All posts by Stephanie

Upgrade

Friday, August 23, 2013 – blog.ryerson.ca to upgrade to WordPress 3.6, ‘Oscar’

blog.ryerson.ca will be upgraded to WordPress 3.6 on Friday, August 23, 2013 between 7:00am and 8:00am.

This is upgrade includes some feature changes, security fixes and performance updates. Details can be found here.

Please report any problems you may experience post-upgrade via the form linked on our Contact Us page.

What’s New in “Green”?

Here are some of the highlights of WordPress 3.6. There are many many more updates that may not be as apparent.

  • New Twenty Thirteen theme
  • Post locking and improved autosave of posts and pages
  • Improved Menu editor
Alert

Twitter Plugins UPDATED – Please Read

This summer, the Twitter plugins on blog.ryerson.ca blogs (WordTwit and Tweet Blender) stopped functioning, as they had not been updated by their developers to work with a new Twitter API. We first reported this problem back in June, and have been working to resolve the issue since then.

We are happy to report that both of the plugins we were using have now been updated. If you were using either plugin previously, please see the details below to find out what you need to do in order to re-establish them on your site. Neither plugin will automatically start working again without your intervention.

We apologize for the time it has taken to get everything working again, and are thankful for your ongoing patience.

Twitter Plugin Details:

We’re *finally* back up and running with both of our Twitter plugins.

WordTwit, the plugin used to send a tweet when a new post is published on your blog, has now been updated. If you were using WordTwit previously, you will need to reconfigure the plugin – it will not automatically work. The new Twitter API has some new requirements, so the setup is a little bit more complicated. Instructions are available in the plugin’s own pages – please read them carefully.

Tweet Blender, the plugin we use to display tweets on our blogs, has also been updated. If you were using TweetBlender previously, you will need to go to the “Status” tab in the plugin and re-authenticate Twitter (by entering your username and password).

Alert

Twitter Plugins Not Functioning – UPDATE JUNE 25

You may have noticed that the Twitter plugins on blog.ryerson.ca blogs (WordTwit and Tweet Blender) are no longer functioning.

This is due to a change that Twitter implemented yesterday, retiring their old API (v.1) in favour of a new API (v1.1). Unfortunately, most of the WordPress Twitter plugins still utilize API v.1, and have not yet been updated for v1.1. As such, these plugins have stopped working properly.

We are working to find a solution for blog.ryerson.ca. It is my hope that the developers of the two plugins we use will provide us with quick updates. In the meantime, we have been testing other plugins, in the event that updates aren’t provided soon.

The developers of WordTwit have confirmed that they are working on an update, so we hope to have this plugin updated soon.

We apologize for this inconvenience, and will do our best to ensure this is resolved quickly.

June 13 UPDATE:

WordTwit, the plugin used to send a tweet when a new post is published on your blog, has now been updated. If you were using WordTwit previously, you will need to reconfigure the plugin – it will not automatically work. The new Twitter API has some new requirements, so the setup is a little bit more complicated. Instructions are available in the plugin’s own pages – please read them carefully.

June 25 UPDATE:

The developer of Tweet Blender has recently communicated that an update is in the works, and should be ready sometime next week. We’ll keep you posted!

Tips

Twitterfy Your Blog

Did you know that your blog and your Twitter account can work together?

Adding some Twitter elements to your blog can pool together the audience for your blog with the audience for your Twitter account. Not only is it a way to promote on both platforms, but a way to generate interesting comments, and broaden your online community. For those of you who blog for class purposes, it’s a great way to reach outside of your classroom peers.

Automatically Tweet Links to Blog Posts

WordTwit is a plugin that generates a new Tweet every time you publish a new blog post. The embedded tweet below is an example of this plugin at work – it’s made up of the title of the blog post, a link to the post and any other text (including hashtags) you may want to add to all of your blog-based tweets.

Once activated, this plugin’s settings can be found under Settings > WordTwit. Just follow the on-screen instructions to authorize your Twitter account and get started!

Tip: Keep your blog post titles clear and concise! Remember that it needs to fit into a tweet, along with any added text and the link!

Display Tweets on your Blog

Tweet Blender is a sidebar widget that lists recent Tweets by a specified user, hashtag, or keyword!

Once activated, this plugin’s settings can be found under Settings > Tweet Blender. The most useful options are all in the General, Widgets and Archives tabs. Try different combinations of settings until it looks and works the way you want.

