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Slide 1: WordPress Multi-User: BuddyPress and Beyond This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence
Slide 2: WordPress is a useful way of understanding the world we live in* * I explain myself in the notes to these slides
Slide 3: Technically, WordPress Multi-User is 99% the same as WordPress
Slide 4: ‘BuddyPress’ is just a set of plugins for WordPress Multi-User. No big deal.
Slide 5: BuddyPress: Social Network Blogs: Websites (optional) WPMU: Administration
Slide 6: Posts = dynamic content Pages = static content Categories = formal taxonomy Tags = informal taxonomy Widgets = versatile miscellany
Slide 7: Members = Find people Groups = Identify with others Activity = Track site-wide activity Friends = Connect with peers Messaging = Email Wire = Message board (Fb ‘Wall’) Profles = Digital identity (Forums = requires bbPress)
Slide 8: It’s time to stop thinking about ‘blogs’ and start thinking about…
Slide 9: documents
Slide 10: ‘proper’ websites
Slide 11: microblogs
Slide 12: scientifc publishing and review
Slide 13: e-Portfolios
Slide 14: scholarly journals
Slide 15: an institutional archive
Slide 16: lifestreams
Slide 17: code review
Slide 18: advanced mapping: GPX, KML, GeoRSS
Slide 19: I could go on… :-)
Slide 20: The technical slide: The more resources you throw at it, the better it will run. * * and use LAMP
Slide 21: LDAP and AD support
Slide 22: Feeds galore! http://example.com/feed/ http://example.com/feed/rss/ http://example.com/feed/rss2/ http://example.com/feed/rdf/ http://example.com/feed/atom/ http://example.com/category/my_category/feed/ http://example.com/tag/my_tag/feed/ http://example.com/tag/tag1+tag2+tag3/feed/ http://example.com/comments/feed/ http://example.com/2009/01/01/my-latest-post/feed http://example.com/2009/01/01/my-latest-post/feed/&withoutcomments=1 http://example.com/author/joss/feed http://example.com/2009/feed http://example.com/2009/01/feed http://example.com/2009/01/15/feed
Slide 23: Bring WordPress into Blackboard with Feed2JS
Slide 24: Institutional benefts? It's easier to support hundred of blogs on an institutional platform than hundreds of blogs on third-party services
Slide 25: Enhances the university brand. Open and progressive Good academic content is good SEO
Slide 26: WordPress MU is a repository of research, teaching and learning
Slide 27: “Can WordPress be a VLE PLE LMS CRM ECMS etc...?” No!
Slide 28: It's Open Source. What about support?
Slide 29: @josswinn jwinn@lincoln.ac.uk http://joss.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk http://mu.wordpress.org/forums/profle/508233 http://buddypress.org/developers/josswinn/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence
Slide 30: WordPress Multi-User: BuddyPress and Beyond This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence 09/11/09 1 This presentation was originally prepared for a demonstration at the ALT Conference 2009. For more details, see: http://joss.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/2009/08/27/alt-c-2009-demo-wordpress-multiuser-buddypress-and-beyond/ “'BuddyPress' is a new social networking layer for WordPress Multi-User blogs. It provides familiar, easy to use social networking features in addition to a high-quality and popular blogging platform. The University of Lincoln have been trialing WordPress MU since May 2008 and have been using BuddyPress since February 2009 to develop an institutional social networking community built around personalised and collaborative web publishing.This session will demonstrate the versatility of the WordPress MU platform. We'll look at an installation that is enhanced with BuddyPress, LDAP authentication, mobile phone support and advanced privacy controls. You'll see how simple it is to set up site-wide RSS syndication and aggregation, enhance your blog with semantic web tools, publish mathematical formulae with LaTeX, send realtime notifications to Facebook, Twitter and IM, publish podcasts to iTunes, and embed GPX and KML mapping files. We'll also look at how to embed WordPress content in your VLE and other institutional websites. The use of a temporary 'ALT-C 2009 BuddyPress' installation will be encouraged.There will be opportunities throughout for questions and answers and participants will leave with a good understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of WordPress and the resources and skills required to provide a social networking and blogging platform in your institution.” 1
Slide 31: WordPress is a useful way of understanding the world we live in* 09/11/09 * I explain myself in the notes to these slides 2 Hello. My name is Joss. I work at the University of Lincoln, UK, in the Centre for Educational Research and Development. We’ve been using WordPress for about 18 months now. When I joined the university, I asked for my own server. If you’re going to do research and development with educational technology, having your own server is a good idea. I’m not an ‘IT guy’. I just think that if servers are the machines that run the code that runs the ‘developed world’, I’d like to know how they work. Before I started working at the university, I’d never taken any interest in WordPress or web applications in general. I liked tinkering with Operating Systems in my spare time. I like WordPress because it’s a useful way of framing the Internet. I’ve learned a lot by approaching the web and WordPress in this way. Similarly, I learned a lot about Operating Systems by using Linux. 2
