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Category Archives: podcasting

Blogs and Podcasts Upgrade – Outage and New Features

We have been running the current Blogs and Podcasts system for 18months now and it is ready for an update. This update will involve an outage where the system will be unavailable (Thursday, 23 June 2011 from 8.30am till 5pm) to staff and students. Most of the changes will be happening behind the scenes so there is no need to worry about ‘everything changing‘. There are a couple of changes/new features you might notice:

  • The My Blogs tab in the Dashboard will now be called My Sites
  • Now you will be able to create navigation menus yourself – no more having to deal with alphabetical order when you don’t want to. You will find this in the Appearances menu of your dashboard, and there is an easy widget you can use to apply it to your site.
  • All logged in users will now have an Admin Bar at the top of all pages – this allows quick access to various sections of the dashboard (add posts, add podcasts, change themes, view your profile etc). This bar can be turned off in your profile if you do not want to use it.

New Admin Bar

New Admin Bar

We apologise for the inconvenience of the outage and hope the new features will be useful to everyone.

WordPress Tip #1 – Sticky Posts

Want a particular post to always appear first in your list of posts? This could be any sort of post:

  • podcast
  • image
  • text entry

Sticky posts are the answer – sticky posts allow you to place any post at the top of your site without editing the timestamps.

To make a post sticky you need to first open the post for editing. You can do this from the Edit section of the Post menu in your Dashboard.

Where to edit your posts

  1. Open the post you wish to edit.
  2. Locate the Publish box on the right hand side of the screen
  3. Edit the Visibility (this will make more options appear).
  4. Select ‘Stick this post to the front page’
  5. Click ‘OK’
  6. Click ‘Update Post’.

Making your post sticky

You can make the post ‘unsticky’ in the same way, this is useful if you wanted to make a different post sticky.

New Podcasting Service for 2010

ITS at Otago has started 2010 by launching a new podcasting service. The new service is built around open source Blogging Software: WordPress Multi-User (WPMU). If you already use the podcasting system – don’t worry the new service has the same functionality – and more.

Front page of the new podcasting service

Otago has been running the same podcasting service for the last three years; in 2009 we made the decision to move to WPMU. This move means we have been able to provide users with many new features. New features include:

  • Pick your own site’s theme
  • Add multiple pages to your podcasting site
  • Use Google Analytics to track site usage (if you have a Google Analytics account).
  • Customizable dashboard (administration area)
  • Ability to customize your site with widgets (calendar, search box, text box, list of links)

Some of the themes offered in the new podcasting service

The widgets available in the new podcasting service

If you’re a podcast site owner ITS will have already contacted you to let you know what has happened and how you were affected. We recommend you update any existing links to the podcasting service you have – i.e. Blackboard links, webpage links, and course information books.

Useful podcasting information

  • ITS Podcasting Help Site – information about what a podcast site is; how to get a podcast site; and reference manuals.
  • Otago Podcasts – the new podcasting service’s homepage.
  • ITS HelpDesk – if you have any questions or feedback about the new system.