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”

Upgrade

Tuesday, February 7, 2012 – blog.ryerson.ca to upgrade to WordPress 3.3.1

blog.ryerson.ca will be upgraded to WordPress 3.3.1 on Tuesday, February 7, 2012 between 8:00am and 10:00am.

WordPress 3.3 “Sonny” details here: http://wordpress.org/news/2011/12/sonny/

Many additions and changes are introduced with this update, some of which include:

  • Drag-and-drop functionality added to the file uploader
  • Improved admin toolbar
  • Improved Dashboard interface, including helpful pointer tips
  • Improved touch support in the Dashboard, for use on iPad and other tablet devices

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

Upgrade

Thursday, August 4 – blog.ryerson.ca to upgrade to WordPress 3.2.1

blog.ryerson.ca will be upgraded to WordPress 3.2.1 on Thursday, August 04 between 10:00am and 12:00pm.

WordPress 3.2 “Gershwin” details here: http://wordpress.org/news/2011/07/gershwin/

Many additions and changes are introduced with this update, some of which include:

  • A new default theme, Twenty Eleven , that features a clean interface and takes advantage of many new features available in WordPress 3.2
  • A cleaner and faster admin dashboard interface

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

Upgrade

Friday, May 6 – blog.ryerson.ca to upgrade to WordPress 3.1.2

An update to our message from earlier this week…

blog.ryerson.ca will now be upgraded to WordPress 3.1.2 on Friday, May 6 between 6:00 and 8:00am, instead of the original date Friday, April 29.

This upgrade will implement changes from releases 3.1.1 and 3.1.2.

This is a maintenance and security update and does not include any major changes.

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