Get started quickly: Select a theme. Convert the default site from a blog to a "normal" web site. Add pages and content. And get assistance from CIT's Academic Technologies for any of these steps.

Select a theme

The CU Blog service owners (not CIT's ATC) maintain/control themes. There are over 300 themes which change constantly, making them difficult to keep up with. The following are themes that are popular, per CIT ATC, as of April 2015:

2015 University Branded theme
Arts and Sciences Twenty Twelve
Parabola
Responsive

Notes

4/27/15: Edublogs sent out a warning that they are going to decommission some themes. Somehow IWS is going to come up with a notification process for people using these themes, and for new ones I can check and make sure they haven’t chosen those. The above ones are not on the removal list.
You can see all themes use by CCB research group by visiting ChemIT's web inventory page, which has that information for "CU Blogs" sites.

Configure the site so it starts at your desired home page, not a blog

Write to acadtech@cornell.edu to request blog assistance (old atc_support@cornell.edu address will still work). This will create a Remedy ticket.
Staff member (likely Bernie, as of April 2015) will be assigned the ticket
Client will be sent ATC contact information, client can contact the ATC and see if any students are available, or, try to walk-in (when time permits, Bernie will help)
STAP students will assist client in converting the blog into a group web site (landing page), but students are not to be assigned work (i.e. all work must be done by the client)
Client may reply to the remedy ticket for further support, and get any questions they have answered
For answers to specific questions, the client may be helped by
- Email
- A Bombgar session
- Phone
- Coming in to ATC
- Being referred to web services team
- Being referred to CampusPress documentation

Add pages to your site and appropriate navigation

Continues from the above work.