Slide 32: Technically, WordPress Multi-User is 99% the same as WordPress 09/11/09 3 If you’re already self-hosting WordPress, you shouldn’t worry about selfhosting WordPress Multi-User. Technically, the differences are insignificant. The main difference is that you can administer more than one site from the same installation. That’s a really useful thing, which you’ll appreciate if you’re running more than one website. Why WordPress? It’s popular. Millions of people choose to use it, support it and develop for it. It’s flexible. Think of it as a web development platform, not just ‘blogging software’. The development of WordPress tracks broader developments in web technology. Sometimes, it leads them. It’s open source. No license fees, no restrictions on use. You are part of a community. Statistics: 15 million sites (http://en.wordpress.com/stats), over 6000 plugins (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins), around 1000 themes (http://wordpress.org/extend/themes). Its use continues to grow (http://google.com/trends?q=wordpress,+blogger,+movable+type, +typepad&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0) 3
Slide 33: ‘BuddyPress’ is just a set of plugins for WordPress Multi-User. No big deal. 09/11/09 4 Really. It’s no big deal. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/buddypress/ 4
Slide 34: BuddyPress: Social Network Blogs: Websites (optional) WPMU: Administration 09/11/09 5 I find it useful to think of BuddyPress as a social networking layer, that sits on top of (or in front of??) WordPress Multi-User (WPMU). You can use BuddyPress all day long and never go near a blog. In my experience, BuddyPress has made WordPress Multi-User easier for people to use. People can create a WordPress blog in their own time but still participate in the community. Over 95% of students use Facebook. BuddyPress is easier to use than Facebook (and people don’t throw Zombies at each other). 5
Slide 35: Posts = dynamic content Pages = static content Categories = formal taxonomy Tags = informal taxonomy Widgets = versatile miscellany 09/11/09 6 Understanding a few of the core WordPress concepts can help you imagine how you might structure your website. 6
Slide 36: Members = Find people Groups = Identify with others Activity = Track site-wide activity Friends = Connect with peers Messaging = Email Wire = Message board (Fb ‘Wall’) Profles = Digital identity (Forums = requires bbPress) 09/11/09 7 These are what BuddyPress brings to WordPressMU 7
Slide 37: It’s time to stop thinking about ‘blogs’ and start thinking about… 09/11/09 8 Seriously. WPMU + BuddyPress is a platform for communities on the web. Each ‘blog’ can, in fact, be many different things. For example… 8
Slide 38: documents 09/11/09 9 This is my MA Dissertation. A WordPress site has been re-conceptualised as a single document. Each blog post, is a document section. Each paragraph can be commented on, annotated, discussed and reviewed. We’ve been funded to work on developing this idea: http://jiscpress.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/digressit 9
Slide 39: ‘proper’ websites 09/11/09 10 OK. I know it looks like a blog, but that’s because blogs and the use of other Content Management Systems have changed web design and publishing in general. Note how Flickr, YouTube and social bookmarking links are all integrated into the page. 10
Slide 40: microblogs 09/11/09 11 You can create your own twitter-like website for groups of people. There are also plugins that would auto-post to Twitter, too. http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/p2 11
Slide 41: scientifc publishing and review 09/11/09 12 With the LaTeX plugin, authors can publish scientific formulae. It’s supported in the comments, too. So reviewers can use LaTeX in their responses. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-latex/ 12
Slide 42: e-Portfolios 09/11/09 13 Dr. Helen Barrett has thought a lot about how WordPress can be used as an e-portfolio tool. http://sites.google.com/site/eportfolioswp/ 13
Slide 43: scholarly journals 09/11/09 14 I also run Open Journal Systems at the University of Lincoln. I’m torn between using WordPress or OJS. OJS is a good tool, but because it supports what can be a complex workflow of blind-peer-review, it’s also quite difficult for some people to use. I think WordPress would make a decent journal publishing tool and it would be easier to use at the expense of losing some specific functionality which OJS provides. There’s a WordPress Publishers blog that highlights how WordPress is being used for different types of web publishing. For managing the journal workflow, plugins like these might be useful: http://publisherblog.automattic.com/2009/06/02/wordpress-pluginscollaboration-emails/ 14
Slide 44: an institutional archive 09/11/09 15 Blog posts from across your WPMU platform can be aggregated into a single site for browsing, searching. Imagine how useful an institutional archive might be if the majority of staff and students used WordPressMU to write about their research, teaching and learning. Instead of your institutional scholarly output being held in Word and PDF documents, they can be published in modern, open web standards such as HTML and RSS. When they’re published in this way, your collective research, teaching and learning, can be visualised, interpreted and discovered in ways that are still being invented. Your content will move with and benefit from progress made on the web. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mu-sitewide-tags/ 15
