Fall WordPress Update
This fall marks our fourth year with WordPress class blogs on campus and our second with portfolio blogs for students and faculty. As you think about things you’d like to do with your blogs this year, here are a couple new plugins and capabilities to get you started. (*To make each available on your blog, go to the Dashboard and activate it in the Plugins menu.)
Elegant Shortcodes – the Learning Studio has been using a theme from Elegant Themes for the last year and wanted all faculty and students to have access to some of the same layout and formatting options. Shortcodes are [simple commands] in brackets that surround the content you want to put in a box, in a column, etc. Here is the page that lists all your options.
Jetpack – a collection of features and widgets previously only available to blogs on WordPress.com. You can turn on basic blog statistics, post/comment subscriptions, and a half-dozen other additions. Jetpack requires a free WordPress.com account.
RV Embed PDF – several faculty producing tenure portfolios on WordPress asked for a plugin that embeds PDFs. Once you activate RV Embed, you simply upload your PDF file using the Add Media button above the post/page editor.
Twenty Eleven Theme Extensions – many of our portfolio users have used one of Automattic’s new default themes, Twenty Ten or Twenty Eleven. The latter included a dozen new features as well as some oddities that some users will want to alter or turn off. Twenty Eleven Theme Extensions adds a long list of theme customizations for those already using the Twenty Eleven theme.
Wolfram CDF Plugin – requested by colleagues in math, the Wolfram plugin gives blog owners the ability to embed interactive models into their blog. For more information on the CDF standard, check the Wolfram site.
Kyle Dickson on Adding an Avatar on Campus Blogs
5:43 pm, 10.22.09
This is an example of a comment. Comments can appear at the bottom of any posts or pages when you you check Allow Comments in the Discussion box.
*If you have trouble with an avatar appearing on ACU Blogs, check to make sure you’re using your MyACU email address for Gravatar.com. To find this email address, log in to MyACU and look in the Courses box to see what email address is listed with each of your classes.
Kyle Dickson on Adding an Avatar on Campus Blogs
5:44 pm, 10.22.09
This is a threaded comment. It shows up as a Reply to the previous comment (indented from the left margin) because I chose the Reply button.
If you just want to Comment on the post, just go to the comment box and submit as you normally would and your note will appear at the bottom of the list.
Threaded or nested comments help visualize some of the back and forth of a discussion board without the confusing interface.