All posts by John

I am a teacher, currently working in Banton Primary for North Lanarkshire Council. I also act as Product Owner/provide support for Glow Blogs. I like Blogs.
news, Releases

Glow Blogs Update April 2022

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Glow Blogs has had another update. Here are some highlights

Use H5P content on other blogs via shortcode

You can now allow your hp5 interactive content to be used on other Glow Blogs. See the H5P example blog Sharing page for details.

Plugin Copy Posts

This post allows you to create template posts that can be copied to other users blog and edited there. This will be useful for providing a starter for e-Portfolio posts by pupils. More information here on the help blog.

Plugin Block/e-Portfolio compatibility

The e-Portfolio plugin has been updated so that profile posts can now work with Gutenberg blocks: Gallery, Cover, Audio File, Video, Media/text, Pull quote, Table, Verse, Next page.

Some inappropriate blocks: Buttons, Search Field, Social Links, will not be shown in a pdf profile.

Other Changes

  • Many plugins and themes have been updated to newer versions
  • Security Update for WordPress
  • A bug in the comment form was fixed
  • A bug in Jetpack Sharing links was fixed

Other recent changes

Remember you can use the newer Blocks Editor for composing posts now.  We have started a Block Blogs to give more information.

The H5P plugin allows you to make all sorts of interactive content.  See the H5P examples blog for examples and more information.

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The Block Editor and e-Portfolios

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Glow blogs have had the ability to switch to use the new WordPress Blocks editor.

There a few possible issues with using the Block Editor for e-portfolio blogs. Some blocks are not compatible with producing pdfs.

We have listed some of the possible issues on the Block editor blog.

Most of the problematic blocks are unlikely to be used in e-portfolios, but many folk may prefer to continue with the default classic editor.

news, Releases

H5P Plugin

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New to Glow Blogs the h5p plugin. This plugin allows you to create a wide variety of interactive content, From 360 tours to word searches, cloze procedures, quizzes and more.

We have a blog with some more information to get you started: H5p examples

H5P makes it easy to create, share and reuse HTML5 content and applications. H5P empowers everyone to create rich and interactive web experiences more efficiently – all you need is a web browser and a web site with an H5P plugin

from: H5P – Create and Share Rich HTML5 Content and Applications

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Glow Blogs Update 26 Aug 2021

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The Glow Services has had a major update

WordPress has been updated. As usual we are slightly behind the latest version from WordPress.org

Many of the plugin and Themes have been updated.

It is now possible to use the Gutenberg Blocks editor on Posts and Pages. You can read more about the Blocks editor. We will be updating the help site to cover this over time.

The Lightbox plugin has now been removed, if a site has used the Lightbox plugin then this will be picked up and Jetpack will be enabled with the Carousel module also enabled.

There is a new plugin Advanced Search and filter plugin This allows large complex sites to create searches which include filters for categories, tags and other taxonomies.

You can now upload ppsx (PowerPoint Slide Show) files to Glow Blogs. These files may be large if they contain audio narration, this will take files space in your media library.

We are looking feedback on how people use Glow Blogs this will help us develop new functionality. Please fill in this short survey. It is linked from all the LA home pages.

There is a new ‘jQuery Migrate’ plugin that is activated across the service. This requires no activity from blog users. The plugin does send email to some blog admins, these can be ignored. We hope to stop the service sending these emails.

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Subscribing to Blogs by e-mail: Feedburner stopping service

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The help blog suggests a couple of third party services that allow you to provide your blog updated by email. One of these services, Feedburner will no  longer provide that service after July 2021 : Feedburner will stop providing e-mail subscriptions in July 2021

If you subscribe to the help blog by email you may like to switch to mailchimp, we have changed the link in our sidebar to use that service, or click   Subscribe to Glow Blogs News by email.

 

news, Releases

Glow Blogs Update 27 Jan 2021

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Glow Blogs has a small update yesterday at 4pm

There are two new Plugins.

Mega Menus Max Mega Menu – WordPress Mega Menu Plugin 
This is a really powerful menu plugin, it will give more responsive and accessible menus. It also fixes the problem with the Yoko theme’s menus on mobile.

WP Accessibility

This plug-in helps with a variety of common accessibility problems in WordPress themes. While most accessibility issues can’t be addressed without directly changing your theme, WP Accessibility adds a number of helpful accessibility features with a minimum amount of setup or expert knowledge.

New themes:

Twenty Nineteen, Twenty Twenty and Twenty Twenty One.
These Themes are particularly designed for the New Gutenberg Editor. They will come into their own when we have tested and implemented the new editor.  The themes will function well using the current editor.

Various Themes have been updated to the latest version.

New sources of external services to embed

The ability to embed content from more external services including FlipGrid, Padlet, Thinglink, Waklet, Micro:bit & Prezi. We now have a blog showing how various embeds work: Embeds – Examples of embedding content from other sites on Glow Blogs

Fixed Issues

Yoko Theme menus on mobile

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There has been a problem with dropdown menus in blogs using the Yoko theme on mobile devices. It the past this could be dealt with by using the Jetpack mobile module. This has now no longer available. There was also a rather complicated workaround using widgets and custom CSS.

As of 27 Jan 2021 there is an easy fix, using the Max Mega Menu plugin.

The plugin is quite powerful and has a lot of setting, but using it to fix the Yoko probelm is very simple:

Activate the plugin in Dashboard->Plugins, click Activate under the Plugin name.

Go to the menu section of the dashboard: Appearance->Menus

Load the menu used for Primary Navigation and tick the enable box in the Max Mega Menus’s Setting

Max Mega Menus Settings Screenshot