jump to navigation

eduBuzz blogs: Searching Pages as well as Posts September 24, 2007

Posted by Gilmour David in : Exc-el, WPMU, WordPress tips , add a comment

By default, the WordPress blog search doesn’t search Pages. If you’ve an eduBuzz blog and want it to do that, activate the Search Pages plugin.

This plugin, from http://www.internetofficer.com, extends the scope of the search to include Posts and Pages.

First blog recovered from backup September 13, 2007

Posted by David Gilmour in : WPMU, WordPress, eduBuzz , add a comment

One of our most popular school web sites, the Pencaitland Blog, has had to be recovered from backup.

What seems to have caused the problem was deleting a user record via the Site Admin / Users menu, when that user was the author of a large number of posts on the blog. Perhaps in an attempt to remove all trace of the user, those posts were also removed. Examination of the wp_<blog no.>_posts table in the WordPress database showed they had gone, and weren’t hanging around in some authorless limbo land.

I don’t know if a warning was issued. Maybe that’s something to try out one day when I’ve some time to spare…

This is the first time that we’ve needed to recover a blog from backup in a year of operation, and is the first time we’ve had occasion to think hard about whether or not it makes sense to entrust sufficiently experienced school staff with Site Admin rights. (more…)

Use of eduBuzz service is becoming embedded September 4, 2007

Posted by David Gilmour in : WPMU, eduBuzz, infrastructure , add a comment

There was a short interruption to the eduBuzz service around lunchtime today, which turned out to be again due to DNS problems at the datacentre where the site’s hosted.

The problem was quickly resolved. Again, as on the previous occasion, there was very little delay - less than 30 minutes - until reports of the problem started to arrive. It was quickly missed.

This provides evidence that use of the eduBuzz service, particularly the WordPress blogs, is now becoming embedded in teaching and learning practice across the local authority.

Of course that in turn has implications for how reliable such services may need to become in future.

Where’s my “Latest eduBuzz posts” widget? August 23, 2007

Posted by Gilmour David in : Exc-el, WPMU, WordPress tips , add a comment

A recent update to this means it will have vanished from the sidebar of any eduBuzz blog using it.

If you’ve been using it, and you want it back, the good news is that it can just be dragged back again. Go to Presentation / Sidebar Widgets and drag “Latest eduBuzz Posts” to wherever you want it to appear. Don’t forget to save the change.
The changes were:

Maybe you’ve tried it before, and wondered why you didn’t see anything? If so, why not give it a try? It has proved one of the most popular ways for people to keep in touch with what’s being posted across the site.

eduBuzz - now with added Widgetbox Widgets August 21, 2007

Posted by David Gilmour in : Exc-el, WPMU, WordPress tips , 1 comment so far

Widgetbox LogoEdubuzz blogs now offer Widgetbox Widgets in addition to the standard Text and RSS ones.

Thanks to a new plugin from incsub and ringofblogs it’s now easy to incorporate Widgetbox Widgets into a WPMU site. The plugin has been developed originally for the edublogs.org blog hosting service, and is being shared under the GPL licence.

Widgetbox offer a huge range of Widgets, many of which have direct educational uses. For example, I’ve just been experimenting with one which offers instant translation of the web page into various languages via the AltaVista Babelfish translation service. You can currently see that one here: http://edubuzz.org/blogs/healthypassportp4/.

James Farmer has done a 3-minute tutorial video here on how to use them. It requires a bit of cut-and-pastery with Notepad, for example, to extract an ID from the Java code provided by the site, but it’s simple and quick.

I now need some willing testers to try it… feedback welcome.

eduBuzz sign-up back to normal August 16, 2007

Posted by Gilmour David in : Exc-el, WPMU, WordPress , 1 comment so far

The fault with eduBuzz sign-up has now been fixed and tested.

For the curious: the fault was being caused by an incorrectly configured plugin, danalog’s site-wide tagging solution, which we’ve been experimenting with. This plugin doesn’t read the domain name automatically, but requires it to be coded into the plugin. And until you do that, it has a placeholder in there of - you guessed it - “domain.tld”.

Creating blogs via sign-up isn’t working August 15, 2007

Posted by Gilmour David in : Exc-el, WPMU, WordPress , 1 comment so far

There’s currently a fault with this, which is leading to attempts to create blogs in the domain “domain.tld” instead of edubuzz.org. If you need a new blog meantime, please email me. Hopefully we’ll get this sorted tomorrow.

How to create more than one blog… August 13, 2007

Posted by David Gilmour in : Exc-el, WPMU, WordPress tips , add a comment

An edubuzz blogger can create any number of blogs. Here’s how:
  -->

eduBuzz blogs get Google Analytics April 18, 2007

Posted by David Gilmour in : Exc-el, Google, WPMU , add a comment

Google Analytics logoThe eduBuzz blog system now has Google Analytics monitoring every blog - we hope. Time will tell if we’re collecting everything we think we are.

Back in December 06, Exc-el bloggers gained a Google Analytics plug-in. That worked fine at first, but before long there were complaints of stats “flat-lining”, although checks showed the stats were still being gathered OK.

Checking the Google Analytics support information at the time led to the conclusion that we were using it in an unsupported way. We had various individuals registered with Analytics accounts, and their multiple accounts were monitoring pages within the same domain. The supported arrangement is to use one account with one domain (although I can’t find a link to that info just now).

Now we’ve removed that plug-in and embedded the tracking code into the WordPress template files using guidance from the WordPress MU forums. Link.

If you’ve an eduBuzz blog and want access to the Analytics stats, let me know the email address under which you’ve set up your Analytics account and I’ll set that up for you.

“Simpler WordPress” plugin offers speed and simplicity March 14, 2007

Posted by Gilmour David in : Exc-el, WPMU, WordPress tips , add a comment

Julien de Luca’s Simpler Wordpress plugin, now installed on Exc-el, is claimed to improve basic blogging performance by removing more advanced features, such as the upload and preview parts of the screen.

This may also be helpful in enabling some bloggers to be presented with a simpler interface if they’ve no need to use the upload feature.

We’ve installed it to see whether it can provide a worthwhile performance improvement in schools with particularly slow internet access. Initial tests suggest it will make a difference, but not a dramatic one. Much of the downloading that takes place is for editor toolbar buttons, and that isn’t affected.

For maximum performance Simpler WordPress could perhaps be used in combination with the basic, non-WYSIWYG editor, but that editor is only suitable for people who won’t be put off by the sight of the underlying XHTML, or the corresponding HTML tag editor buttons, such as b-quote, img and ul. If you’ve an Exc-el blog and want to try it, you can switch off the normal editor under My Profile (there’s a link in the top right of your admin screen).

Feedback on the Simpler Wordpress plugin would be appreciated. In particular, it would be good to know what difference is observed on the various slow school networks.

FireStats icon Powered by FireStats