EduGlu Sandbox

I’ve been meaning to redesign the main site at UCalgaryBlogs.ca for awhile now - the Edublogs Clean theme isn’t intended to be dropped in as a stock theme, but as a starting point for hacking something tailor-made.

I just put up a bunch of these posters in a few of the buildings on campus. Time to spread the word a little more widely…

I got word back from Akismet that using it on UCalgaryBlogs.ca to protect all of the blogs hosted there falls under the free license, despite the wording on their website that suggests it’s an enterprise use.

I just had to uninstall the TanTanNoodles Simple Spam Filter from UCalgaryBlogs.ca - it’s a simple plugin that uses a dictionary lookup to try to detect what it thinks are REALLY obvious spam comment attempts. But it was a bit overzealous.

I’ve disabled WP-Super-Cache on UCalgaryBlogs.ca because it was doing quirky things like showing the anonymous front page after someone logged in, etc… And, with our low load and mostly logged in users, it really wasn’t necessary.

One of the profs using UCalgaryBlogs.ca was asking if there was a way to show the “audit trail” for a blog posts. If she’s having students write stuff, and needs it in by a given date (say, an assignment deadline), she’d like a way to know if a post was saved before the deadline, or updated after it.

The UCalgaryBlogs.ca publishing platform has really only been active for the last month, with real faculty and students using it. In that month, it’s already seen more activity, in terms of blog posts written, than weblogs.ucalgary.ca has seen in over 3.5 years of activity.

1600 posts.

In one month.

30 days.

I wasn’t convinced that we needed a “campus blogging platform” here at UCalgary. I’d tried to set up one before, at weblogs.ucalgary.ca , and watched it basically wither on the vine for 3 years. Little activity, except in small bursts when used in a class. Almost no individual involvement or ownership. Not interesting or relevant to anyone.

I’m working with a faculty member who is using a WordPress with his students this semester as a place for them to publish and reflect as a group.

Donncha pushed the WPMU 2.6.1 update live today, and it’s a required upgrade for security reasons. I just wanted to post that I’ve upgraded ucalgaryblogs.ca to WPMU 2.6.1 and everything appears fine. It took all of 2 minutes to do, too.

Here’s my process: