Posts from the ‘techie stuff’ Category
I made some changes to the website recently, and most of the changes are based on the new features of the WordPress Jetpack plugin.
1. I removed the Disqus commenting system.
- Disqus has been moving toward becoming a social network of its own, and there was just too much complexity being added to the commenting procedure.
- Comments are now handled solely within WordPress with the Jetpack plugin, and commenters can sign-in to make a comment with their Twitter, Facebook, or WordPress credentials.
- All of the old comments are still there too.
2. The Photon feature of the Jetpack plugin is now active.
- Using the Photon feature allows for integration of our WordPress.org installation with WordPress.com’s CDN (Content Delivery Network).
- This means that images and other information will load faster across the web.
3. We’re now using the Publicize feature of the Jetpack plugin for auto-posting to social networks.
- Previously we were using the “WP to Twitter” plugin which had some hiccups, but only because of Twitter changing their API. Hopefully there will be fewer missteps with the Jetpack plugin.
- Also, we were using Hootsuite to post to Facebook, but I didn’t like this setup. Hootsuite is okay for managing multiple social networking accounts (for a fee), but rather than using a direct-post to Facebook, Hootsuite relies on RSS. There would often be a delay of hours for the WordPress RSS to be read by Hootsuite, and then hopefully Hootsuite would send that info to Facebook. With the Jetpack Publicize feature, things are working much more quickly, and reliably.
- Sadly, Google+ still doesn’t have a public API available for auto-posting.
4. Backups of the site have been made – both a full FTP download, as well as an export of the site’s posts and info.
5. Lastly, I changed the social networking or sharing buttons so they show at the bottom of posts, but they do not show on the front page.
If anyone would like other changes or tweaks, please let me know.
I went through the CDH website here, and I made quite a few revisions. The website was getting a little cluttered, which is a good thing since it’s being used a lot, but it did need some spring-cleaning.
Here’s a quick overview of changes:
→ the main navigation was cleaned up
- the About page is now incorporated into the Members page
→ the News navigation dropdown has been revised
- now the only dropdowns are “events” and “resources”
- all the other categories are still available as a dropdown in the sidebar
→ the Twitter sidebar widgets have been removed
- the CDH Twitter feed was mostly just posts from CDH itself (@UCRCDH)
- and #digitalhumanites can be reached in other ways
→ Links (mostly UCR related) have been moved from the sidebar to the footer
→ a new Calendar page has been added to the site (this is for CDH events)
→ the ability to post from iPhone and iPad WordPress apps has been turned on
Also, I added a new category called “techie stuff” where I’ll post info about updates to this site, as well as other things of interest regarding hardware, software, coding, and the digital engineering culture.
If anything looks weird, or if you can’t find something, or something isn’t working right, please send me an email.
