Posted by andrea on 30th November 2009
If you have explored BuddyPress at all, you will have noticed not only the lack of free themes available, but also the trouble in just finding them. We aim to change that with the Free BuddyPress Themes site. Not only will it feature whatever free BuddyPress themes we can find anywhere online, we will be releasing BuddyPress themes as well. One thing I am especially excited about is taking existing GPL WordPress themes and “BuddyPress-ifying” them. 
Don’t forget to subscribe to the rss feed when you get there. Got any suggested free themes? Let us know!
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Posted by Randy on 30th November 2009
These days, with regular blog posts and in the course of a typical work week, I find myself doing a fair amount of writing. But what struck me recently is how rarely I use Microsoft Word to assist with that writing. When writing something that requires thought I normally start in a simple text editor. I find the lack of options helps me focus — and when it comes time to move it to an email, blog post, or even a Word file, it is easy to copy and paste the text. MS Word’s tendency to drag along boat-loads of non-standard formatting is such a pain I actively avoid using it for any writing destined for web delivery. Start collaborating with a tool like Google Docs and Word becomes superfluous.
In our department alone we’d save $5,000 annually in licensing by ditching office — tempting in these tight financial times. At home Ethan and Leo both use OpenOffice for all their school work with no difficulties. – they have word processing, presentation and spreadsheet capabilities. For my part I currently use Microsoft Access, Visio and Excel for database work quite a bit. But a move to MySQL and other open source tools (OpenOffice’s Base) could cure this need. So I can definitely see a near-future office environment that does not include MS Office coming.
Who needs Microsoft Office? Freeware puts twists on old apps | Workers’ Edge – CNET News
Most people become so accustomed to using Microsoft Office that they never consider its alternatives. But there are more than one way to process words and spreadsheets: Word and Excel aren’t the only games in town.
Removing extra tags in a Word Web document
Word has the ability to turn your document into a web page. However, it has the reputation for creating bloated pages that contain a lot of extraneous code. For this reason, many experts suggest using an alternate program for creating web pages. But, you can get around this.
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Posted by Randy on 30th November 2009
While graphic designers may hate this idea, one of the great things about standard HTML is the site visitor can adapt the content to meet their needs/preferences. Tools like AdBlock plus for Firefox help remove the advertising clutter. But for longer articles I find more help is needed for reading on the screen. It is nice to get rid of the sidebar menus, white text on black backgrounds and other graphical window dressing. When printing an web page a well designed site will provide a print-specific style sheet, but many don’t. So tools like TidyRead and Readability enter to help tame the presentation.
Neither of these tools is perfect. I like TidyRead a little better as it keeps images and embedded videos in its conversions — but it only seems to work with blog-type sites. Readability works on more sites, but often doesn’t convert all the text. Both tools work via a bookmarklet that you just drag to your browser tool bar. When on a site you want to convert you click the link, which sends a request to the service which returns a simplified page to your browser. Note that the more security conscious (paranoid) will point out that the service model means the sites can track browsing behavior. But neither service requires a registration, and there are already so many things tracking our browsing behavior I say what’s one more. Especially if it makes it easy to adapt the content to the end-user’s needs. Neither tool is perfect, but both are a step in the right direction.
TidyRead.com
TidyRead renders web pages with better readability as an-easy-to-read manner, similar to eBooks, by accurately extracting the context text and removing the cluttered materials. Read what you should and nothing else.
Arc90 Lab
Readability
Despite the ubiquity of reading on the Web, readers remain a neglected audience. Readability is our popular bookmarklet that removes the junk around what you’re reading and displays a clean, readable view.
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Posted by Ron on 26th November 2009
A quick note that Chris has released a new version of his Facebook Dashboard Widget (Download link) that is compatible with WPMU.
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Posted by andrea on 26th November 2009
Donncha has updated the domain mapping plugin for WPMU. Get it here.
The biggest changes include subfolder blog support, and remote login – which means you can be logged in to the main domain and have it carry over to the mapped domain. Sweet!
More news about our own domain mapping plugin coming in the next month. Watch the wpmu forums Monday for more plugin news, because we’ll need testers.
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Posted by Shelley on 24th November 2009
As part of the WPMU implentation I’ve been working on for a year now, it’s time to start training my content contributors (“content managers”? I haven’t come up with the right title for these departmental “please take this responsibility off my plate” types). Simply giving faculty and staff basic software training and sending them on [...]
