If you can see the image below, you’re running on the new server already…

On any of your UCalgaryBlogs.ca sites, just go to the Dashboard, and open the Tools section. There, you’ll find an item called “Import Users”. All you need to do is enter the email addresses of the people to be imported, one address per line, and then select the role to be used for the users on that site. Click the “Import Users” button, and the users will be added to the site. If they don’t have accounts at UCalgaryBlogs.ca, one will be created automatically for them. They will receive an email containing their login information, and the address of the site.

Thanks to Boone Gorges for developing the new plugin!

There are also still some rough spots that need to be worked out after the upgrade. Most of them are performance-related, but some plugins may be acting up. If you notice anything out of the ordinary, please let D’Arcy know ASAP.

Some of the improvements include:

• new default theme “twentyten”
• simpler formatting of posts – you can now use the Markdown syntax instead of geeky HTML angly brackets.
• easier embedding of media from YouTube and other services (just use the new format like this:

[embed]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NINOxRxze9k[/embed]

and WordPress will magically create the embed code to display the video. like this one:

The fancy new media embed feature works automatically for all media hosted by these services:

• YouTube
• Vimeo
• DailyMotion
• blip.tv
• Flickr (both videos and images)
• Viddler
• Hulu
• Qik
• Revision3
• Scribd
• Photobucket
• PollDaddy
• Google Video
• WordPress.tv (only VideoPress-type videos for the time being)
• SmugMug
• FunnyOrDie.com

We hope you’ll find the upgrade worthwhile. If you have any questions, please let D’Arcy know.

Unfortunately, the world of spammers on the internet saw that as an opportunity. Over the years, they have used this to create thousands of accounts, thousands of websites, and temporarily publish thousands of pages of filthy spam in their efforts to trick Google into increasing the search rankings of the websites they link to.

It’s gotten to the point that most of the time I have available to spend supporting and extending UCalgaryBlogs.ca has been wasted in removing the spam websites and accounts created by these people. As a result, I’ve decided to require valid @ucalgary.ca email addresses for new accounts on UCalgaryBlogs.ca

Anonymous and pseudonymous blogging is still important – you don’t have to use your real name, and your email address won’t be exposed. If you really want privacy and anonymity, there are now a number of excellent third party solutions available off campus, where you can use any email account and ensure that your activities are completely separate from your campus identity.

1. The BuddyPress “social networking layer” was turned off. It didn’t look like anyone was actually using it, and it was causing confusion (2 separate places to set avatar images, multiple locations to post new content, confusion around privacy, and complicating site maintenance and support). So, for now, I made the executive decision to turn it off. It may come back in the future, but not until BuddyPress has had some more time to stew.
2. A new theme. I’ve switched the “home” theme and am working on building some more useful functionality into it – a handy dashboard to access all of your sites, for starters. I’ll be tweaking the “home” site over the next couple of weeks.
3. A better “admin bar” – that grey bar that runs along the top of the page. When logged in, it now provides much better functionality, making it easier to get to the good bits of your site, and to create and manage content quickly.

I’ve got a bunch of other things I’m (slowly) working on, and will try to roll out some more improvements over the holiday break.

If you have any questions, please contact me.

I’d done testing of the new database code, and it worked fine prior to attempting to roll it out on the production server. I’ll do some more testing (and am talking to the developer of the new database code to help debug the situation). I won’t try to do any further rollouts of the code without some extensive testing – and all data will be safe, regardless.

I’ve tested the new configuration, and it should work just fine. If there are no snags, there should be no more than a few seconds of downtime. If the gremlins decide to come out and play, that may be extended to a few minutes as I revert to the previous configuration.

I’m planning to do the configuration change at 10am on Wednesday, November 11. Hopefully, it being a holiday, and the beginning of reading week, there should be little activity on the site (you DO have other things to do, right?). It should only take a few seconds, but in the worst case scenario, the service will be back up and running normally no later than 11am that day.

If you have any concerns, please let me know. I’ll post an update after the database configuration has been changed.

I apologize for the inconvenience this problem caused. I know it’s difficult when the software doesn’t work when expected – especially under the pressure of writing as part of a course. Thanks to everyone who reported the problem – that really helped me track down the cause and (hopefully) fix it as quickly as possible.

• D’Arcy

I’m working on tracking down the cause of this right now. Hopefully it won’t take long to debug this.

I apologize for the inconvenience. Thanks for bearing with the difficulties here on UCalgaryBlogs.ca!

There are a few options to tweak, if you really want to, to customize how the mobile version of your site works – check out your Dashboard, in the Settings section, for an item called “WPTouch” and click the shiny checkboxes to your heart’s content.