UMW Blogs Upgraded to WordPress 3.2.1

Posted on August 3, 2011 by Reverend

Image credit: darek.zon’s “Blue Sky”

Yesterday UMW Blogs was upgraded to the latest version of WordPress (3.2.1), and it was surprisingly seamless. Why surprising? Well, we hadn’t updated since December 2010 and we had more that 69 plugins and themes that were waiting to be upgraded over the last few months, and I thought this would be the time when we finally paid for our sin of theme and plugin gluttony. But, we didn’t—so far we’ve escaped relatively unscathed and laid a couple of  workhorse plugins over the years to rest, a couple of which had far outlived their time. Here is the shortlist of mu-plugins we killed (I will be posting the longer list of plugins and themes we let go as we continue the culling process all this week and next). It is WordPress time at DTLT!

Userthemes is gone. When dsader created Userthemes it was the only way to edit and customize individual themes on a WPMu install without manually copying and re-creating existing themes and then add custom hacks. With the 3.2.1 WP Multi-Site setup this is built into the network admin space. I am loving the uber admin network center.

Anarchy Media Player has been retired. It pained me to do it, but we had to. The instances of AMP shortcode still needs to be converted throughout the site to convert YouTube embeds (working on that) but in the meantime this plugin was a drag on the system and hadn’t been updated since 2008—kinda surprised it worked for so long after it was killed. My very special zombie plugin. And still haven’t found a media plugin as versatile, but with embedding YouTUbe videos in WP as easy as copying and pasting a URl in the visual editor, how could I rationalize this plugin anymore?

MU Multi-Site Manager has also been retired, and I am sad to see it go. This is the pluginw e used to get Longwood Blogs, Faculty Academy, and other WPMu sites that were hosted within UMW Blogs. Interestingly enough, deleting the plugin doesn’t effect the existing networks within networks at all. This week I will be experimenting with James John Jacoby’s Multi-Network plugin as a replacement. And I am planning on testing it as I try and bring the precursor to UMW Blogs (ELS Blogs) into the UMW Blogs fold.

Akismet was also retired on UMW Blogs, but that had nothing to do with functionality and everything to do with money. They wanted $750 a month for a site as big and active as UMW Blogs and we just couldn’t afford it (more details in my previous post here) so we are going with TypePad AntisSpam, so far so good. And I will be crossing my fingers because without a good spam filter we are kinda finished.

Finally, anyone have any recommendations for plugins that they love and think we should play around with in UWm Blogs?

Posted in UMW Blogs, WordPress, wordpress multi-user, wpmu | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

TypePad AntiSpam on UMW Blogs

Posted on August 2, 2011 by Reverend


Image credit: Dok1’s “Spam”

After about 3 years with Akismet on UMW Blogs we switched over to TypePad Antispam so that UMW would no longer be breaking the new licensing for Akismet—under which we would be paying $750 a month for this spam filter on a multi-site installation with 5000+ blogs (actually that quote was for 4000+ blogs back in December 2010). We were more than willing to pay something for Akismet, but the $750 figure was too rich for our blood. I understand no free lunch and all—the liberterian mantra—but that quote seemed rather extreme. I know others have tried to work out something with Akismet, and I’m not sure where that went, but I can’t see how small public colleges like mine where the WordPress blogging platform is an experiment and an afterthought can come up with $10,000 a year for spam protection. We operate on a shoe-string budget and pay less than what Akismet wanted for spam filtering to host and backup all of UMW Blogs. The sad thing is that anyone who has run a large blogging system knows that without a good spam filter the system would be crippled to the point of uselessness. We ultimately stayed on Akismet for the Spring semester because we didn’t have an alternative lined-up and really couldn’t get off Akismet before the new semester started. Luckily no one at Akismet was interested in calling us out and making us pay—and Matt seemed rather cool about looking the other way, but all the same I felt like I was doing something wrong. It was uncomfortable and I wanted out of Akismet as soon as possible.

Midway through last semester I was turned on to TypePad’s AntiSpam option for WordPress, which like Akismet was also developed by Matt Mullenweg, in fact the two seem closely related—save that one is free and one isn’t 😉 We’ve now been on Typepad’s Antispam for 12 hours now, and all is good so far save one issue we are running into. Whenever anyone posts a comment on a blog the comment takes, but in the interim this error message shows up:

Warning: stripslashes() expects parameter 1 to be string, array given in /home/umwblogs/public_html/wp-content/mu-plugins/TypePadAntiSpam.php on line 226

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/umwblogs/public_html/wp-content/mu-plugins/TypePadAntiSpam.php:226) in /home/umwblogs/public_html/wp-content/plugins/subscribe-to-comments/subscribe-to-comments.php on line 817

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/umwblogs/public_html/wp-content/mu-plugins/TypePadAntiSpam.php:226) in /home/umwblogs/public_html/wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 934

I don’t think the Subscribe to Comments error is the cause because I deactivated that plugin and the other two errors still showed up—though I might be wrong. Anyone have any ideas how we might get around this? I also posted this same query in the WordPress MUltiSite forum to see what’s what. If get an answer there I will post it here and vice versa.

Either way, it is a huge relief to be done with Akismet, and I am more than confident we can get rid of this error and see how TypePad’s AntiSpam solution works for us. It may not be a silver bullet, but that’s allright because I am all about the pewter!

Also, my next post will be about how smoothly the upgrade went for UMW Blgos to WP 3.2.1—it was very, very nice.

