

Do not include the word “emory” in your domain name. The university brand management office is quite emphatic about trying to keep domains including “emory” only for official university sites.

Do not include my class name or something specific about a course, or even your major, in your domain name. You will add subdomains or pages of your sites that are specific to classes, but your primary domain name should be something that can grow with you.

How do I use HTML to format comments on this site (& others)?

Different themes handle commenting differently, but many themes allow users to create links and other formatting while leaving comments, but only if they know how to do so manually with HTML code. There’s often no visual editor that lets you use HTML at the push of a button, the way there is when you’re in the dashboard composing posts and pages.

When you’re leaving a comment on a post on this site, there’s a line at the bottom that lists the most frequent types of HTML and formatting that you might want to use:

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=”” title=””> <abbr title=””> <acronym title=””> <blockquote cite=””> <cite> <code> <del datetime=””> <em> <i> <q cite=””> <strike> <strong>

For each of those codes, you just surround some text with the applicable HTML tags (i.e., you have an opening tag <em> (which adds emphasis), then the text you want to be emphasized, then you close the tag so that the browser knows when to stop emphasizing </em>).

Code Examples

Here are examples of how each of those codes work:

<a href=”http://eng101s15.davidmorgen.org”>course homepage</a>

<abbr title=”Hypertext Markup Language”>HTML</abbr>

<acronym title=”EWP”>Emory Writing Program</acronym>

<blockquote cite=”<cite><a href=”http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/l/ludwig_wittgenstein.html “> </cite> “>If people never did silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done.
Ludwig Wittgenstein<blockquote>

<cite><a href=”http://eng101s15.davidmorgen.org/”></cite>

<code><a href=” “>course homepage</a></code>

<del datetime=”YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssTZD”>This text has been deleted from the comment and there’s a time stamp to indicate when, which is not visible but is available to screen readers.</del>

<em>Emphatic!</em>

<i>Italics!</i>

<q cite=”http://eng101s15.davidmorgen.org/ “>The q cite tag allows you to provide a citation that does not show up visibly, but is available to screen readers behind the scene.</q>

<strike>This text has been struck through</strike>

<strong>Guiness for strength!</strong>

Outputs

And here’s how each of those different effects will look on this site when the comment is published:

course homepage

HTML

Emory Writing Program

If people never did silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done.
Ludwig Wittgenstein

http://eng101s15.davidmorgen.org/

<a href=" "> </a>

This text has been deleted from the comment and there’s a time stamp to indicate when, which is not visible but is available to screen readers.

Emphatic!

Italics!

The q cite tag allows you to provide a citation that does not show up visibly, but is available to screen readers behind the scene.

This text has been struck through

Guiness for strength!