2008 – Page 2 – Edublogs – free blogs for education

Edublogs gets a makeover

24 Comments on Edublogs gets a makeover

It’s not quite a brow-lift, nose-job, full set of Da Vinci crowns and a tummy-tuck… but we’re pretty happy with our new look nonetheless :)

And what’s more, your blog backend is going to get a makeover really really soon too (more details at the end of this post).

So here’s how we used to look:

Old Look Edublogs

And here’s how we look now:

New look Edublogs

We’re hoping that the new look demonstrates how far we’ve come as a company in the last year and also improves on your Edublogs experience. It’s a lot lighter on the load, contains some nice new useful links for logged in users, describes what we do much better, profiles The Edublogger better than before and shows off more Edublogs Supporters rather nicely too.

And of course, hopefully it also helps build awareness of Edublogs Campus too :)

As for your blogs, well we can’t confirm the date yet but most likely in the next few weeks we’ll be upgrading the site to the latest version of WordPress which means that your admin area is going to start looking a lot like the below:

New WordPress admin area

And it also means that you’re going to get a heap more of most excellent features, some of which are so cool it’s exciting just anticipating them :)

So we’ll let you know when that happens, and also (in case you’re worried) have a whole new set of video tutorials and other materials to help acquaint you and your students with the new admin layout.

Widgets, javascript, iframes and objects (and all that jazz)

68 Comments on Widgets, javascript, iframes and objects (and all that jazz)

After lengthy discussions and weighing up of the pros and cons we’ve decided to allow javascript, iframes and object code onto Edublogs.

This means that you can now just copy and paste pretty much most ’embedding’ code you can pick up around the web directly into your Edublog.

For posts and pages just click on the ‘Code’ tab and paste the code in there. For sidebar widgets just create as many Text Boxes as you need (under Presentation > Widgets) and copy and paste the code into them.

For example, say you wanted to play this classic game on your blog… simply go there, click on ‘Get Widget’, copy the code and paste it in your ‘Code tab and you’ll get something much like the below:

You can also use iframes to embed things like Calendars, put CoComment and Ligit in your sidebar or add live chat and extra Twitter options.

Why don’t you show us how you are using this new freedom!

Side note: As a result the Widgetbox, Box.net and Video Widgets will be replaced by this approach – so please recreate any widgets you currently have in Text Box form before we remove these widgets (next week).

Simply create blogs and usernames for your students

68 Comments on Simply create blogs and usernames for your students

Update: By popular demand we’ve also introduced an ‘Add Users’ feature that lets you easily add up to 15 users at one time to your blog (and they can all have different roles too!) Check out ‘Add Users’ under your ‘Users’ tab.

We’ve got a cracking new feature this week, one that we should’ve introduced ages ago and one that we think you’ll love!

Introducing…. the Blog and User Creator!

You can find this beautiful new feature in your ‘Users’ menu and what it does is simple.

It allows you to create, in batches of up to 15 at a time, blogs and usernames for your students and colleagues.

Give them a username, pop in their email address, choose a URL for them and decide if you want to also be admin of their blog (how neat is that, you can easily administer every student blog you set up… you can even change the student to ‘author’ or ‘contributor’ level!)

So now you don’t have to worry about your students all creating blogs, you can do it for them here.

Or if you want to introduce Edublogs to the other teachers in your school… just set them up an account using this tool.

And it even doesn’t matter if your students don’t have email addresses, because there’s a simple hack you can use with gmail.

Anyway, as you can probably tell, we’re pretty excited by this feature, and we’d love to get your feedback on it so please tell us what you think in the comments below.

Marvellous Mandigo and tell us your theme desires

28 Comments on Marvellous Mandigo and tell us your theme desires

One of our most popular (and customizable) themes, Mandigo, now has a great big customizable header too!

Head on over to your ‘Presentation’ area select it, and enjoy the massive amount of flexibility.

And, after you’ve done that, please let us know in the comments below any improvements to existing theme or new types of themes you’d like to see at Edublogs… we’ll do our best to make you happy :)

Come together (and chat on our new forums!)

67 Comments on Come together (and chat on our new forums!)

Here’s some pretty big news… Edublogs.org is now open only for teachers but also for students of all descriptions.

Previously we’ve hosted three other sites – uniblogs.org, learnerblogs.org and eslblogs.org for students but we decided a few weeks ago that this is both overly complex and limits what teachers can do with their students through their blog on Edublogs.org.

Uniblogs.org, Learnerblogs.org and Eslblogs.org will remain in operation indefinitely but we won’t be allowing new signups to them, from now on *everyone* can sign up here and simply select if they are a ‘Teacher’, ‘Student’ or ‘Other’ (librarian, researcher, administrator etc.)

You can change this ‘blog type’ at any time through your options and we’ll be adding more ‘types’ as we go along (best to start simple).

And here’s one of the immediate benefits of the new system… our brand spanking new, completely groovy, forum system!

new edublogs forum system

All you have to do is visit Options > Forums and you can create a forum and add it anywhere on your blog by simply pasting in the ‘Page Code’ that you are provided with – for example (forum:4) – but with square brackets.

Then you can use it for class discussions, Q&A on anything you want and as a central hub for hosting conversations on whatever you like. You know, all the things that forums are good for :)

And of course, now all you students need to have is a username and/or blog on edublogs.org and their avatars will appear next to their contributions and link back to their blogs if the have them. Neat huh!

Here’s a handy 3 minute video that goes through the whole process of setting up a forum:

So we hope the new system makes life easier for everyone and we hope you enjoy the new forums functionality (please feel free to suggest any improvements too!)

NB: You can export blogs from uniblogs.org, learnerblogs.org and eslblogs.org to Edublogs.org if you want by creating new blogs at Edublogs.org and using the Manage > Import / Export features.

Bye bye Kubrick, hello Cutline

5 Comments on Bye bye Kubrick, hello Cutline

With not-so-heavy-heart Edublogs finally bids farewell to the ubiquitous Kubrick as our default theme today and welcomes in a mod of the brilliant 3 column Cutline based on the original by the brilliant Chris Pearson.

New default Edublogs theme

We originally figured we’d wait to see what new default WP came up with but sometimes, heck, you’ve just got to take these things into your own hands!

The new default theme has a nice customizable header, first level pages listings (if you make pages ‘sub-pages’ by giving them page parents they won’t appear), two widgetized sidebars (with one dedicated to telling you want to do with it) and a first post full of useful information and a quick video introducing you to the site.

An unfortunate by-product is that everyone with a default theme now has the new theme… however, never fear as you can just reselect Kubrick if you like as it’s now available as a regular old theme.

You can see an example of how a brand new blog will now look here.

Onwards and upwards as they say!