Category Archives: news

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

news, Releases

Glow Blogs updated April 2025

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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.

Housekeeping

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.

news

Glow Blogs Housekeeping Announcement

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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

news

How Glow Blogs Are Used

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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.

Word Cloud generated from the titles of 40 posts on Glow Blogs. blogs for Scottish Education.
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.

Issues

Jet Pack Settings Issue

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Some sites with the Jetpack plugin enabled do not have a link in the Dashboard Sidebar.

Screenshot of left hand menu in the dashboard, jetpack icon missing.
Missing Jetpack icon
Screenshot of left hand menu in the dashboard, jetpack in place.
Jetpack icon in place

Our developers are aware of the problem and are working on a fix.

Workaround

The Jetpack settings can be accessed from the Plugins screen:

Screenshot of the Link to the settings on the Jetpack listing on the Plugins page of the dashboard.

Clicking on the Settings link under the Jetpack listing will take you to the Jetpack settings.

Unfortunatly there is not a link to the Auto Reply page which allows you to reply automatically to contact forms. You can find that by adding /wp-admin/admin.php?page=jetpack_auto_reply_settings to the url of your blog.

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 ↩︎