UNSW Blogs - Under the Dashboard

Workshop for UNSW Staff with Jo Kay, May 2009

Workshop for UNSW Staff with Jo Kay, May 2009

WORKSHOP OVERVIEW

• Welcome and Introductions

• Wordpress MU: Background and Tech Specs

• UNSW Blogs Overview

• UNSW Blogs Policies: Publishing and Management

• Bangs and Whistles: Plugins on UNSW Blogs

• (Very) Quick Overview of Template Design for Wordpress

• Future Development on UNSW Blogs

• Questions and Discussion

Workshop for UNSW Staff with Jo Kay, May 2009

UNSW Blogs Overview

• UNSW Blogs Platform established as part of the TELT Pilot project

• Allows for the setup and management of multiple blogs for staff use at UNSW

• Running on the Wordpress Multi-User 2.7.1 platform

• Customised templates which include University Branding

• Added functionality including Podcasting &Vodcasting, Web 2.0 tools and social networking (via plugins)

http://blogs.unsw.edu.au

Workshop for UNSW Staff with Jo Kay, May 2009

Wordpress MU:

Technical RequirementsTo run WordPress MU you need webhosting which provides:

• PHP version 4.3 or greater• MySQL version 4.0 or greater• Apache mod_rewrite

UNSW Blogs is running version 2.7.1 which was released in March 2009.

Workshop for UNSW Staff with Jo Kay, May 2009

Wordpress MU:

Background & Tech SpecsFlavours of Wordpress!

– Wordpress: Supports one weblog per installation, open source, easy to self-host

– WordPress Multi-User: (WordPress MU, a.k.a. WPMU) allows simultaneous blogs to exist within one installation and managed via one site admin dashboard

– Other related products include Lyceum (which was designed for enterprise use and has a normalised database structure ) and BuddyPress - a plug-in extension of WPMU that is adding missing community features

Workshop for UNSW Staff with Jo Kay, May 2009

UNSW Blogs Terms of Use & Publishing Policies

• The Terms of Use and Guidelines Publishing on the UNSW Blogs platform are currently under development

• The Terms of Use and Guidelines should allow for flexibility and sharing, as well as ensuring that relevant university polices are met.

• Consideration should be given to policies for both professional and personal use of online tools such as blog, wikis and social software

Workshop for UNSW Staff with Jo Kay, May 2009

Existing Policies to Consider

• TAFE NSW – Sydney Institute’s Terms of Use and Guidelines for the myLearning Platform (Wikis and blogs) See: http://termsofuse.sydneyinstitute.wikispaces.net/

• BBC Guidelines for Online PublishingSee: http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/

• BBC Guidelines for Personal Use of Online and Social Media SitesSee:http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/advice/personalweb/index.shtml

Workshop for UNSW Staff with Jo Kay, May 2009

TAFE NSW – Sydney Institute Guidelines

See: http://termsofuse.sydneyinstitute.wikispaces.net/

Workshop for UNSW Staff with Jo Kay, May 2009

Theme Design for Wordpress

• Wordpress Themes allow for detailed customisation of both the platform at an administration/corporate level, but can also be used to enable a high level of user customisation.

• Wordpress themes consist of php files and css. (style.css, header.php, page.php etc)

• Resources for those interested in developing Wordpress Themes is available @ http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/

Workshop for UNSW Staff with Jo Kay, May 2009

UNSW Blog Themes

• A small collection of UNSW Blog Themes have been developed and more are on the way!

• Themes have been designed to meet UNSW Branding obligations, but still allow for a level of user customisation and personalisation

• Themes are designed for use with a wide range of plugins, plus ‘widgetised’ to allow for extensive sidebar and content customisation.

Workshop for UNSW Staff with Jo Kay, May 2009

Themes: Course Blog Theme

Workshop for UNSW Staff with Jo Kay, May 2009

Themes: UNSW Blogs - Simple

Workshop for UNSW Staff with Jo Kay, May 2009

Template Design

• Relatively simple process: – Create style.css, header.php, page.php etc– A huge range of Wordpress Themes freely

available which can be used as the basis for development

– Source code for UNSW templates can be made available for the ‘geeks’ in the UNSW Blogs Community in a sandbox environment.

Workshop for UNSW Staff with Jo Kay, May 2009

PLUGINS!• A wide range of plugins have been installed to extend the UNSW Blogs

Platform. A list of Plugins installed on the platform is provided @ http://blogs.unsw.edu.au/unsw-blogs-platform-features/

• In general, most standard Wordpress Plugins work with WPMU, however there are some exceptions. Additionally some plugins require extra customisation to work on the WPMU platform securely.

• Plugins can be activated and deactivated on a per-blog basis.

• "mu-plugins" are generally administrative, and are enabled by default (security features, statistics, user management, tag and category management)

Workshop for UNSW Staff with Jo Kay, May 2009

PLUGINS: Google Analytics

• Allows for statistics tracking at both site admin and user level.

• Plugins in to Google’s freely available analytics tools

Workshop for UNSW Staff with Jo Kay, May 2009

PLUGINS: LifeStream

• Allows users to create a stream of all of their online activity via RSS and a range of social networking sites including Facebook, Flickr, mySpace etc.

• Great way to ‘mashup’ a group of sites

Workshop for UNSW Staff with Jo Kay, May 2009

Scaleability & Integration

• Wordpress MU creates new database tables for each blog– Enables improved Plugin compatibility – Takes advantage of existing OS-level and MySQL query caches – Enables segmented user data – which allows for multi-site

platforms and ‘blog farms’

• Authentication: Allows for integration via LDAP enabled directory services– OpenLDAP, Apache Directory, Microsoft Active Directory, Novell

eDirectory, Sun Java System Directory Server etc

Workshop for UNSW Staff with Jo Kay, May 2009

Ongoing Development on UNSW Blogs

• Ongoing development of templates to support various faculties and projects – eg. Faculty based templates (branding) and team or project based templates (TELT blog)

• Ongoing testing and development of WPMU Plugins to support customised content and social networking/communication

Workshop for UNSW Staff with Jo Kay, May 2009

Future Development

on UNSW BlogsRecommended Strategies for future

development: • Pilot and testing of of additional and

complimentary tools including BuddyPress – a WPMU based social networking platform (http://buddypress.org/)

• Exploration and testing of tools to support and enhance multimedia delivery (youtube integration, media servers, complimentay software to support image galleries)

Workshop for UNSW Staff with Jo Kay, May 2009

Questions and Discussion!

Note: We will publish these slides on the TELT Blog shortly and encourage you to continue the discussion online!

Workshop for UNSW Staff with Jo Kay, May 2009

USEFUL LINKS

• UNSW Blogs: http://blogs.unsw.edu.au• TELT WIKI – Blogging Resources:• Wordpress MU: http://mu.wordpress.org• Jo Kay’s Website: http://jokay.com.au

Workshop for UNSW Staff with Jo Kay, May 2009

Contact Jo!

Jo Kay, Freelance Virtual Worlds, Web Design, eLearning & Facilitation

– Blog: http://jokay.com.au– Wiki: http://jokay.wikispaces.com– Portfolio Site: http://jaspercat.net – Email: joannamkay@gmail.com– Twitter: http://twitter.com/jokay – Islands of jokaydia: http://jokaydia.com – Mob: 0405179622