Posted in UMW Blogs, WordPress, wordpress multi-user, wpmu | Tagged , , , , , | 9 Comments

Jaws Mashup

Posted on August 1, 2011 by Reverend

Derek Whitaker, an internaut in Martha Burtis’s first Summer session ds106, did a memorable sound mashup using the film Jaws in this post here. And given it’s Shark Week—one of the most infuriating, sensationalized, and riveting weeks of U.S. television—-I figured I would share Derek’s awesome work here:

Great White by dwhitake

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Why we loved Molly

Posted on July 28, 2011 by Reverend

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Totally

Posted on July 27, 2011 by Reverend

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Two Months Bender

Posted on July 27, 2011 by Reverend

Long live Paul Gleason! Mr. Vernon remains my all-time favorite K-12 administrator ever to grace the silver screen.

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Study Abroad Blogs on DTLT Today

Posted on July 26, 2011 by Reverend

The Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies (a.k.a. DTLT) has a new 15 minute daily show called DTLT Today. DTLT Today is the brainchild of our latest and greatest addition to DTLT: the Tim “Timmmmyboy” Owens. It’s been awesome having him aboard for the last two weeks, and he is already off and running with his own ideas for how DTLT could be better—-and that is exactly what we want! Tim’s idea behind DTLT Today to make it short, focused, and daily. It could be about anything tangentially related to what we do from our more localized work at UMW to broader news of the day. I like the free-ranging possibilities here, and the fact we can come up with a topic for that day as it hits us keeps it fresh and inspired, or so we hope. What’s more, it is allowing us to make more use of our makeshift television station at DTLT which has been awesome for our group as a whole—this Summer has opened up a wide range of possibilities for us to explore and experiment with when it comes to web video and live broadcasting.

Anyway, in today’s episode we spend 15 minutes talking about how aggregating specific blogs on UMW Blogs has helped focus for us just how much great stuff we have going on around this publishing platform. Over a year ago I wrote about this idea of “Self-service aggregation” and a year later with more than 500 aggregated study abroad related posts from 25 newly aggregated study abroad blogs I think we can say this experiment has been wildly successful. What’s more, I think it might suggests for us some possible ways for experimenting with aggregating departmental work from around UMW Blogs (and even eventually umw.edu as it moves to WordPress this Fall—UMW FTW!!!). Anyway, DTLT Today represents yet another format to talk UMW Blogs, aggregation, and the mounting media collective that is DTLT 😉

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Dr. O’Blivion interviews Jim Groom

Posted on July 22, 2011 by Reverend

Dr. Oblivion sits down with Jim Groom for a final interview about what has been happening, Groom’s motives and intentions, and more.

Special shout out to Tim Owens for doing the filming, editing, and split screen work!

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Summer of Oblivion: The Burtis did it!

Posted on July 22, 2011 by Reverend

An award-winning performance by Martha Burtis right here! Not to mention the brilliant supporting actor role of Steve Greenlaw.

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ds106 Finish Up Strong: Archiving and Final Exam

Posted on July 19, 2011 by Reverend

All,

The 5 week intensive course has been fast, furious, and a lot of fun. I can’t thank the open, online students enough who carried the commenting, feedback and general network love for many of the for-credit students at UMW. That said, some unbelievable gems from the UMW community made themselves known over the last 5 weeks, and some unbelievable work was produced as a result. You all know who you are and I applaud your effort and look forward to more. For those UMW students who didn’t avail themselves on the affordances of the ds106 community at large and simply tried to get by, I’m afraid you missed the whole point of ds106—which has nothing to do with a grade.

I also want to recognize the thankless work of Martha Burtis, Andy Rush and Tim Owens at the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies who not only counseled this broken TA throughout the process but more importantly played along with crazy, experimental notions of what this class could and should be more brilliantly than any other crew could—you all rock! They made it far better than I could have ever dreamed. This was a class that really reflected the ethos of DTLT more than anything: experiment wildly, do it openly, hold people accountable for their own genius, and have fun all the while. And while this class had too many problems to list here (but my final video will examine some of them), it was approached in good faith, and I think there is much to be learned from that.

Anyway, enough gushing, this class is all but over. The open, online credit students rocked the house, and ds106 loves you. As for the UMW for-credit students, you have just a little bit further to go before you sleep:

  • All video assignments are due no later than midnight tonight unless you contacted me otherwise—nothing else will be accepted after that point.
  • Starting tomorrow you must work on archiving your blog, I already posted the details, timeline and tutorials for this.
  • As a final exam, each of for credit student (and any of the open, online students who are interested) need to create a considered and thoughtful reflection on the ds106 Summer of Oblivion. It should be at least 5 minutes long and should be a circumspect and thoughtful review/reflection of this online course. What worked for you? What didn’t? Was the Oblivion narrative a sideshow or an attraction? Would this class work better in person than online? If so, why? If not, why not? Etc. These are all starter questions, I want you to pursue you particular reflections on this course. Please avoid attacks, rants, and the blame game. Come clean, where did you fail the class and where did the class fail you? What’s more, I want you to do it as a video that you submit on your existing blog (and your archived blog) by no later than midnight Thursday, July 21st.

Finally, today there are three new videos from the Oblivion narrative that begin to sew the campy threads of this craziness together, no matter how loosely. You can find them all here: http://ds106.tv

What’s more, there will be one more short video tomorrow morning at 11:30 AM (EDT).

And that’s that, best regards, and remember ds106 is 4life!

Jim Groom
Dr. Brian Oblivion
Tim Doom
Tim Groom
Kim Droom
And the voice of Sherrif John Bottom

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