Category Archives: news

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

We have examples of the Max Mega Menus plugin & more information.

How To, news

Glow Blogs Start of Session FAQ

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A few quick tips that might help at the start of this new session.

Forgotten username or password

Your RM Unify Admin, who may be in your establishment or Local Authority will be able to help.

I need to access a blog where I do not have a role. For example you have moved school.

An Admin of the blog should be able to add you. Adding Users, Setting Roles | Glow Blog Help

No one in school can access a blog (perhaps staff have moved or retired)

You need to get your Local Authority to raise a call with theRM help desk.

Make sure you include the usernames you want added to a blog and the URL of the blog.

I can log on to Glow but I can’t access a blog where I have a role.

You need to get your Local Authority to raise a call with theRM help desk.

Make sure you include your username and the URL of the blog.

I can’t work out how to…

  1. Search the help blog
  2. Check the FAQ
  3. Use the contact form to get personal help.
  4. Leave a comment on one of the pages if you think that is appropriate.
  5. Chek the Yammer Group Yammer : Glow Blogs – Community Support Group
  6. email gw09johnstonjohn4@glowmail.org.uk

Featured image HELP | Alan Levine | Flickr  Some rights reserved

news, Releases

Glow Blogs Updated 18 Aug 2020

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Glow Blogs had an update today. There are several changes mostly with the Jetpack plugin. This has been updated and brings a few new useful features.

There is a new module Copy Post, this adds the ability to start a new post based on existing posts. This adds a link to the posts and page lists. It need to be activated in the Jetpack settings.

The contact form is now edited directly in the post or page editor.

Lazy Images makes pages load much faster by only loading visible images, waiting to load images that are offscreen as you scroll down.

Sitemaps are files that list each post and page that should be indexed by search engines like Google or Bing. Jetpack allows you to generate such files thanks to the Sitemaps feature. Once activated you can find the sitemap.xml file on your blog at: yourblogurl/sitemap.xml

So for the help site this would be

https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/glowblogs/glowbloghelp/sitemap.xml

If you have the sitemap activated you can submit it to google to help with indexing your site and produce a sitemap on your site by using the [sitemap] shortcode.

Tiled Galleries this add several different galley options to Galleries. This includes tiled mosaic, a square grid, and a circular grid.

More Trees
Tools
Trees
A pier
A World in a Glass
Zoom

We will be adding more help on some of these features soon.

news

Glow Blogs for Contingency and Continuity

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Given the current school closures in Scotland schools and teachers are looking for ways to continue to deliver education.

You can use Glow to deliver education during an unexpected event. There are many different Glow applications and services. Here are some of the features of Glow Blogs that may be useful.

  • Many schools already have their school websites set up on Glow Blogs. These may be the natural place for parents and pupils to look for information in the first instance.
  • Public Glow Blogs can be seem without having to login. Pupils and parents who are unable to logon to Glow will be able to access information.
  • Glow Blogs are websites are accessible in a web browser in a wide range of devices. The requirements are low and without installing a particular application.
  • Information can be presented in a variety of ways. Text, images, audio, video and embedding content from other websites (For example YouTube).
  • A the simplest level, text, it is very simple to post to a blog.

What sort of information can you provide to visitors

  • General Advice around school closures. Information about hub schools and links to Local Authority information.
  • General Learning Resources
  • Advice and resources for classes and groups
  • Information of how pupils can connect to other services in Glow. Classrooms, Teams, Sharepoint sites etc.

All this information can be organised to make it easily accessible to pupils and visitors visitors.

The help blog should help you if you need to find out how to do something. Use the menus or search to find content. We have  FAQ and Tips  pages too.

You can get more help via the support, or leave a comment on the appropriate page.

news

Getting Help with Glow Blogs

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During the times of School Closure many schools are using Glow.

Blogs are particularly suited publishing news and information in a timely fashion and one of the easiest ways to post public information that does not need a log on to. The recent infrastructure changes make Glow Blogs a more robust platform too.

If you need help with Glow Blogs, here is how to get it:

If you need to know how to do something the Help Blog is a good place to start use the search box from any page of look at the Site Map.

There is a list of Frequently Asked Questions (and answers)
Three of the most common are:

If you can’t find what you want you can get in touch using the contact form. Or leave a comment on any of the pages. If you do not get an answer to these please email gw09johnstonjohn4@glowmail.org.uk

If the problem looks like a bug or a problem with an account you need to log it with the RM help desk via you LA.

If the question does not relate to Blogs you are better looking at:
General Glow Help Information

If your question is about Accounts and password
Accounts and passwords

news

Glow Blogs Theme Retirement

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The themes made unavailable in December will be retired completely on the 30th of January along with themes that were removed from the theme picker  in 2015.

Removal of old and unmaintained themes will allow us to update Glow Blogs and keep blogs secure.

If your blog uses on of the old themes, it will be automatically switched to the Twenty Fourteen theme on the 30th of January 2020.  As this may result is a few changes to your blog appearance, menus and widgets we suggest that you change your theme before then.

We have general information on themes and advice on testing and changing themes  here on the help blog. Please get in touch if you need more advice.

You can find out more about the process on Glow Connect:

https://glowconnect.org.uk/2020/01/07/glow-blogs-theme-retirement/

Themes being retired include: classic, default, digg3, dundee, fjords, K21.0.3, oxygen, p2, regulus, suburbia, suffusion, visual and wp-andreas01.

news

Glow Blogs Theme Retirement

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As we work on improving and upgrading Glow  Blogs some of the themes currently in use are not compatible with newer versions of WordPress. These are going to be retired, first made unavailable in the theme picker from Tuesday 17th December  and next year removed from Glow Blogs altogether. Glow Key Contacts will be receiving advice.

More information is available on Glow Connect

https://glowconnect.org.uk/2019/12/11/retirement-of-glow-blogs-themes/

If you are using one of the listed themes you start thinking of changing to another one. We have information on changing themes here.   Please leave a comment or get in touch if you need more information on changing themes or need advice on how to support a particular feature.

Fixed Issues

Jetpack sharing IE 11 Bug

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We have discover a small issue with the Jetpack sharing module on Glow Blogs.

If Facebook and Twitter are selected to hide behind the share button they don’t show in IE11 it doesn’t work with Official buttons so the other option needs selected or they have to be shown individually.

Jetpack sharing settings screenshot

We use the Icon Only setting here on the help blog.

Jetpack sharing settings - buttons

 

We hope to fix this in a update soon.

news

Creating a School Website Videos

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Mr Feist, a Principal Teacher & Digital Leader of Learning in Mosspark Primary School in Glasgow, has produced a series of videos on creating a school website. The video are hosted on YouTube and displayed in Mr Feist’s Glow Blog:

Creating a School Website for FREE! | The Digital Revolution

You can Follow Mr Feist 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 (@mrfeistsclass) on Twitter.