New Plugin #3 – Add a Facebook “like” button

Our third new plugin released this week is an easy way to integrate Facebook with your blog.

fblikehand

The Facebook Like plugin gives you the ability to quickly add a ‘like’ button at the beginning or end of posts or pages.

To give it a try, don’t be afraid to click on “like” at the bottom of this post! :)

Plugin Features

  • Easy to setup – all you need to do is activate, and the plugin automatically does the rest!
  • Change location – you can choose to have the “like” button at the beginning or end of each post, and rather or not to display it on your front page or not.
  • Customization – other settings include changing the colors to match your blog and making the button bar bigger or smaller.

How to Customize

After activating the plugin, you can click on Facebook-Like under the Settings tab of your blog’s dashboard.  From here, you will find all of the options with explanations provided.

More New Stuff!

This makes THREE new plugins made live this week – including the new PayPal and Calendar plugins.

The next few months are going to bring even more new plugins and features to Edublogs!

Be sure to follow us at twitter.com/edublogs and facebook.com/edublogs so that you can be the first to know as we roll out the coming changes!

New Plugin #2 – A Calendar For Your Blog

As promised, we are releasing THREE new plugins this week!  minical

The first is an easy way of accepting payments or donations right inside your blog.

The second, which has been a highly requested feature, gives you the ability to place a calendar on any post or page in your blog.

This plugin can be used as an event calendar, lesson plan book, or maybe a class birthday calendar.  We would love to hear about other ways that this feature might be used.  Feel free to leave a comment below with your ideas!

So how do you use the plugin?

calendaroptionsIt’s easy.  Pro and Campus users can activate the plugin from their dashboard.  This will create a new Calendar tab near the bottom of the left column in the dashboard where you can configure the calendar.

The most common way to use the calendar is to create a new page and copy and paste {CALENDAR} into the page where you want the calendar to appear.  Make sure to include the brackets and use all upper case letters.  This can be used on any page or post in a blog.

To add events, click on Manage Calendar on the calendar tab.  Events can be recurring, scheduled for all day, or given specific times.  You can assign events to different categories and give each category a different color so it can be easily identified on the calendar.  You might find ColorPicker.com useful when assigning colors.

And what about widgets?

Once the plugin is activated, you will find two new widgets to put in your blog’s sidebars.  There is one for “Today’s Events” and one for “Upcoming Events”.

A calendar may just be the perfect addition to a class blog to keep students and parents informed. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s release of plugin number three!

New Plugin #1 – Accept Payments and Donations!

This week we are unveiling THREE new plugins available to Pro and Campus users!  These will seriously increase the functionality and versatility of Edublogs.

To start off with, we have …

PayPal Logo

… a PayPal plugin which makes it easy for teachers and educators to accept payments and donations!

Imagine being able to allow parents or students the ability to pay for field trips, club dues, or course materials right in your blog.  Or maybe you would like to offer a secure means of accepting donations.

Once activated, you will be able to place a new PayPal widget in any sidebar in your blog.  Here are a couple of examples:

WPPayPalExamples

All that is needed is a PayPal account to begin accepting donations or payments!

WPPayPalSettings

After activating the the plugin, you will find the options under Settings > WP PayPal Payments in your blog’s dashboard.

Enter your currency (from seven different currencies!), payment information, and choice of donation or payment.

PayPalWidgetNext, click on Appearance > Widgets and make sure to drag and drop the WP PayPal Payment widget into the sidebar of your choice.

PayPal will notify you by email of any payments or donations received.

For help on activating new plugins, you can view our help post here.

We hope that you enjoy the ease of accepting payments with this great plugin and maybe even that it will help you bring in a bit more donations too.

Happy blogging!

Make your blog look like Twitter or Facebook

Did you know that two of our newest premium themes can make your blog look like it is right out of Twitter or Facebook?  We bet students are going to love these!

The Retweet Theme

The Retweet theme is highly customizable, complete with multiple background images and the ability to choose from any color scheme imaginable.

rtbackgrounds

Other features include a list of latest posts right at the top, integration with Twitter, customizable logo image, and quick social bookmarking capabilities.

Visit Amelia’s Awesome Blog for an example of a student blog using this new theme.

Smells Like Facebook

This new theme looks so much like Facebook that it is easy to get confused as to what site you are on while using it!

You can add a logo image, use one or two sidebars for widgets, and fake out friends with a real looking facebook blog.  :)

smfacebook

Want to give these themes a try?

In your Dashboard, you’ll find Premium Themes under Appearance.  Find the theme you like and click on Activate – that’s it!

And don’t forget as a Pro user you can simply upgrade up to 50 student (or other) blogs!

Once upgraded,  these blogs will have:

Features on  upgraded student blogs

Upgrading is as simple as 1, 2, 3:

How to upgrade a student blog

Provide some details for your blog
No stress, you can always change this later on.
Use only lowercase letters (a-z) and numbers.
.edublogs.org

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