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Posted by Randy on 24th November 2009
Here is another session from WordCamp NYC. The topic is WordPress-as-content management system, and the story of the transformation of the Harvard Gazette. They took the paper’s static html site and transformed it to a WordPress powered site in just 3 months. It is always interesting to see how adaptable WordPress is to fit various needs, and the Gazette implemention is very well done. both video and audio versions of the session are presented below. Watch for the discussion about their administrative interface — they have customized the edit-posts panel in a very nice way that divides the listing according to category. Making it easier for editors to get right to their content.
Audio Only: WC2009_harvard_gazette
WordCamp New York City 2009 » Saturday Sessions
Case Study: Harvard Gazette. Within a three-month period, the Digital Communications team and its partners planned, implemented, and launched a new online version of the nearly 100-year old Harvard Gazette. The business goal was to establish the online Gazette as the daily paper of record for the University, in tandem with a brand refresh and complete print redesign. We selected WordPress as the CMS, and chose to use minimal plug-ins to keep the site lean and efficient.
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Posted by Reverend on 23rd November 2009
As everyone begins to put their final audio and video projects onto their blogs I wanted to mention a few plugins and tricks that might be helpful. The first plugin is Podcasting. You can use this plugin to include audio (mp3 and mp4) and video (mov and mp4) in your posts. With the plugin enabled you’ll have a new panel in your Add New Post page called Podcasting
It will take a File URL which you can get when you upload the file by clicking the File URL button in the upload interface.
Just copy the file URL from the upload screen and paste it into the File URL box of the Podcasting panel and click Add. After you click Add the Podcasting panel will look like this
Clicking Send to editor will add the required text to your post for including the .mov, .mp4, or .mp3 file. If you used iMovie or Garageband to create your audio or video file it may have saved the file as a .m4v or .m4a. You can just change the extension to .mp4 and it should upload to your blog. You can adjust the settings for the Podcasting plugin by visiting the settings under the Settings panel.
If you are using an online video service like Youtube then you can enable the WordPress Video Plugin. This plugin will allow you to embed a video in your post using a short code like [service videoid]. You can reference the Short code instructions for examples on using the plugin for each of the supported services. You should also be able to use the Press This bookmarklet found under Tools to embed video and other files in your posts. You can find some good examples of using Press This at http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/automate-blogging-tasks-with-press-this-for-wordpress/.I hope this helps you complete your projects and if you have any problems just contact Instructional Technology.
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Posted by Randy on 23rd November 2009
I’ve been thnking quite a bit lately about the merging domains of traditional, static web site design, and social networking. Jay Collier at the Bates Online Media group has recently blogged on the subject, and how it is influencing the Bates College site content. He has posted a terrific diagram outlining the Architecture of Online Engagement, which starts with “powerful organizing ideas” and moves through first impressions, shared interests, collaboration and learning, and even getting something done, on the path towards deepening personal and social impact. Too often I find site design discussions still center around content and informaton dispersal — a more static, one-way push concept. Engagement, ideas, collaboration and impact — these are the concepts that we need to get front-and-center in site discussions.
Bates and the Social Web « Bates Online Media
At Bates, we’ve developed a blueprint which approaches the entire bates.edu domain from the perspective of social experience, drawing our constituents from general awareness of the College toward deeper social and personal interaction based on shared interests and common intellectual passions.
RodeWorks » Blog Archive » Social learning in the workplace
Perhaps our current problem isn’t one of the medium — print vs. digital — but one of style — static versus dynamic/social.
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Posted by Randy on 23rd November 2009
WordCamp NYC had so much good stuff going I missed plenty of interesting talks. One thread I caught a whiff of, and made a note to explore further, is the use of child themes in WordPress site design. The feature is quite new, just appearing in version 2.7. The ideal is that the parent part of the theme handles the structural type elements, and the child handles the decorative stuff. I missed the child-theme talk at WordCamp, but luckily the session is now posted on WordPress.tv – explore your inner child and get own WordPress child themes going!
Allan Cole: Children Are the Future—Developing with Child Themes « WordPress.tv
Allan Cole introduces us to Child Themes which will allow you to speed up your development time and make future-proof theme edits,
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Reverend
Andre Malan
Matthew K. Gold