The PDF Issue that recently developed on Glow Blogs has now been fixed. PDFs can now be uploaded as expected without any workarounds.
Thanks to all the people who reported it.
If you changed your Resize larger images to setting to zero as a workaround please reset it to the value it had before. 1260 pixels is the default.
Note the behaviour of pasting pdf links into the classic editor has changed. See the PDF page for details of how this works now.
Glow Blogs has been updated to WordPress 6.8.2.
This update is mostly a behind the scenes one, you might not notice much difference.
The main features of WordPress 6.8 are covered in WordPress 6.8 – WordPress.org
WordPress 6.8 packs a wide range of performance fixes and enhancements to speed up everything from editing to browsing.
100+ accessibility fixes and enhancements touch a broad spectrum of the WordPress experience.
The Style Book is available in some classic themes, this gives you an overview of the standard styles in classic themes in the Site Editor style book. It is read only for our classic themes. Accessed via the Appearance -> Design section of the dashboard.
You can also access patterns for classic sites in the Design section, this allows you to add & edit patterns easily. Usefull if you have repeated content or repeat a type of content. Patterns are used in the block editor.
Block, images, you can set any image to site featured images.
The FSE see some improvements. Especially in the views of Navigation, styles, Pages & Templates in the Editor.
The Style Book has a new, structured layout and clearer labels, to make it even easier to edit colors, typography—almost all your site styles—in one place
Pages listed & can be edited in the Appearance-> Editor section of the dashboard.
This issue has been fixed with a release on Monday 13 October. PDFs now upload as expected.
An issue with pdf uploaded to Glow Blogs has recently developed. Our developers are looking at the issue to create a fix.
The issue is that pdfs uploaded to Glow Blogs are ‘truncated’ to one page.
We hope this is fixed soon. There are a few workarounds you can use in the meantime.
This release contains a couple of improvements and some general updated.
We have restored the ability to add additional CSS in the customiser and the Styles of the Site editor.
You can again edit the styles of your site. Read more on the new CSS page.
We have added a new contact form with Google reCatcha v3 to Block themes.
The Jetpack contact forms did not work in the block editor. You can now use this plugin in Block Theme sites. Read more about the plugin & other form options on the Contact Form page.
Various plugins & theme have been updated.
There was a new release on Glow Blogs today.
We have changed the way users can control cookies with the civic cookie plugin. This allows visitors and users to set the cookies they will accept from Glow Blogs. You can change this at any time by editing your cookie preferences. These are accessed from the icon that will appear at the bottom right of every page.
You can choose to accept or reject cookies in different categories. We have also an new Glow Blogs Cookies Policy page.
The Following plugins have been updated to the latest versions:
WP Draw Attention, Akismet, Jetpack, Civic Control Cookie, WP Accessibility, MegaMenu, 3D Flipbook and You Tube embed.
Check your sites & tell your Key Contact before the 21 August 2025 if you need any restored.
It is getting near to the 28 August 2025 date when unused blogs will be deleted from the system. If you have a blog that you have not used for a few years but still value please check:
Read the Official Announcement on Glow Connect.
it is getting near to the 28 August 2025 date when unused blogs will be deleted from the system. If you have a blog that you have not used for a few years but still value please check it out.
Do you have a Glow Blog? Most likely the answer is yes! Glow Blogs is one of the most popular services in Glow with hundreds of new blogs created each month.
This is fantastic news and we want to make sure Glow keeps performing well to support your blogs. To help with this we’re carrying out a housekeeping exercise to remove older Glow Blogs that haven’t been used for a while.
On 1 May 2025 we archived older Glow Blogs that haven’t been used for a number of years. Following this, commencing 28 August 2025, we will permanently delete these from the system to free up space and help improve overall performance.
This will affect; blogs with no users and no updates in the past 3 years, private blogs with users but no updates in the last 3 years and e-portfolios with or without users that have not been updated since 2017. Please note there are a small number of blogs and e-portfolios that have updates in the past three years that are also being archived as they have no users and do not use a home theme. If you have any questions regarding this then please speak to your local Glow Key Contact.
If your Glow Blog is archived but you want to continue using it you have the opportunity to restore it back to the live environment. Simply email your Glow Key Contact before 21 August 2025 and they will raise a service call on your behalf. Otherwise there’s nothing you need to do.
Thanks for your help and happy blogging.
Glow Blogs was updated yesterday.
The Following Plugins were updated. Jetpack, Syntax Highlighter, WP Accessibility, Mega Menu, H5P, Youtube Embed , 3D Flipbook, Userway Accessibility, WP Draw Attention.
The Plugin updates in the main as small fixes and compatibility with the latest version of WordPress.
Fixed: A problem with the Jetpack icon not being visitable in the dashboard. Access to turn on and off the jetpack modules has been restored to the dashboard. The interface has changed a little. The Modules have been split into tabbed sections in the Setting screen.
You can access the older simpler interface by using the Modules link in the settings or Dashboard.
Fixed: Various problems with the H5P plugin. You now can install all of the H5P content types.
You may see a problem with installing some content types. In particular the Games Map, Interactive Video and other large content types. The libraries are large and need other libraries to be installed. You may occasionally see a 503 error but refreshing the page will show the content type installed and ready to use. We would recommend installing the interactive Video content type before adding the Game Map, Branching Scenario or Column types.
Glow Blogs has just been updated to WordPress 6.7.2
This has not brought a lot of new features that users will notices but there are improvements in performance, security & accessibility.
Most of the improvements to the editor are for the block editor and site editors, bringing some more features to many of the blocks and improvements to the site editor.
Not many users of Glow Blogs are using the block or site editor yet. We would recommend trying the block editor as it makes posting different types of content simpler. There are also a lot more possibilities for changing the appearance of the content & layout.
The Site editor is more complex but lets you completely change the layout and appearance of the site.
We have more information on the Block editor. We have a site that explains a lot more about the individual blocks along with lots of tips for using it: Blocks – Using the Blocks Editor in Glow Blogs. Finally our newer tutorials cover many of the features of the block editor.
This video shows some of the main changes in WordPress 6.7. Remember third party videos show WordPress in general so some of the features may not be available on Glow Blogs.
This release also prepares for our housekeeping exercise. Please read: Glow Blogs Hosekeeping Announcment The exercise starts on May the first. This is paerticualry important if you have a useful site that has not been updated for a while.
Glow Blogs Housekeeping Announcement
Do you have a Glow Blog? Most likely the answer is yes! Glow Blogs is one of the most popular services in Glow with hundreds of new blogs being created each month.
This is fantastic news and we want to make sure Glow keeps performing well to support your blogs. To help with this, we’re carrying out a housekeeping exercise to remove older Glow Blogs that haven’t been used for a while.
On 1 May 2025 we will start to archive older Glow Blogs that haven’t been used for a number of years. Following this, commencing 28 August 2025 we will permanently delete these from the system to free up space and help improve overall performance.
This will affect; blogs with no users and no updates in the past 3 years, private blogs with users but no updates in the last 3 years and e-portfolios with or without users that have not been updated since 2017. If you have any questions regarding this then please speak to your local Glow Key Contact.
If your Glow Blog is archived but you want to continue using it you have the opportunity to restore it back to the live environment. Simply email your Glow Key Contact before 21 August 2025 and they will raise a service call on your behalf. Otherwise, there’s nothing you need to do.
Thanks for your help and happy blogging.
The Glow Team
To get an idea of how Glow Blogs are being used we took a visit to the Local Authority Home pages and followed a few links from the Latest Posts. The Posts are below the Word Cloud generated from the titles once we remove schools names and words like school, nursery, etc.
