Today we released a new plugin for WordPress that allows you to subscribe to the RSS feeds of private blogs using any RSS reader.
When you are logged in and viewing a private blog, the RSS feed links will now contain a special key unique to you and the blog that gives your reader access to the feed. There is nothing special you need to do, just subscribe as usual and feeds from private blogs will now work without redirecting your reader to the login page.
During the past few years new versions of WordPress have made this system much easier to use — and our community has made use of these new abilities to make a wide range of sites structured in many ways.
Most of the content in WordPress sites are Posts, chronologically ordered entries that make up a ‘blog’ or news site. Pages on the other hand, are non-time-dependent content that can be arranged in a hierarchy. Traditionally, Pages in WordPress sites were used mostly for describing the blog, contact information, or other content that rarely changes and isn’t ‘newsworthy’. (more on Posts vs. Pages)
Recently, a number of sites have been making increasingly large use of Pages, such as to hold curricular resources that are then referenced from Posts describing assignments that use them. For sites that make significant use of Pages, site-owners can now enable the RSS Includes Pages plugin so that new pages are added to your site’s main feed. For course sites in WordPress, enabling this plugin will allow page additions to be fed into the Course Hub as updates.
We still recommend making use of Posts in WordPress sites to share new material with readers rather than heavily using Pages as Pages are still second-class citizens in many ways (such as support for tagging and categorization). With the new RSS Includes Pages plugin, Page-heavy sites can now feed new content to the Course Hub and others subscribed to their feeds.
Yesterday, we updated WordPress to v3.1. Most noticeable change in this update is the introduction of a new “admin” bar that appears after you log in. This admin bar includes quick links to all sites in which you are a registered user. Site authors will also see links to add new posts and editors will have quick links to comments. The other notable new feature is a “link browser” that allows you to search and quickly link to other posts/pages on your site.
Most importantly, this release includes over 800 bug fixes by over 180 developers from around the world. It has been downloaded over 1 million times in the last week.
Let us know if you have any questions about this update or experience any problems.
I’ll be doing a couple of workshops on WordPress this month, showing some of the ways this platform has been used for blogging, courses, research, projects and initiatives. Will give an overview of what’s possible with WordPress and then open up for discussion and questions.
Dates/Times/Location
For more information, see: WordPress @ Middlebury
I’ve coordinated with the Education and Training Team to offer some workshops on WordPress next week, here are details:
These workshops will give an overview of latest version of Translucence, the theme framework that powers many Midd blog themes and will showcase a variety of sites that have recently been created to highlight the many different ways that WordPress can be used.
For other upcoming workshops, see: How to Learn More » On-campus Workshops.
The Curricular Technology Team in collaboration with Shel Sax and academic liaisons has organized a number of learning management system (LMS) training workshops, see:
Segue from Segue > LMS Pilot Training Sessions
The first workshop in the 6th annual CTLR Pedagogy Series was a discussion of LMS platforms lead by Mary Ellen Bertolini, Jason Mittell and Louisa Burnham. Online discussion, assignments and grading were all hot topics.
Yesterday, Scott Siddall from Longsight, an open source service provider, lead a day long training session in Sakai. A number of faculty have agreed to pilot Sakai this spring and attended the afternoon session to get an overview of the platform and hands-on training. There will be more training sessions next week. Here are dates:
Tomorrow and Friday, I’ll lead a workshop on Moodle, providing an overview of this LMS platform and then hands-on training for faculty who have agreed to pilot it. Here is schedule:
While all of these training sessions are primarily for pilot participants, other faculty and staff are encouraged to attend at least the first part of these sessions where we’ll give an overview of the platforms and their distinguishing characteristics.
For more information, see:
Segue from Segue > Learning Management Systems Evaluations
Segue from Segue Teaching with Technology LIS Staff Middlebury Community MiddPoints
