Web.unc.edu Upgrade – Known Issues

By Jeff VanDrimmelen | Posted on: May 14, 2012 at 5:18 am | Posted in General | Comments Off

The upgrade on Saturday went quite well and was completed about 10:00AM.  There have been a few issues that have cropped up related to themes that we are working on.  We will update this page as these are resolved and we find any other issues.

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/.

Updating your Domain Mapping After Server Upgrade

By Jeff VanDrimmelen | Posted on: April 30, 2012 at 3:44 pm | Posted in Documentation | Comments Off

On Satuday, May 12th, 2012 we will be upgrading web.unc.edu servers to handle the growing traffic and need for resources.  You can read more about this upgrade here.

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 Server Upgrade Scheduled for Saturday, May 12, 2012

By Jeff VanDrimmelen | Posted on: April 30, 2012 at 3:39 pm | Posted in Announcements | Comments Off

UPDATE: This change was completed on Saturday at 10:00am.  The new sites are resolving now.  Please let us know if you have any problems by submitting a help request at http://web.unc.edu/get-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

TED Launches new “TED-Ed”

By Vanvi Tran | Posted on: April 24, 2012 at 1:33 pm | Posted in Pedagogy | Comments Off

Many college students have discovered the benefits of using online videos as supplementary course material. The popularity of online lessons available on Khan Academy through YouTube has spread across campuses, so students should be excited to learn that the popular TED organization has now joined the movement in free online education.

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:

YouTube Preview Image

April Newsletter

By Daniel Cho | Posted on: April 21, 2012 at 10:41 am | Posted in Newsletter | Comments Off

As the semester is coming to a close, we thought we would share an update on all of the great things that have been happening at web.unc.edu! Enjoy the latest newsletter from the web.unc.edu team.

News & Documentation

The New Events Calendar Plugin WordPress Smileys
Create a Final Project iWeb Sites Cannot Be Uploaded to Web.unc.edu
TinyMCE Advanced Plugin Guidelines for Themes and Plugins
What Anchors are and How to Use Them

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?