2.0 toolbox

What’s a blog without YouTube embedding capabilities? Not much of a blog, most likely! Some of you may have noticed that embedding a YouTube video into WordPressMU is, well, impossible. At least without some intervention. So, I’ve intervened by installing a plugin and activating that plugin on all 2.0 Toolbox blogs. This plugin allows you to embed YouTube videos into your blog posts with zero fiddling to make it happen. Here’s a quick 52-second screencast to show you how to do it (best viewed in full-screen mode):

If you have any problems doing the same thing on your blog, leave a comment and I’ll look into it. Have fun embedding!

We should be up and running on the new version of the blog server software!  If you have any problems or if something is broken, please let us know.

We’re planning on upgrading the 2.0 Toolbox to the latest version of WordPress MU on Thursday, August 13 at 20:00. This means that all 2.0 Toolbox blogs will be inaccessible for about 2 hours starting at 20:00 on Thursday. This upgrade fixes some minor back-end issues so you shouldn’t notice any visible changes to the admin or public interfaces for your blog after the upgrade.

We’ll post again once the upgrade has been successfully completed. Thanks for your patience!

I’ve just installed reCAPTCHA on the 2.0 Toolbox blogs in an attempt to curb comment spam. I’ve noticed that some blogs are getting hit harder than others, but I’ve activated the plugin on all blogs just in case. If a blog reader is not logged into the 2.0 Toolbox and would like to leave a comment on any post, he/she will have to type in 2 words presented in an image to submit the comment. Here’s an example:

Captcha programs have their drawbacks (some word images are just impossible to read!), but by and large, the benefits outweigh the negatives. Also, reCAPTCHA is a worthy cause that uses captcha input to digitize books from the Internet Archive! Read more about the project here.

If you’re having any trouble with the reCAPTCHA on your blog, let me know.

Just to a quick update to let everyone know that the blogs on the 2.0 Toolbox are now running off WordPress MU 2.7 (the latest, greatest version of the software). The upgrade went smoothly, for the most part. RSS feeds didn’t survive the upgrade initially, but all is now well on that front.

Here are a couple of things on my to-do list that I will be getting to over the next couple of weeks:

• Better spam control. We currently have a captcha plugin running, but a little spam is still spilling through, so I’m looking for something a bit hardier and hope to test/implement some new spam controls soon. Update: done!
• Fixing the list-all page which lists all the blogs on the 2.0 Toolbox. The script that powers that page has been busted for months and it’s time to do something about it!
• Installing a few more themes. We already have a pretty extensive list of themes on offer, but I haven’t added any new themes in months, so I hope to rectify that very soon.
• Possibly conducting a drop-in session on the new admin interface for faculty and staff members who have a blog on the 2.0 Toolbox. If you have any interest in such a session, let me know.

If you’ve got any questions, comments or suggestions for other features you’d like to see on the 2.0 Toolbox, feel free to get in touch!

WordPress recently saw a snazzy upgrade (to version 2.7) and just a couple of weeks ago, the same upgrade was made to WordPress MU — the software we use to power the blogs on the 2.0 Toolbox. We’re taking advantage of it being Reading Week next week to upgrade our WordPress installation and just wanted to give all 2.0 Toolbox blog users a heads-up. The upgrade will take place on Wednesday, February 18th, at 8 pm and should last about an hour.

What sort of changes can you look forward to in version 2.7? Glad you asked! Most of the changes are to the administration interface, so your blog readers shouldn’t see much of a difference. For a detailed outline of what version 2.7 does, take a look at this page. And for a thorough review of how the admin panel has changed with the new version, check out this post.

We’re hopeful that the uprgade will go smoothly, but if we do encounter any issues, we’ll post updates and progress reports to our Twitter stream.

Questions? Feel free to leave a comment below or get in touch.

Here’s one of the best things about open source software: you can make it do what you want it to do. This is a big part of why we chose the software we did for the 2.0 Toolbox — both WordPress and PmWiki are open source, which means we can actually get into the guts of both pieces of software and make changes to suit your needs. And when we can’t figure out how to do it ourselves, chances are the development communities around these projects have already come up with something we can use in the form of plugins or add-ons.

Which is to say that if your blog or wiki does not have a feature you hoped it would have, or is not behaving in a way that works for you, tell us about it! We are happy to work with our 2.0 Toolbox users to get the software to work the way you want it to work (rather than forcing you to work the way the software does!), so if there’s something you’d like your blog or wiki to do that it isn’t currently doing, drop me a line with the details.

It really is all about you!

This is just an FYI for all our beta testers who have started a blog on the 2.0 Toolbox. We just upgraded the WordPress installation on this server (to version 2.3.3), so if you notice odd behaviour on your blog, send me a message with the details.

We’re hoping this upgrade will help solve a couple of problems we’ve been having with managing plugins and the security certificate on the site.