Mar 27th, 2009
by Brad Mitchell
The WordPress upgrade to the new version 2.7 was successful yesterday. If you now login to your blog, you will see that the Dashboard is significantly different. We are currently working on updating all of our Blog Setup and Instructions pages to mirror the changes made to the Dashboard. These new instructions should be updated next week. *The instructions are now updated as of 3/30/09*
Our anti-spam plugin, Defensio, was not working correctly with the new upgraded version of WordPress, so it has been replaced with the WP-SpamFree plugin. I activated it on all of the blogs in our system, so you shouldn’t really see any changes. I also added the SI-Captcha plugin to all of the blogs that were not using it, just as an extra precaution. If someone is logged in the Captcha won’t show up on the comments, but if someone isn’t logged in it will appear.
The other two new plugins are WPtouch and the KB Advanced RSS Widget. WPtouch reformats your site with a mobile theme when viewed with an Apple iPhone, Apple iPod touch, Google Android or Blackberry Storm touch mobile device. It does not affect the look of your blog when viewed in a normal web browser. You can look at this blog on a mobile device to see an example of how it works (it’s really neat). The KB Advanced RSS Widget allows you to pull in RSS Feeds into a Sidebar Widget. You can add multiple widgets for different feeds. The ‘Media’ widget on the right sidebar of this blog is a working example of this new plugin.
Posted in Plugins, System upgrades, Updates.
Tagged with android, instructions, iphone, mobile, plugin, rss, spam, upgrade, widget.
Mar 18th, 2009
by Brad Mitchell
We will be doing a significant upgrade to our WordPress system at 8:30 AM on Thursday, March 26th. We will be upgrading all blogs in blogs.missouristate.edu to the new 2.7 version of WordPress.
You won’t see any changes to the look of your actual blogs after the upgrade, but you will see major changes to the Dashboard of your blog. Features will continue to be organized as they currently are (Write/Manage/Design/Comments/etc) but the layout of the Dashboard will be different. Once we have the upgrade completed we will update all of our online instructions to be compatible with the new system.
If anyone has any questions please feel free to get in contact with me. Thanks!
Posted in System upgrades.
Tagged with blogs, dashboard, upgrade, version.
Feb 9th, 2009
by Brad Mitchell
Some new plugins have been added over recent weeks, and I wanted to highlight them to all of our WordPress users in case you would like to add them to your blog:
- Counterize II – this plugin will show you a simple counter on your Dashboard of how many visitors you have per day on your blog.
- SI CAPTCHA – this plugin requires a reader to fill out a CAPTCHA form before they can comment on your blog. This will help to protect your blog from spam comments.
To enable these new plugins, simply click on the ‘Plugins’ link on the right side of your Dashboard, and then click on the ‘Activate’ link on the plugins you would like to add to your blog.
Posted in Plugins.
Tagged with analytics, captcha, comments, plugin, security, stats, update.
Nov 24th, 2008
by Brad Mitchell
I’ve added some new plugins recently, and wanted to point them out to everyone in case there is interest in adding them to your blog.
- WP-Polls – at the request of one user, I’ve added this plugin. It allows you to add a poll system to your WordPress blog. You can easily include a poll into your WordPress’s blog post/page. It also includes a widget option, which allows you to have a poll present in a sidebar widget on your blog site.
- Threaded Comments – this plugin allows you to have threaded and nested comments on all of your posts. It also adds the ability to notify a commenter via email when someone has replied to their comment.
The threaded comments plugin is a great tool to encourage discussion in the comments section of your blog, and I’d suggest that if you allow comments to your blog then you should activate this plugin. We might be tweaking the look of this plugin a bit over time, but it should be a welcome addition to this blogging platform.
I also wanted to point out that you can add avatars to your account, and every time you make a comment your avatar will appear. All you need to do is create an account at Gravatars and make sure you use your Missouri State email account. Then everytime you make or reply to a comment, your avatar will appear. This Gravatar system is enabled on many sites and blogs so it will carry over automatically to any other sites you log in w/ your Missouri State email address.
Posted in New Features, Plugins.
Tagged with comments, discussion, gravatar, plugin, widget.
New plugins – analytics and CAPTCHA
Feb 9th, 2009 by Brad Mitchell
Some new plugins have been added over recent weeks, and I wanted to highlight them to all of our WordPress users in case you would like to add them to your blog:
To enable these new plugins, simply click on the ‘Plugins’ link on the right side of your Dashboard, and then click on the ‘Activate’ link on the plugins you would like to add to your blog.
Posted in Plugins.
Tagged with analytics, captcha, comments, plugin, security, stats, update.
Comments Off