Jul 27th, 2009
by Kenneth Newquist.
After a successful pilot of WordPress MU during the Spring 2009 semester, ITS has decided to move WordPress into production with Sites. This installation, located at sites.lafayette.edu, hosts personal, club, and organization home pages. A separate installation, called Depts, is being setup for WordPress-powered departmental web sites.
All traffic to the WordPress pilot site — wordpress.lafayette.edu — and the myriad blogs and sites hosted there is being automatically redirected to sites.lafayette.edu. We plan to maintain this redirection through December 2009.
Questions about the pilot-to-production migration can be sent to the program administrators at wordpress@lafayette.edu.
Posted in: News.
Tagged: wordpress
Feb 3rd, 2010
by Kenneth Newquist.
We’ve updated Sites at Lafayette to the latest version of WordPress. This iteration introduces some new functionality:
- Improved Multimedia Support: Insert YouTube, Hulu, and Flickr videos as well as Flickr photo galleries into a post without a plugin. To do this, simply post the web address of a video into a new post. Make sure the web address is on its own line, and then publish the post. More multimedia instructions are available on the ITS site.
- Trash Bin: Instead of immediately deleting posts and pages, WordPress will now place them into a trash bin. Detailed instructions for deleting and restoring pages and posts is available on the ITS site.
- Photo editing: You can now make basic edits to photos within WordPress. Documentation is coming for this new feature.
We’ve also updated a number of WordPress plugins. If you’re using NextGEN Gallery (the photo gallery tool) you need to do a quick update by logging in, clicking the “Gallery” link in the lefthand administration column, and then clicking the “Start upgrade now…” link. WordPress handles the rest.
Here’s the complete list of updated plugins:
- Authors
- Contact Form 7
- Google Analytics
- NextGEN Gallery
- Page Links To
- PowerPress
- TinyMCE Advanced
If you encounter problems with your web site after the upgrade, please contact the Help Desk:
Posted in: News.
Tagged: announcements · features · plugins
Feb 2nd, 2010
by Kenneth Newquist.
Sites at Lafayette will be down for scheduled maintenance from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m., Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2010.
Posted in: News.
Tagged: announcements
Nov 11th, 2009
by Kenneth Newquist.
On this episode of the ITS Coffee Break, hosts Courtney Bentley and Ken Newquist discuss Chris Phillips’ essay “I Hear America Reading: Using Digital Audio to Teach American Poetry,” which appeared in the Summer 2009 issue of Teaching American Literature, and they announce Moodle Hack/Doc Fest V, which will be held at Lafayette.
Tech News includes Windows 7 testing, the Droid smartphone, and DARPA’s new $40,000 balloon hunting challenge. In Help News, Ken and Courtney take a look at the Powerpress plugin for WordPress and announce a new smartboard workshop. Get the podcast.
Posted in: News.
Tagged: podcasts
Oct 29th, 2009
by Kenneth Newquist.
We’ve discovered a bug in WordPress in which pages that only have a number for a name (e.g., 2009) can’t be accessed. Instead of going to the page in question (e.g., http://sites.lafayette.edu/asite/classes/2009) the parent page loads (e.g., http://sites.lafayette.edu/asite/classes). The problem is that WordPress will not allow page slugs to contain only numbers; if you change the slug to something with a mix of alphanumeric characters, like “classof2009″ then the page loads normally.
Here’s how to change a page’s slug name:
- Click “Pages” from the left menu in your site’s Dashboard.
- Hover over the pages titled with only numbers and click the “Quick Edit”
link when it appears.
- Change the slug name to include a non-numeric character and click
the “Update Page” button.
- Repeat for each page titled with only numbers.
This bug has been submitted to WordPress.org.
Posted in: Known Issues.
Oct 29th, 2009
by Kenneth Newquist.
The ITS Coffee Break podcast is back. After a six-month hiatus the long-running podcast has moved from its old home on Soapbox to Sites.
In Episode #60, hosts Courtney Bentley and Ken Newquist discuss Lafayette’s WordPress MU project, take a look at Bates College’s new WordPress-powered home page, discuss the Google Wave web application, debate the merits of Amazon’s Kindle vs. Barnes & Nobles’ new Nook ebook reader, and talk about an upcoming copyright webinar. Get the podcast.
Posted in: News.
Tagged: podcasts
Oct 28th, 2009
by Kenneth Newquist.
We’ve updated three WordPress plugins:
- Authors
- Contact Form 7
- Google Analytics
We’ve also added a new FeedBurner plugin that can be used in tandem with Google’s FeedBurner service to track the number of people subscribing to your site’s RSS feed. To use it, just activate the plugin, go to Settings > Feedburner and add the URL of your feedburner feed. If you need to burn a feed, visit feedburner.google.com.
If you’re using these plugins, and encounter problems after the upgrade, please call the Helpdesk at 610.330.5501 or submit a help ticket.
Posted in: News.
Oct 26th, 2009
by Kenneth Newquist.
We’ve made some changes behind the scenes to give WordPress a speed boost. The practical effect of this is that almost everything that makes up a WordPress page (web pages, JavaScript and style sheets) will now download 2 to 3 times faster than they did before. This should help those who’ve reported slowness when working with WordPress off campus or over wireless.
If you’re still experiencing slowness with WordPress, please contact the help desk at 610.330.5501 or submit a help ticket.
Posted in: News.
Oct 14th, 2009
by Kenneth Newquist.
We’ve updated several plugins on Sites at Lafayette to their latest versions: Authors, Contact 7, Google Analytics, NextGen Gallery, Page Links To, PowerPress and Sidebar Login. If you’re using these plugins, and encounter problems after the upgrade, please call the Helpdesk at 610.330.5501 or submit a help ticket.
Posted in: News.
Tagged: updates
Aug 19th, 2009
by Kenneth Newquist.
Sites at Lafayette has been updated upgraded to WordPress 2.8.x. This was a security update, and doesn’t include any major new functionality. One side effect of the upgrade is that sites that have an apostrophe in their title (e.g. Joe Smith’s Web Page) now have a backslash in them (e.g. Joe Smith\’s Web Page). You can remove the backslash by logging in and going to the “Settings” page for your site, clicking the “General” link, and then editing your site’s name where it says “Blog Title”.
We’ve also updated the Google Analytics (statistics tracking) and Powerpress (podcasting) plugins to their latest versions. Unfortunately, we also needed to remove a plugin: the Slideshare plugin (used for sharing online presentations via Slideshare.net) is broken, and has been deactivated.
If you encounter problems, please call the Helpdesk at 610.330.5501 or submit a help ticket.
Posted in: News.
Jul 27th, 2009
by Kenneth Newquist.
Over the weekend we had a problem with off-campus users being unable to access the WordPress admin dashboard on Sites. That problem’s been fixed, and you should be able to access it now.
Posted in: News.
Tagged: bugs
