In the most recent update to Glow blogs we updated the version of Jetpack that we use. Jetpack no longer supports Additional CSS. This is no longer available from the customiser or in the Styles of the Site Editor.
CSS already added to sites continues to function. Native WordPress support Additional CSS but not in multi-sites like Glow Blogs. The developers are investigating how to implement this and we hope to enable Additional CSS soon.
Glow Blogs has just had a fairly large update.
Glow Blogs is now using wordPress 6.6.2. This bring quite a lot of new features, especially to the Block & Site Editor.
Quite a few plugins have been updated too. Two of these, Max Mega Menus & SyntaxHighlighter Evolved now provide blocks to make it easier to use these in the Block or Site Editor.
The Site Editor especially has had many enhancements and improvements. If you are interested in spending time customising and designing your site it is worth a look.
The Site editor is now a central area to manage Design, Navigation(menus), Styles, Pages, Templates & Patterns. The Site Editor on Glow Blog now match that in the Site Editor – Documentation on WordPress.org .
There are some new blocks including:
The Gird Block is one of the container blocks that can be used to organize multiple blocks and adjust the height, width, and position of all blocks inside the container.
Grid block – Documentation – WordPress.org
The Grid block will allow you to create very complex layouts.
The Details block displays a text summary and an arrow button: When you click on the text or the button, the block opens and reveals additional content on the page.
and Footnotes1
There is a new Block Theme Twenty Twenty-Four
Twenty Twenty-Four is designed to be flexible, versatile and applicable to any website. Its collection of templates and patterns tailor to different needs, such as presenting a business, blogging and writing or showcasing work. A multitude of possibilities open up with just a few adjustments to color and typography. Twenty Twenty-Four comes with style variations and full page designs to help speed up the site building process, is fully compatible with the site editor, and takes advantage of new design tools introduced in WordPress 6.4. Twenty Twenty-Four | WordPress Theme | WordPress.org
Here is a great video that explains some of the best new features in less than 7 minutes:
Note there are still some issues on Glow Blogs you can keep up to date with them on the Issues page.
An issue with H5P content types has arisen.
If you try to install some content types you will get an error. The problem seems to be because the H5P API has been updated but the version used by theWordPress plugin does not now match it. Technical Details here.
Modules affected: AR Scavenger, Branching Scenario, Document Tool, Game Map & Quiz (Question Set)
If you had already installed these types they will still work and you can create new content with the versions installed.
We hope to have a fix in place by the end of November 2024
This tutorial shows how to make a simple site with Glow Blogs. You can read through the tutorial or follow along on the videos.
The tutorial will use the Twenty Sixteen theme & the block editor.
This will be a Class Blog that a teacher, or teacher & pupils could use to share news from their class.
The tutorial will also help you to understand some of the basics of the Block editor.
You need to logon to Glow when you visit the site. It contains example images and text created with the aid of ChatGPT and other AI tools. This text should not be taken seriously.
This is the one of several tutorials sites that are in the works. We would very much appreciate any feedback.
We are pleased to announce a new release for Glow Blogs, which includes several fixes and updates to plugins and themes.
Embedding Sways: Microsoft recently changed the URLs for Sway embeds, which disrupted the embedding process on Glow Blogs. The developers have now improved this process. We’ve also updated the help documentation to show how to embed a Sway in Glow Blogs moving forward.
H5P Results: If you provide H5P content for your learners, a bug affecting the display of results has been fixed. You can find more information about the H5P results system on the H5P example site.
Glow Analytics: A bug that affected viewing analytics on very old Glow Blogs has been resolved.
Accessibility: Various accessibility improvements have been made across the service, including updates to the “Create a Site” page.
The following plugins have been updated to newer versions:
3D flipbook, Akismet, Event Organiser, H5P, Userway Acessibility, WordPress Importer, WP Accessibility, WP Draw Attention, WP Postratings and Youtube Embed Plus
These themes have been updated
Twenty Twelve, Twenty Thirteen, Twenty Fourteen, Twenty Fifeteen, Twenty Sixteen, Twenty Seventeen, Twenty Nineteen, Twenty Twenty, Twenty TwentyOne, Twenty TwentyTwo and Twenty TwentyThree.
Please note that the Make and Agama themes have not been updated by their designers for some time. These themes are often used for more complex site designs. To ensure longevity, it may be advisable to use the Site Editor and the Twenty Twenty-Two or Twenty Twenty-Three themes for more complex site designs.
We hope to upgrade the WordPress version used on Glow Blogs soon and add the Twenty Twenty-Four theme. The improvements to the Site Editor in that version of WordPress may assist you with site design beyond what you can achieve with classic themes.
There are currently many Glow Blogs that haven’t been used or updated for some time. To improve performance, we will conduct a housekeeping exercise before the end of the year to remove old and unused Glow Blogs. This will only affect blogs with no users and no recent updates. These blogs will be archived first, allowing people to check if they are still needed. More details and dates for the Glow Blogs Housekeeping will be shared soon.
Digital Tidy Up of Glow Blogs – Glow Connect
Susan Sey, Education Scotland Product Manager ran a Glow Blogs Webinar last week.
This session provided an overview of how Glow Blogs could be used by practitioners and students to capture and exemplify learning.
Glow Blogs Webinar – Glow Connect
There was a live demo showcasing how you can build pages using the new block editor.
We also looked at how you can embed interactivity by using the H5P plugin.
You can download the presentation, follow links and watch a replay on Glow Connect.
There have been several changes to the way Twitter (now X) works with Glow Blogs.
Twitter/X keeps changing the goal posts for integration with other systems. Recently they have stripped out most of the functionality for free third party use.
This is, as far as we know, the current state of affairs. Please get in touch if you have a different experience or more information.
You cannot use the Twitter Timeline widget anymore. We will soon be removing it from Glow Blogs. At the moment it just does not work. You might see old tweets or just a no tweets yet notice in the widget.
You can still embed tweets in a blog post or page by pasting in the link to that tweet. N.B. I just tested this and if you copy the link to the tweet from the twitter user interface you get a url like:
you need to change x to twitter for that now to work.
In the past a tweet with replies the replies would get embedded, it now embeds the tweet and then a link to all the replies. If you embed a reply toy will get the original tweet & the one reply linked to.
If you paste a link to a blog post into twitter, it will produce a card consisting of the featured image which links to the blog post. As in the example above.
If the blog post does not have a featured image no image will be included.
You can still use some services to auto post tweets, https://dlvrit.com is still working for me. I presume they pay twitter for the privilege. An image will be posted along with a dlvr.it shortened link.
Plugin updates include updated and small fixes for:
In addition we should mention a new content type for H5P content was added last week. The Game Map:
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