Slide 45: lifestreams 09/11/09 16 You can bring any other service you use on the web into your WordPress blog as a Lifestream. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/lifestream/ 16
Slide 46: code review 09/11/09 17 There are a number of syntax highlighting plugins http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/syntaxhighlighter/ 17
Slide 47: advanced mapping: GPX, KML, GeoRSS 09/11/09 18 This is cool. It’s a plugin that provides comprehensive support for GPX, KML, GeoRSS. Whether you undertake scientific field studies or are a fanatic jogger, you could use this to present your tracks using the Google Maps API. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/xml-google-maps/ 18
Slide 48: I could go on… :-) 09/11/09 19 But I won’t. 19
Slide 49: The technical slide: The more resources you throw at it, the better it will run. * * and use LAMP 09/11/09 20 It runs on Windows IIS, but if you want decent community support, run it on LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) Give it a dedicated server and lots of RAM if you’re expecting hundreds or thousands of users. Like any web application, as it grows, you’ll need to split the database onto other servers. It will scale to whatever your needs as long as you have the resources. (wordpress.com hosts 6m blogs) It integrates easily into an existing LDAP/AD IIS discussions: http://mu.wordpress.org/forums/tags/iis WPMU README.txt: http://trac.mu.wordpress.org/browser/trunk/README.txt 20
Slide 50: LDAP and AD support 09/11/09 21 We use this on our university blogs. It’s very simple to implement LDAP support and allow your staff and students to log into WordPressMU with their existing credentials. http://sourceforge.net/projects/wpmu-ldap/ 21
Slide 51: Feeds galore! http://example.com/feed/ http://example.com/feed/rss/ http://example.com/feed/rss2/ http://example.com/feed/rdf/ http://example.com/feed/atom/ http://example.com/category/my_category/feed/ http://example.com/tag/my_tag/feed/ http://example.com/tag/tag1+tag2+tag3/feed/ http://example.com/comments/feed/ http://example.com/2009/01/01/my-latest-post/feed http://example.com/2009/01/01/my-latest-post/feed/&withoutcomments=1 http://example.com/author/joss/feed http://example.com/2009/feed http://example.com/2009/01/feed http://example.com/2009/01/15/feed 09/11/09 22 That’s a lot of feed end-points. By the way, with digress.it (http://wordpress.org/plugins/digressit) you get comment author feeds and paragraph level comment feeds, too. Crazy. I’ve written quite comprehensively about WordPress feeds here: http://joss.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/2009/04/15/addicted-to-feeds/ 22
Slide 52: Bring WordPress into Blackboard with Feed2JS 09/11/09 23 You can use Feed2JS (http://feed2js.org/) to take a WordPress RSS feed and convert it to Javascript. Just paste the Javascript into the HTML view of the Blackboard editor. Feed2JS is highly configurable making WordPress/Blackboard (or any other VLE), a flexible arrangement. 23
Slide 53: Institutional benefts? It's easier to support hundred of blogs on an institutional platform than hundreds of blogs on third-party services 09/11/09 24 The way the multi-user environment works means that I effectively support one blog, rather than many. If a whole class of students needs blogs or adding to a single blog, I can have this set up in minutes.
Slide 54: Enhances the university brand. Open and progressive Good academic content is good SEO 09/11/09 25 All blogs get a university domain name. The university brand is valued by many staff and students. The rapid production of generally good quality content is good SEO for the university as a whole.
Slide 55: WordPress MU is a repository of research, teaching and learning 09/11/09 26
Slide 56: “Can WordPress be a VLE PLE LMS CRM ECMS etc...?” No! 09/11/09 27 WordPressMU is a very versatle tool, but don't expect it to do everything. Organisatons really need to move away from thinking about 'one tool to rule them all'. It's temptng to work this way because it's easier for people to learn just one tool and easier for organisatons to support just one tool. But if you want a VLE/CRM or ECMS, etc. I would recommend you look elsewhere. What is important in a publishing tool like Wordpress, is that it's easy to get data in and get data out. WordPress is superb in this respect and as a consequence, can work well with other applicatons you choose to use. Data formats like RSS/Atom and good Access Management (single-sign-on) are a way of loosely joining applicatons into a whole. That is how the web works. That is how insttutonal uses of the web should work, too.
Slide 57: It's Open Source. What about support? 09/11/09 28 The community is huge and responsive to answering questons. htp://wordpress.org/support/ htp://mu.wordpress.org/forums/ htp://buddypress.org/forums/ htp://www.wpmudev.org/ htp://www.google.co.uk/search?q=wordpress For paid support, I'd recommend: htp://premium.wpmudev.org/ (Cheap) htp://automatc.com/services/support-network/ (Not so cheap, but proper 'enterprise support' with an SLA. You'll get support from core WordPress developers)
Slide 58: 09/11/09 @josswinn jwinn@lincoln.ac.uk http://joss.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk http://mu.wordpress.org/forums/profle/508233 http://buddypress.org/developers/josswinn/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence 09/11/09 29