Blogs.oregonstate.edu

Wordpress

Blogs, you've heard about it, and you've read some maybe, and you are thinking, what's the big deal?  Well, blogs are for your story.  In some cases, they are for your site.

If you are a department or unit that needs to tell an ongoing story, don't maintain two separate sites, just maintain a blog.  It's easy to use, easy to edit, and your ramp up is quicker.

Central Web Services provides this core service free of charge to all OSU students, student groups, faculty, staff, and departments.  Check it out at: blogs.oregonstate.edu!

We are using Wordpress as our blog solution.

We encourage everyone to speak up and speak out in their personal blogs, but just as a reminder, use of this application is covered by OSU’s Acceptable Use Policy.

 

WP Help BlogSupport for WordPress can be found in a few different ways:

To get your own blog, visit blogs.oregonstate.edu

 

Plugins

Blogs.oregonstate.edu runs with several Wordpress plugins.  Plugins in blogs.oregonstate.edu come in two forms, those that are enabled on all blogs (and cannot be turned off), and those that can be turned on for an individual blog.

Enabled Site-Wide

CWS has installed two plugins to minimize spam on blogs.  Akismet is used to reduce spam comments.  reCaptcha is also used to prevent comment spam.

To add polling functionality to your blog, we provide a polling plugin, wp-polls.

Individual Blog Settings

Popularity Contest enables the ranking of your posts by popularity, using the behavior of your visitors to determine each post’s popularity.

Sociable will automatically add links on your posts, pages, and RSS feed to your favorite social bookmarking sites

WP-PostRatings adds a rating system for your blog’s posts and pages. 

Google Analytics

Global Site Tags

The blogs.oregonstate.edu Help Blog provides additional details on all of the installed Wordpress plugins.

To request additional WordPress MU plugins, please review our criteria for selecting Wordpress plugins and then contact us using the CWS contact form.

Plugin Evaluation Criteria

Central Web Services reviews all plugins that are included as part of the centralized OSU Wordpress MU installation.  We do this to ensure that blogs.oregonstate.edu remains a stable, secure and supportable product for the campus.  The following are the initial criteria we use to evaluate a plugin.

  • Code Review:
    1. Are there any pending security bugs in the bug tracker?  What are they and how long have they been there?
    2. Is it performing sql queries directly? If so, does the module escape user input?
    3. How does it handle user input? Is it being escaped? Is user input cleaned before printing it out in a page?
    4. Are permissions check in place? Are the checks manual or does the code rely on other core methods?
    5. Is the code well documented? Does it follow a standard?
    6. Is the javascript code and css well structured?  Does it follow follow a standard?
    7. Does it have readme, install and upgrade files?
  • Lifespan/Activity:
    1. How long has this plugin or 3rd party program been around?
    2. How many developers are working on it?
    3. Is there a roadmap? What does it look like?
    4. What is the release life cycle?
    5. What is the average turn around time for critical bugs?
    6. How active are the forums or mailing list discussions?
    7. Do other programs use or depend on this library?
  • Support:
    1. Is there user documentation? Is there documentation for developers?
    2. Is a documentation generation system like phpDocumentor used?
    3. How quickly do the developers respond to requests?
    4. Are newer and older versions of Wordpress supported?
    5. What is the learning curve like?
    6. Is the module usable through the Wordpress interface or does it require users to work with HTML, CSS, theme changes or other advanced techniques?
  • Compatibility:
    1. Does the it conflict with other existing plugins or modules or other updates?
  • Cost/Benefit:
    1. Will the module work with Wordpress MU as is, or would some re-write be needed?
    2. How complex are patches to apply? (# of classes, files, and db tables affected)
    3. What % of our users would benefit from this new module or plugin?
    4. Is there a fee to purchase or use the plugin?
  • Redundancy
    1. Does OSU/CWS already provide this service?
    2. Is this capability already planned for an upcoming Wordpress release or update of a currently supported plugin?

 

To request additional WordPress MU plugins, please contact us using the CWS Help Ticket.