WordPress - is anyone using?

[Ed Patterson]

I know that a few schools are using wordpress with WhippleHill.  My question is for those schools.  Are you having WhippleHill host you solution?  Do you host it somewhere else?  Do you use it for areas of your public website alongside podium?(I am referreing to creating a page that would have link directly to your wordpress page from a podium site that would appear to the public as part of your site)

 

Also do you use wordpress in place of any groups pages or in conjunction with groups (allowing some group owners to use wordpress instead of a academic group or community group page?)

[Rebecca Moore]

We purchased WH's WP plug in last summer and have a number of blogs with it, some behind password, some public. From our homepage we have a row of social media icons. The WP one goes to a school blog called the K-12 Journey: http://blogs.randolphschool.net/K12/?sso=no

There is another button that has part of the Head's signature, which goes to his blog. He has been blogging for the past 2 years on a blog that WH had built into the site, but this year he moved over to a WP blog and I think this is working well. http://blogs.randolphschool.net/head/

 

We share the stories from the public blogs as news and through social media. They format nicely for that. I have been tracking the read rate with google analytics, which is satisfying, because people actually read them. I think they are a very different animal to group pages, which are better for time sensitive groups that might need to make announcements.

We tried one as an upper school newspaper, we have another for MS writing and another for technology news and reviews. These have been okay. The 5th graders got into it last year but the 7th & 8th graders hated it as a platform for their student paper. Right now it's there for the teachers to use if they want. Our Head used one with his senior seminar and they did a lot of writing and feedback, so that worked well.That was his academic group page.

 

The only tech glitch has been that we can't get our blogs channel to show up on the public side of the login page -- you can only see it once you log in even though some of the blogs are public. If anyone has set up a public blogs channel, I'd love to know how they did it!

 

Hope that answers some of your questions :)

 

 

 

 

[Ed Patterson]

Hi Rebecca,

Thanks for your response, this does help!  I was curious specifically about the ability to keep some areas public and others behind the password.  If you have the address of thel public bogs can you just insert them as Links or Text?

Ed

 

[Ed Patterson]

Hi Rebecca,

Do you host your blogs or did you purchase hosting from a 3rd party?

 

Ed

[Rebecca Moore]

Hi Ed, Just saw these replies. We use wordpress.org through WH, as a plug in. So we host them on the WH site. WH troubleshoot. The nice thing is that when students or anyone join a blog as contributors they do this through their Whipple Hill account so there is no  extra account info or password required. I have since learned that the blogs channel is only visible to people who are logged into the site, however the blogs that are public can be shared via a link or on the social media buttons we have on the homepage. What have you decided to do with this since October?

[Ed Patterson]

Hi Rebecca,
We decided to use another host for our wordpress blogs.  We are going to revisit this when our contract is up for renewal with the hosting company.  We wanted our blogs to be visible and searchable outside of our domain, without worrying about other contributors at this time. 

Ed

[Jed Dioguardi]

We have Whipplehill host our Wordpress sites to take advantage of the SSO capability and security based on user. We do not use is for areas of our public website. Currently we use for tech professional development resources and an online version of the school newspaper.

[Ed Patterson]

Thanks Jed! 

I think the school paper is one specific area we'd be interested in.  If WH did not host it would you be able to take advantage of the SSO? for keeping some areas public?

 

Ed

[Jed Dioguardi]

The SSO is tied to the hosting but we can also publish public Wordpress sites.