Mount Royal University Blogs

MRC Blog Pilot Project

This is a pilot project of WordPressMU for Mount Royal College. WordPress MU is a multi-user blogging platform. Questions to be examined in this pilot include:

  • There have been quite a number of requests for blogging capabilities for various purposes. Is WPMU a good choice for some or all of these purposes?
  • What plugins and functionality are desired from a College blogging platform?
  • How much support will be required to provide this service?
  • How difficult is the learning curve for new bloggers on WPMU?

WordPress MU supports most features of WordPress, which is one of the most popular blogging applications around. Many features are supplied by plugins. To start with, very few plugins have been installed; if you identify plugins that would be useful, please send a note to wwwmgr@mtroyal.ca with your suggestions. Not all plugins can be used in MU, but most can.

This pilot will be run until mid-April 2009 at which point all users will be expected to provide input. AFter receiving input, the project will be either re-tooled for long-term deployment or scrapped if the product is unsuitable. If WPMU is selected for long-term use, we hope to be able to migrate content from the pilot to production, but we can’t guarantee it.

The pilot project owner is Jonathan Stade: please send feedback and questions for him to wwwmgr@mtroyal.ca

To get started, sign up and then check your email to start blogging! (note: registration is restricted to email addresses @mtroyal.ca)

~Jonathan Stade

7 thoughts on “MRC Blog Pilot Project”

  3. We need a way to find other blogs.
    Perhaps a list of MRC blogs on the main blog page?

    -A blog neophyte.

  5. To use the Smart Youtube plugin, you need to enable it for your blog in the plugins section of your admin pages, then write a post. In the post, you need to put the Youtube URL in the text like so: httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6s7a4lSlnro

    Note that extra v in the httpv:// part, that’s what makes the plugin do its thing. If you want, and the video you are linking to has the option, you can also use httpvh:// for the high quality version, or httpvhd:// for the high definition version.

    If you are still having problems, please let me know what’s happening for you and what page you are having the issue on. (ie. send me the URL)

  6. I look at a sitewide search/listing for implementation. The trick is to find a way to do it that

    a) doesn’t require any manual intervention (this service needs to be self-serve for long-term success)
    b) creates the list of blogs
    c) doesn’t render the privacy options moot.

    I’ll have to do some research on what’s available.

  7. Statistics for visits is on the list of plugins to research. There are a huge number of statistics/counters plugins available, in this case, the trick is to pick the best out of a large pile of options.

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