Category: blog

Woah!

Today’s news is kinda big.

We’ve made available a new plugin, called Jetpack, which when activated brings a ton of new tools and features to your blog.

What Can Jetpack Do?

Post by Email

You can create a unique and private email address that can be used to publish a new post on your blog just by sending an email. Read more here.

Auto-post to Facebook, Twiiter, Google+ and More

Connect your blog to your Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Path, or Tumblr account to automatically share a link to each new post every time you publish. Read more here.

Sharing Buttons

Much like the AddThis plugin already available, Jetpack gives you another means of adding social sharing icons to the bottom of each of your posts.  Read more here.

Better Image Galleries

Visit our news post from yesterday about the new themes. Click on the image gallery at the top of the post (of all of the themes) and you can see how the images open up in a new full screen slideshow experience. There’s also ways of displaying images in fun new layouts.

Learn more here:

1. Carousel
2. Tiled Galleries
3. Slideshows

Widget Visibility

Hide or show widgets on different pages, giving you total control and flexibility to really customize your sidebars. Read more here.

Spelling and Grammar

The additional spelling and grammar tools can be set so that you must run a check before publishing each new post – a great way to cut down on typos and errors!

And More

There are more modules too that you might find useful. Just activate the Jetpack plugin and take a look around.

Important Notes

Jetpack is developed by the team behind WordPress.com and in order to use the plugin, you must create or have a WordPress.com account.

Jetpack on Edublogs is available to Pro blogs and student blogs that Pro teachers have added as part of My Class.

The plugin is also available on our Edublogs Campus networks, though a Super Administrator must enable the plugin first.

How To Use Jetpack

Go to Plugins > Social in your blog’s dashboard and find the Jetpack by WordPress.com plugin. Click Activate.

Then, go to the new Jetpack menu item near the top of your menu and connect your blog to a WordPress.com account.

You can find more detailed instructions on setting it up here.

And as always, please contact us with any questions you may have.

Happy blogging!

Happy New Year!

We’re excited to share some of the most significant improvements to Edublogs and Edublogs Campus in years!

A New Modern Look And Feel

You’ll immediately notice in your dashboard a brand new coat of paint.

Don’t worry, everything is exactly where it was before, but the new design is more modern and more importantly…

Mobile Friendly Dashboard

While our apps for iOS and Android work great, sometimes you might want to quickly write a post or check your blog’s dashboard from your web browser.

And now you can!

You can upload images or take pictures with your device’s camera right in the dashboard too.

Plus, if you are using our apps, you have an option to open the full dashboard experience, which is now much better as well.

Now students have no excuse not to get their posts submitted no matter where they are! ;)

Color Schemes

Hover over your name in the top right corner and choose ‘Edit My Profile’ and you’ll see options for different color schemes as well.

A nice touch, we think.

The New Plugin Experience

Visit the ‘Plugins’ menu item and you’ll also notice a dramatic new way of searching for and discovering plugins.

A little preview, now that the Plugin experience is much improved, we hope to concentrate on adding many new ones over the coming months, so stay tuned!

We’ve just released the new Edublogs for Android app – available now for free in the Google Play Store!

You can blog, upload photos, moderate comments, and more right from your phone or tablet.

Here are a few screenshots to whet your appetites:

Nice, huh?

For help using the app or more info about blogging from phones and tablets, check out the guide here.

And don’t forget our Edublogs for iOS app too :)

Happy mobile blogging!

Sending an automatic email to your blog’s visitors with each new post is a powerful way to reach them.

And today, we are rolling out new and improved email subscription to help you grow and maintain your followers.

All of this is live now for our Pro blogs on Edublogs.org and will soon be available on our Edublogs Campus networks too!

What’s new?

• Choose from immediate, daily, or weekly emails
• Import subscribers with a CSV file
• See a list of your subscribers to know who’s getting the emails
• A nifty Follow button like the one above
• Export a list of all subscribers

Getting Started

1. Head over to the Subscriptions > Settings in your blog’s dashboard.

2. Check the different options to personalize the emails that are sent out. You really won’t have to make any changes, but if you’d like the “Follow” button to show, enable it here.

3. Go to Appearance > Widgets and add the Email Subscription widget to a sidebar. This will give your visitors an easy way to subscribe themselves.

4. That’s it! You can manage and see a list of your subscribers at Subscriptions > Subscribers.

Tips and Ideas

For class blogs, add all students and parents as email subscribers with one one click using the new import tool (Subscriptions > Add Subscribers) to ensure they are all getting updates.

If you post a ton, change over to daily or weekly digests so that your followers don’t get bombarded with loads of emails.

We’re hopeful that these improved tools will only increase the communication abilities that blogs provide.

If you need any help getting started, contact our support team and we’ll get you fixed up!

Happy blogging!