Still Troubleshooting

• WordPress Slideshow Gallery - Some sites that use the wordpress slideshow gallery by inserting the [ slide ] shortcode are not showing up.

Resolved

• Custom Header Images Do Not Crop - Some themes have a custom header image field that allows you to upload an image and crop it before putting it in the header.  The 2010 theme is one of those.  The image will upload, but it will not crop.  RESOLVED:  You can now upload images and crop them.
• Sites using the Atahualpa theme – Some sites that have custom CSS, and custom banners applied to their site are no longer loading. RESOLVED: We have updated this theme to work with this new environment and now all sites should be resolving as normal
• Sites using the UNC Clean (Default) theme – The “UNC Theme Settings” under Appearance is no longer showing up as an option.  RESOLVED: This page is now available to all site admins.
• Sites look really weird… just some text, and no theme – This is happening on some sites that have wp-minify enabled.  RESOLVED: If you are seeing this go and check your Dashboard under Plugins and if you have wp-minfiy enabled, disable it.

Have other issues?  Please submit a help request at http://web.unc.edu/get-help/.

This upgrade also means a change in the IP of the site, which may affect some of the sites that have domain mapping enabled on their sites, or something OTHER than a web.unc.edu URL.  This is commonly something like “departmentname.unc.edu”, or “groupname.org”.  If this affects you, please read the following completely.

*.unc.edu URL’s

If your site URL ends in .unc.edu you will not need to do anything.  This includes departmentname.unc.edu, onyen.unc.edu, group.unc.edu, etc.  All the necessary changes will be managed by us and your site will begin to resolve on the new server as soon as the upgrade is complete.

Everything else – *.org, *.info, *com

If you set up your domain mapping on web.unc.edu by adding an A-record pointing directly to the IP of the server as outlined at the end of the third step on this document, you will need to log into your domain provider and change your IP address once the upgrade is complete (on Saturday morning, May 12, 2012 between 10am-12pm).  Here is a video about how this process will work.

New IP Address = 152.19.243.39

FAQ

How will I know when the update is complete?
We will post a message on web.unc.edu that the migration has been completed.  You can go to web.unc.edu, and if you see the message you may change your IP. We will NOT email you to alert you when we have finished.

How long does it take for the DNS changes to take effect?
A lot depends on your domain provider.  It could be as fast at 15 minutes and up to 24 hours.  If you have made the changes to the IP, just be patient.

What happens if I don’t change my IP Address?
Once the DNS for web.unc.edu changes over your site will go looking for this site on web.unc.edu but will not be able to find it and will result in a “page not found” error.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us and we’ll do our best to help.

Web.unc.edu has been growing steadily over the past couple of years. It’s come a long way since our first beta group built a website in Fall of 2009 with 15 students. At last count there were over 2700 websites, and 6700 users.  With that in mind we knew it was time for us to find a more permanent home for all these sites so that we can continue to handle growth over the coming years.

OASIS, ibiblio, and ITS have teamed up again to build a new infrastructure (series of servers) to house web.unc.edu.  We have been hard at work testing everything for months and we are finally ready to move all your sites to these new high-powered servers.

When – Downtime?

• The migration will occur from 4am-12pm on Saturday, May 12th, 2012
• There will be no downtime for this migration, however you will not be able to make any edits to your site during this time.

Why?

There are several benefits to this new setup we have for web.unc.edu.  Here are a few:

• All the sites are shared across multiple servers.
• There is a load-balancing tool in this new infrastructure that will allow web.unc.edu to handle MUCH more traffic than it has in the past.
• Support – This new system will be supported by ITS, which means that the web.unc.edu can focus on supporting you, and ITS can keep WordPress up to date and secure.

FAQ

How will we know the migration is complete?
We will post a message on the front page of web.unc.edu once the migration is complete. Once you can see this message on the site, you will be able to log in and edit your site again. We will NOT email you to alert you when we have finished.

Will anything change on my site?
No, all of your data will be migrated and your site will look and function the same as before.

If you have any other questions or concerns, please let us know.

~ The Web.unc.edu Team

As reported in a recent Washington Post article, TED’s new TED-Ed channel on YouTube is their effort to provide free, engaging online video lessons for high school and college students.

TED talks available at Ted.com have been very popular across the world, including on college campuses; however, these new TED-Ed videos will be slightly different from the typical TED talk video in order to be more captivating and informative. The videos combine some of the best educators’ narration of a lesson with vivid animation to supplement the lecture.

There are currently 22 videos on the YouTube channel, broken up into 5 playlists such as “How Things Work,” “Inventions that Shaped History,” and “Questions No One (Yet) Knows the Answers To.”

The videos currently available on the channel are shorter than other video lessons such as the popular Khan Academy videos. They are also not based on specific course subject matter. Therefore, these video lessons are not meant to correspond to a course curriculum. Instead, they are meant to excite students about learning outside of the classroom.

Check out the most recent video uploaded to the channel below introducing and explaining the purpose of the new channel:

Click here to view the embedded video.

News & Documentation

Updated Servers

Due to the growing popularity with web.unc.edu, we have updated our servers to help maintain high performance during peak user times, and have several other upgrades planned for this summer.  Although the update adds stability and performance, there are no major changes to the user-side and will not effect the way users work in through their dashboard. Thanks to everyone for their patience in our transition.

Spotlight: New Sites

The development of web.unc.edu wouldn’t be possible without the participation of UNC programs, classes, professors,  departments, and individuals (aka you all!). The following are examples of some recent sites created on here. Check them out and see if there is anything you can take away and add to your own site!