Tip: Enable the Archive page in Tweet Blender. This saves the tweets that it pulls into its own page. This is a great way to keep a record of tweets that were relevant to your blog!

Embed Tweets on a Post or Page

Tweets can be embedded in any post or page, with all of the original links intact! Not only does this allow you to share the information from the tweet, but it adds some visual interest that you wouldn’t get from simply cutting & pasting the text. You can also embed an entire conversation!

  1. Locate the tweet you want to embed, on Twitter.com*, and hover your mouse over it.
  2. Click the More button, and select Expand. Click the grey Details link, found next to the date of the tweet. This will open the tweet on its own page.
  3. Go to the address bar of your browser, at the top of the screen. Highlight, then copy the entire URL (web address) of the tweet into your clipboard, by right-clicking and selecting Copy from the contextual menu.
  4. In any post or page on your blog, click the Text tab on the textbox editor.
  5. Paste the code on its own line (not on the same line as any other text or content), by right-clicking in the editor window and selecting Paste from the contextual menu.
  6. Click Preview to see that it works before you Publish.

*Steps 1 & 2 are specific to Twitter.com. If you use other apps to access tweets (like Tweet Deck, Hoot Suite, etc.), the steps to get to the tweet’s own webpage may be different.

Your embedded tweet will look something like this:

Tips

Embedding Videos – The Easy Way!

Do you ever use your blog to share videos you find on sites like Youtube or Vimeo?

There’s a really easy way to embed videos from some of the more popular video hosting sites – just paste the URL of the video.

Until recently, we had to copy and paste the embed code from a site. This can be pretty easy, but there is a much more efficient way of completing the task.

  1. Locate the video you want to embed on your blog post or page. Copy the URL from your browser’s address bar, at the top of the screen.
  2. Create a new post/page or edit an existing post/page.
  3. Click the Text tab in your textbox editor.
  4. Paste the URL for the video on it’s own line.
  5. Complete your post/page, making sure to not change the video’s URL or add any other text to the same line.
  6. Publish your post/page.

Related Article: Adding Images and Multimedia

What sites can I embed from?

Notice that this list is not limited to video hosting sites.

(list taken from this page on the WordPress codex on March 6, 2013.)

Tips

Dealing with Blog Spam

We recently updated our article on “Dealing with Spam“, offering some tips and tricks to limiting spam on your blog.

Blogging can be a time consuming process – and our time should be spent working on great content and a nice interface. Instead, we find ourselves taking time to check a never-ending list of what appear to be comments. At first, it’s nice to think that your site is getting some attention, and then you realize that most of it is spam.

There’s almost nothing more frustrating and discouraging than spam.

Spam is a part of blogging life. We install plugins to try to limit it, but there’s no surefire way to block spam while allowing useful comments.

Here are some tips for dealing with spam

Article: Dealing with Spam

Upgrade

Friday, February 15, 2013 – blog.ryerson.ca Upgrades to WordPress 3.5.1

blog.ryerson.ca will be upgraded to WordPress 3.5.1 on Friday, February 15, 2012 between 7:00am and 8:00am.

This is upgrade rolls together features from the 3.5 and 3.5.1 releases.

Notable updates include:

  • A new Media Library interface from inside a post or page, for uploading media and creating galleries. (See videos below)
  • A change in the location of the Privacy settings. They can now be found in the Dashboard under Settings > Reading.
  • Security fixes

Please report any problems you may experience post-upgrade via the form linked on our Contact Us page.

 

Here are some videos that illustrate the update to the image upload and gallery creation features:

A look at the new Media Library interface:

Creating Image Galleries:

Upgrade

Friday, June 29, 2012 – blog.ryerson.ca to upgrade to WordPress 3.4.1, ‘Green’

blog.ryerson.ca will be upgraded to WordPress 3.4.1 on Friday, June 29, 2012 between 7:00am and 8:00am.

This is upgrade includes some feature changes, security fixes and performance updates. Details can be found here.

Please report any problems you may experience post-upgrade via the form linked on our Contact Us page.

What’s New in “Green”?

Twitter Embed

Simply copy the permanent link to any tweet (or tweet conversation) and paste in the HTML source of a WordPress post or page. When published, the tweet(s) will be embedded, adding some visual flair.

Theme Preview

Click on the ‘Customize’ link for the theme enabled in your blog, and you will be brought to a screen that allows you to preview the WordPress-based theme changes (such as title, tagline, link colours, background image, header image, etc). Your changes will only be published to your blog when you click “Save & Publish”