Tag Archives: WordPress

The system that runs sites.middlebury.edu

Reduced comment spam in blogs

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During the past few months we have been seeing an increased amount of comment spam coming into WordPress (sites.middlebury.edu) that follows a distinctive pattern: the comment text is useless, but unoffensive and contains no links itself, while the Comment Author Website field contains the URL of a commercial site. Because the comment text doesn’t contain any links, the comment doesn’t get picked up by WordPress’s existing spam filters and until now would be held for moderation. Continue reading →

New Themes Available for sites.middlebury.edu

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I’ve added 132 new themes to our instance of WordPress that can be used for your department, course, and personal blogs. The eight themes that we previously had have been renamed #1-8 so that they show up first in the list, followed by the new options. If you need a theme with a particular color, layout, or features, click the “Feature Filter” link on the right side of the Themes page and check the boxes that apply to your needs.

You can click on one of the thumbnails in the Themes page to see a preview of your blog in the new theme.

If you want to blog, but the Middlebury blogging network is lacking something you need, let us know.

New Social Media Tools in sites.middlebury.edu

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I’ve added two new plugins today that you can use to connect your blog on sites.middlebury.edu with people through social media. In this post, I’ll describe what they do as well as cover a couple of options we’ve had for a while that you might not know about. For official organizational blogs, like this one, I’ve got an officially-ish Facebook app and ShareThis and Disqus accounts ready to go, so talk to me first.

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sites.middlebury.edu now on WordPress 3.3.1

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We made the upgrade yesterday to WordPress 3.3 (and 3.3.1). The video below gives an introduction to the changes and new features in version 3.3. We tested as many features as we could think of before applying this change, but please let us know if something’s not working as it should be.

[middmedia 3572e0e0d4518e3ad5796c80f9e53083 imcbride three-three-final_hd.mp4 width:400 height:300]

As an added bonus, we now show videos from MiddMedia using the HTML5 video player in browsers supporting WebM playback: Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and browsers on Android devices. Internet Explorer 9, Safari and iOS users also get the HTML5 video player, playing the video in MP4 format while Internet Explorer 7 and 8 users will still see the flash-based player.

Curricular Technology J-term Workshops for Faculty

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LIS Technologists and Liaisons will be offering more workshop in J-term on Moodle and WordPress, as well as general technology work sessions where faculty can get assistance on using any platform supported by LIS.   There will also be workshops on migrating Segue sites to these other platforms.  For more information, see: Segue from Segue > Workshops

 

Aesthetics of the Moving Image

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Louisa Stein is an assistant professor of Film and Media Culture.  In the spring of 2010, I interviewed Prof. Stein about her use of technology in a number of her courses.  Below is a screencast from that interview that describes her use of WordPress and Moodle in a first year seminar course on the “Aesthetics of the Moving Image.”.

[middmedia E966CA341E9D26A5EA67ECDE36E4C402 achapin teachwithtech-stein-fmmc0101-08.mp4 width:400 height:254]

 

Course Hub Case Studies

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The Course Hub is being actively used by a variety of courses this fall.  To give a sense of the different ways faculty are using this new platform, we’ve made a short screencast that shows a number of courses and some the resources they have linked to their course hub sites.

[middmedia E966CA341E9D26A5EA67ECDE36E4C402 achapin course-hub-case-studies01.mp4 width:400 height:254]

Curricular Technology Workshops in December

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The Curricular Technology team has scheduled workshops and work sessions for faculty on various platforms that are available for teaching and learning. Workshops typically provide overviews of a given platform. Work sessions are designed to provide hands on support and consultation.

  • 2-3 pm, Thurs, Dec 8th, Library 105, Introduction to Moodle (sign up)
  • 3-4 pm, Thurs, Dec 8th, Library 105, Introduction to WordPress (sign up)
  • 3-4 pm, Tues, Dec 13th, Library 105, Curricular Technologies Work Session (sign up)
  • 2-3 pm, Wed, Dec 14th, Library 105, Curricular Technologies Work Session (sign up)

For more information on these, see: Workshops

For information about all workshops offered by LIS in December see: On-campus Workshops > Schedule