Smith College Blogs

Our blog software has been updated from 2.6.5 to 2.8.2.  You will notice the completely redesigned (and completely customizable) Dashboard when you log in. (For more information and a tutorial on how to use the new Dashboard, see my previous post.)

I’ve also added some handy new plugins:

The Flickr widget allows you to show photos from your Flickr account in your blog sidebar.

More Privacy Options lets you customize the level of privacy of your entire blog. You can now limit access to only logged-in Smith users, or you can limit it to a specific group of people whom you select. This will allow us to use Wordpress for course blogs which are visible to course members only.

My Page Order lets you set the order in which pages appear in the page list widget.  Under Pages, you’ll see an additional menu item that lets you easily drag your page list to reorder it.

Wordpress 2.8.1 has been released!  We were planning to upgrade to 2.7, but we will now be skipping directly to 2.8. This upgrade will happen by the end of July, so be prepared to see some nice changes here.

Along with the usual security updates and bug fixes, this version comes with a completely redesigned Dashboard interface.  This means that when you log in to make updates to your blog, the blog administration page you see will look very different.

Here is a view of what the new interface looks like:

WordPress 2.7 Dashboard

For more information on the new Dashboard interface, please read this tutorial.

For further information on what specifically has changed from 2.6.5 to 2.8.1, see WordPress’s blog posts on 2.7 and 2.8.

Smith College Blogs has been updated to WPMu 2.5.6, an update which fixes a security problem and a few bugs. Via WordPress Blog:

The security issue is an XSS exploit discovered by Jeremias Reith that fortunately only affects IP-based virtual servers running on Apache 2.x. …

2.6.5 contains three other small fixes in addition to the XSS fix. The first prevents accidentally saving post meta information to a revision. The second prevents XML-RPC from fetching incorrect post types. The third adds some user ID sanitization during bulk delete requests. For a list of changed files, consult the full changeset between 2.6.3 and 2.6.5.

The Blogs hosted on Sophia have been nominated for the WPMU Awards at WPMU.org! Check out the other WPMU sites at WPMU.org & vote for your favorite.

Smith College Blogs have recently been updated to WPMu 2.6.3, which fixes a vulnerability in the Snoopy library, which is used to fetch the feeds shown in the Dashboard.

Akismet was also updated, a plugin which, if you haven’t noticed it, should be your favorite! Akismet protects your blog from comment spam, and it’s doing it’s job if you never think about it. To check out what Akismet has blocked, go to Comments → Akismet Spam. (As of writing this post, Akismet has blocked 102 spam comments on the Smith College Blogs News & Updates blog.)

Lastly, the video embedding/linking plugin has been upgraded to Viper’s Video Quicktags 6.1.4. You’ll notice the new embed buttons in your text editor. To add other types of video or remove some of the default buttons, go to Settings → Video Quicktags.

I added four new themes to blogs hosted on Sophia today… See the gallery below for a preview.

To change the theme of your blog, go to Design → Themes. Click on the theme you want to use and then click on the Activate button in the upper-right corner of the preview window.

This post also demonstrates a new plugin, WordPress Lightbox Gallery. This plugin automatically makes your galleries into Lightbox galleries if you have it enabled. Click on a thumbnail above to see the plugin in action.

To add a lightbox to an image that is not in a gallery, add the atribute rel="lightbox" to the <a> tag around on your image.

To activate the WordPress Lightbox Gallery plugin, go to Manage → Plugins.

Smith College blogs hosted on Sophia were upgraded to WPMu 2.6.2 this morning.

The update includes a number of stability fixes and a security patch, as well as one new feature: You can now easily add images to your posts or pages using a URL!

1. Find an image online or upload your own to your Sophia web space.
2. Right-click (or ctrl-click if you’re on a Mac) on the image and choose Copy Image Location. (The URL of the picture is now in your clipboard.)
   

   Right-click and choose "Copy Image Location"

3. Login to your blog and begin writing a post (or edit an existing one).
4. Click on the Add an Image button at the top of the Visual Editor.
   

   New "Add an Image" button

5. The Insert Media window will open. Paste the image URL into the Source field, give your image a Title and Caption, choose the Alignment, and a Link URL, then click Insert into Post. (Only Source and Image Title are required, but if you are using someone else’s image, it is good “netiquette” link back to the original source.)
   

   Example of inserting an image using a URL

6. Voila!
   

   Zevi in the Grass by Alexander Kahn

Plugins at Smith College Blogs have moved! You can now find all available plugins under the Manage → Plugins submenu (instead of the Plugins tab on the upper-right hand side).

New plugins include:

Photo Dropper

Photo Dropper is a Wordpress plugin that lets you add Flickr photos to your posts. It searches for Creative Commons licensed photos – images that are licensed for shared use – and lets you drop them into your posts – right from your dashboard with just 1 click.

Google Maps Quicktag

While editing your post, you can quickly pop-open Google Maps from the editor and generate your map through the Maps interface, or quickly grab the link to a map you’ve already prepared in My Maps. Then, you can copy the code given for embedding and paste it directly into the HTML editor. (You can also use this plugin to embed any “embeddable” content from another website.)

Smith College Blogs hosted on Sophia were successfully upgraded to WordPress MU 2.6.1 this afternoon.

The update brings WordPress MU up to speed with WordPress 2.6.1 and “fixes a number of critical bugs, particularly in deleting users and blogs.” [Holy Shmoly!]

SC Blogs has recently switched from Viper Video Quicktags to Anarchos’s Anarchy Media Player for WordPress Mu.

The new media player/embed tool integrates more easily with syndication and podcasting and it’s easier to use.

You’ll notice that there are now two additional buttons on your Visual editor (aka the What You See Is What You Get editor):

Visual Editor

An “A” for embedding miscellaneous and sundry media files and an “f” for embedding Flash SWF movie files into your post (or page).

To insert media from the web, click on the Embed a media file button (the yellow “A”) and paste the full URL (including http://) to your video or audio file.

For example, to embed a video from YouTube

1. Choose the video, then copy it’s URL.
2. Click on the Embed a media file button.
3. Paste the entire URL into the pop-up window.
4. Click OK.
5. The following code gets inserted into my post (without spaces next to the brackets): [ kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/K9SrIvx43Pk" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" / ]
6. Click Save.
7. To see what it will look like, click Preview this Post.

This is the video that gets embedded:

Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Flash video.

Anarchy Media Player also auto-detects links to mp3, flv, Quicktime mov, mp4, m4v, m4a, m4b, 3gp as well as Windows wmv, avi and asf files, and creates a player on your page. So, for example, the following link:

<a href="http://www.archive.org/download/DefianceOhioTheFearTheFearTheFear/Defiance_Ohio__06__Now_Now_Now.mp3">Defiance Ohio - The Fear The Fear The Fear - Now Now Now</a>

Creates this player: Defiance Ohio – The Fear The Fear The Fear – Now Now Now

The great thing about this is that if you embed an mp3, m4a, m4b, mpeg, mp4, mov or qt video, it will automatically be detected as a podcast in your blog’s feed!