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news

Glow Blogs Housekeeping 2

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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.

The Glow Team

Tutorials

Glow Blogs Tutorial: School Site

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This tutorial shows how to make a simple site with Glow Blogs. You can read through the tutorial or follow along on the videos.

Screenshot of a glow blog site

The tutorial will use the Twenty Fourteen theme & the block editor.

This will be a School Site with some of the features that you may like to add.

The tutorial will also help you to understand some of the basics of the Block editor. The site uses a classic theme, Twenty Fourteen, but it will be simple to follow along and use a different theme.

The tutorial takes a modular approach. Starting with setting up a functioning 2 pages site, News & About, up and running, then look at how the site can be expanded.

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.

How To, news

Featured Images information

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We have just added some information and instructions about Featured Images, These are a rather neglected ‘feature’ on Glow Blogs. They are really useful for making your posts stand out on both your own site and when you share them. There are especially useful if you share posts and can enhance your own site by adding a visual element to navigation.

Featured Image
Issues

Additional CSS Issue

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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.

news, Releases

Glow Blogs October 2024 Update

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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

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.

Details block – Documentation – WordPress.org

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.

  1. The Footnotes block will be added to your page or post as soon as you insert your first note using the Rich Text option. This new block works like other blocks and it can be moved around and removed. Footnotes block – Documentation – WordPress.org ↩︎
Issues

H5P Issue Some content types cannot be installed

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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

Tutorials

Glow Blogs Tutorial: Class Site

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This tutorial shows how to make a simple site with Glow Blogs. You can read through the tutorial or follow along on the videos.

Screenshot of a class blog

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.

news, Releases

Glow Blogs Update 14 Aug 2024

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We are pleased to announce a new release for Glow Blogs, which includes several fixes and updates to plugins and themes.

Fixes

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.

Plugins

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

Themes

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.

Upcoming

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
news

Glow Blogs Webinar

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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.
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.

Glow Blogs Webinar – Glow Connect

You can download the presentation, follow links and watch a replay on Glow Connect.