Web Strategy and Development Blog

Update to WordPress blogs

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This morning we updated the Missouri State blogs to better work with the WordPress threaded commenting system. We have been using a third-party plugin to allow for threaded comments, but our themes now work with the integrated WordPress threaded comments and thus the plugin is no longer needed.

To turn on threaded comments on your blog:

  1. On your blog’s Dashboard, navigate to Settings > Discussion.
  2. Under ‘Other Comment Settings,’ check the box labeled ‘Enable threaded (nested) comments.’
  3. Select the number of levels deep you would like the threaded comments to go.
  4. Click the Save Changes button on the bottom of the page.

We have also integrated a Tiny MCE Comments plugin into all of the blogs, allowing for commenters to add links, format text, etc. This plugin works on both threaded and un-threaded comments.

Missouri State Magazine site launched

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This week the University launched a new site for the Missouri State Magazine that correlates with the printed magazine that is sent to friends and alumni of Missouri State. This was a collaborative project between Web and New Media, Publications and the Alumni Association.

Magazine Homepage Magazine Story

Some of the features include:

  • This new site is meant to correlate to the printed Magazine but with extra content that is exclusive to the web site; examples include multimedia features such as photo slideshows and videos. This is a standalone site and design that will only be used for the Magazine.
  • The home page includes three featured stories that rotate at the top of the page, as well as ‘Featured Online Exclusives’ that contain extra content only available on the site.
  • There is a Table of Contents page that shows users all of the stories for the current edition of the magazine. There is also an archives page that allows users to access previous editions of the magazine and the stories therein.
  • The site is running in WordPress. There were also two new WordPress plugins designed specifically for this site that are now also being used on the regular Missouri State blogs – an MSU Calendar widget that allows users to pull in events from the Master Calendar, and an Inline Media Tool plugin that allows us to embed Flickr photo slideshows, YouTube videos, and audio files or videos from iTunes U anywhere within a story.
  • The design was done by Lindsay Winchester, in coordination with Publication’s printed Magazine design.
  • The coding of the site was done by student Matt Seigel, with oversight by Chad Killingsworth and Brad Mitchell.
  • The site will be updated in correlation with new editions of the printed Magazine being published.

Linking your Facebook Page to Twitter

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Facebook recently released a great new plugin that allows users to link their Facebook Pages to their Twitter account. If your University unit already has a Facebook Page established but has been hesitant about using Twitter, this tool should help convince you it’s time to set up that new Twitter account.

This new tool will automatically share status updates, links, photos, notes, and events with your followers on Twitter directly from your Facebook Page. You also have the option to choose the kinds of things you want to share both on Twitter and Facebook.

What this means to you is that once you set up a Twitter account and link it to your Facebook Page, this plugin will do all the work for you – importing all of the info you want your Twitter followers to see from Facebook. You only have to update your info once, on Facebook, and your updates will automatically show up on Twitter. It’s a great way to re-purpose content and allow people to keep up-to-date with info from your University unit in different ways.

Here are the step-by-step instructions on how to add this plugin to your Facebook Page:

  1. Visit http://www.facebook.com/twitter/ and log in to Facebook.
  2. Click the green button marked Link a Page to Twitter.
  3. A new screen will appear, allowing you to select from the Pages you’ve created to choose one to link. Click the appropriate Link to Twitter button.
  4. Your browser will redirect to Twitter. If you are not logged in, do so, and a screen will appear that asks if you want to allow Facebook access to your account. Click the green Allow button.
  5. You will be redirected back to Facebook, which will ask you what sort of updates you want to be sent to Twitter. Choose from the options and click Save Changes.
  6. Your updates from Facebook will now appear as tweets in your Twitter account, linking back to the original item in Facebook.

If you wish to learn more about using these tools, be sure to read our support pages for both Facebook and Twitter.

New Blog Plugins: Spam catcher, Multiple authors, Twitter, Better Links

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We’ve added some new plugins to our WordPress blogging system recently, and I thought I’d share them with everyone in case you’re interested in using them on your blog:

Askimet – another anti-spam plugin. We had a few spam comments sneak through our other anti-spam plugin, so I added Askimet as well for double coverage. This has already been activated on all of the current WordPress blogs, and will be on all future blogs as well.

Co-Authors Plus – allows multiple authors to be assigned to a post. Only the users on your blog can be selected as authors on your posts.

Twitter Tools – integrates your WordPress blog and your Twitter account. You can bring your tweets into your blog (in a sidebar widget) and pass your blog posts to Twitter.

My Link Order – allows you to set the order in which links and link categories will appear in the sidebar. Uses a drag and drop interface for ordering.

WordPress Upgrade to 2.7 + some new plugins

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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.