Program Site Example: http://summer.unc.edu

Miscellaneous Example: http://evecarsonscholarship.unc.edu/

Statistics

Below is an overview of different statistics about visitors since the last newsletter (October 4th, 2011).

Overall, since we have started we have had 1,346,917 visits and 4,310,260 pageviews. Thank you all for your support and for making these statistics possible!

Getting Help

As always, the web.unc.edu team is here to help in what ever way we can.  Be sure to check out our getting help page.  There you will find the following things:

1. General Documentation – Anything and everything related to WordPress
2. Carolina Theme – We have over 150 themes, but the default one and best one is the Carolina theme.  Here you can find info and tutorials for getting the most out of this theme
3. FAQ – The most common questions we see.
4. Training Videos - Here is a link to full length training classes, and short 5 minutes just in time tutorials.
5. Submit a Help Request – Tried to find your answer but still stumped?  Or need to do something that only we can do?

This new feature brings back some of the exclusivity Facebook had from when registration required an “.edu” email address. With “Groups for Schools,” students can join groups according to major, class (year), organization, and much more.

Within these groups, students can add posts to create discussions, add photos and videos, make polls, and even upload files. This can be a valuable way for people to share information within classes or groups and easily share documents with other students.

The official announcement on Facebook regarding “Groups for Schools” was made only yesterday, and made available for UNC students shortly after. As more students join the feature and it becomes available for more colleges and universities, there will surely be updates made.

As of now, the Groups at UNC include the various class groups, a textbook exchange group, specific dormitory community groups, and much more. Only time will show the usefulness students find in this new feature, considering any student with an active email address can create a new group for the school. This could become a positive online community for UNC students to share information and study material, but it can also quickly become a cluttered space that becomes useless to students.

I was contacted yesterday by a professor who wanted to allow her class to create graphical novels online for final projects.  I made a 1/2 hour video walkthrough of three different layouts and options for creating this final site that might be useful for others thinking about using web.unc.edu for their final projects.

The article emphasizes that the service is not unnecessary or redundant, as one might initially think. Instead, it is much more streamlined than having professors reply to numerous emails or using discussion features on Blackboard or Sakai.

By using Piazza, students can choose to post questions that require rather straight-forward answers on the site for the professor, TAs, or other students to answer. Thus, more time during face-to-face office hours is left for students who need more one-on-one help. Best of all, Sankar is constantly evaluating feedback from users about how to improve the service and the testimonials from professors that use the service show that Piazza can help you save time and be more efficient.

In addition to being beneficial for professors and other instructors, Sankar’s personal experience of being too shy to approach others shows that the service can be helpful for students as well. The discussion area can become a virtual study hall for students to quickly get their questions answered, help other students by answering their questions, and overall interact with one another to better understand the course material without having to set-up personal meetings. That way, class doesn’t have to end with the lecture portion — students can continue to learn and discuss topics away from the classroom setting.

If you are interested in using Piazza, check out the wealth of information on their site (including a demo or free live demonstrations you can register for) and read the testimonials from professors using Piazza.

First, you need to make sure the new plugins can work on web.unc.edu, and in a wordpress multi-site environment.  They should not have excessive use on processes since it is a shared service among all sites. Flash based plugins are not allowed because they put a strain on the server.

To test plugins, you can add them to the test server at http://dev.web.unc.edu/guide-to-testing/.

Second, you need to make sure it has large use potential. Not all requested plugins are added to web.unc.edu because every plugin added to the service, even when not activated, increases the amount of time it takes to load websites. Therefore, only plugins that have the potential to be used by many sites will we consider to be added.

Last, you need to check if the plugins already exist in some form on web.unc.edu. For the same reasons that were previously stated, adding multiple plugins that do the same thing is not suggested in order to avoid a long load time for sites. So look for existing plugins to accomplish what you need.

If the plugin you’re requesting fits these requirements and guidelines, then please submit a ticket to the web.unc.edu team and it will be added to the dev blog in order to gather some more input about it from other administrators.

• Activating the Events Calendar plugin
• Adding Events
• What Events Look Like
• What the Events Calendar Looks Like
• Selecting your Widgets
• Events Calendar Settings

Activating the Events Calendar plugin

What Events Look Like

What the Events Calendar Looks Like

The events calendar has the option of being displayed in a list view or a calendar view. Either way, both views show all the events in a given month.

Selecting your Widgets

The Events Calendar plugin creates three new widgets. Each of these can be used at a user’s discretion as some may be more appropriate than others based on the type of website. Below will be a brief description of each:

• Events Calendar: This is adds a small month calendar on a widget space that includes a “View all”  link to the main calendar. Events added will appear on this widget.
  
• Events List Advanced Widget: This widget provides a list of all of your upcoming events as well as a “View all” link to the main calendar. You can customize the number of events that are displayed as well as other criteria such as address, city, state, etc.
  
• Next Event Widget: This widget displays the next event in a given month. This widget is similar to the Events List Advanced Widget except that only one event will be displayed and there are no custom options. There is also NO link to the main calendar.
  

Events Calendar Settings

The Events Calendar Settings is located under “settings” in the dashboard. There are two important settings can be adjusted:

• You can set the default view of the Events Calendar in calendar view or event list view. The number of events that is shown in the events list view can also be customized.
  
• The next setting is crucial to note if you want Google Maps to be displayed on your event pages. The check box must be selected if you desire this feature. The dimensions of the embedded Google Maps can be customized here.
  
•  Some users might find that their calendar takes up too much or too little space than what is shown in these examples. To adjust this, click on the “template” tab and you will have a variety of choices to choose from. Each template setting should change the way the calendar looks on your site!