All 4 entries tagged ITS

Blogbuilder 3.25

We've just released a new version of Warwick Blogs (the last one was nearly 2 years ago!) with a number of improvements and bug fixes:

• We've improved the RSS and Atom feeds from your blogs, and also added JSON support (add ?json=json to the URL, and you can add callback and assign parameters to do JSONP). For example: http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/news/?json=json
• We've significantly improved our support for newer web browsers (IE9, Chrome, Firefox 4) and you should find fewer problems using these browsers with Warwick Blogs
• We've added OAuth support to Warwick Blogs with the following details:

• Request token: https://websignon.warwick.ac.uk/oauth/requestToken?scope=urn%3Ablogs.warwick.ac.uk%3Ablogbuilder%3Aservice
• Authorisation: https://websignon.warwick.ac.uk/oauth/authorise
• Access token: https://websignon.warwick.ac.uk/oauth/accessToken

• You'll need a consumer key and secret to use OAuth to Warwick Blogs in your own application, you can contact the IT Services Helpdesk (helpdesk@warwick.ac.uk) to request this
• We've modified the Atom API to allow setting of arbitrary permissions by adding the special elements <blogbuilder:read-permission> and <blogbuilder:comment-permission> - these can be set to webgroups, names of groups on the blog in question, or to the special strings Anyone, Staff, Students or Alumni.
• We've increased the text limit for the biography and contact details sections of the profile page significantly (32,000 characters)
• We've added more "Back to Blog Manager" and "Back to my blog" links to the Admin section to make it easier to navigate
• We've fixed issues with uploading files with spaces in and inserting media into the editor

As always, if you have any problems you can comment below or email the IT Services helpdesk at helpdesk@warwick.ac.uk

Mathew Mannion : 14 Jun 2011 11:12 |  Tags: BlogBuilder ITS Update |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Blogbuilder update

There has been a new release of Blogbuilder today with a few improvements and new features:

Alumni Permissions

As well as writing entries that can only be seen by staff and students, users can now write entries that can be seen by all Alumni users who log in with their WGA users. This will not work retroactively and Alumni users will not be able to see "University–only" entries (only "University & Alumni" entries). If you find that the Alumni permissions do not work for you, then you may well have one of the old Alumni accounts we created before we had a proper authentication system that points to the WGA. If you are having trouble, let us know and we'll check out your account.

If you have joined the WGA and wish to maintain access to your blog after your ITS usercode expires, see this entry

[media] Tag

The Warwick Blogs syntax (Textile) has been extended in order to allow users to post sound or video files on their blog that are hosted externally, such as MP3 files that are uploaded to a hosting account or video files from YouTube or Google Video.

You can put these onto your blog by taking the URL of the MP3 or video (or the URL of the YouTube/Google Video page where it is located) and wrapping them in a [media] tag as follows:

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_YMigZmUuk[/media]

Which will produce the desired result:

Mathew Mannion : 14 Aug 2006 14:15 |  Tags: BlogBuilder ITS Media Update |  Comments (28) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Keeping your blog

Writing about web page http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/its/elab/services/webtools/blogs/faqs/general/exblogs/

There is an FAQ here that lets you know what to do when you graduate so that you can keep your blog. In case anyone hasn't found this page yet:

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When you graduate or leave the University your blog will not just be deleted. We intend to keep content up for as long as we can as we believe blogs are a great online resource.

However, once you leave the University you will no longer be able to sign in. You have 4 options:

1. Join the Warwick Graduates' Association (http://www.wgaalumni.co.uk) and sign up for their web site. Once you can sign in on their web site you will be able to sign in to Warwick Blogs as well. Once you can do that, email us at blogs@warwick.ac.uk and tell us the following information:
   • Your blog address (eg. http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/joebloggs
   • Your old IT Services user code
   • Your new WGA website user code (most likely an email address)
2. Leave your blog online for everyone to read, but we'll make it inactive so that it can't receive comments. You don't need to do anything for this to happen; we will detect when you leave the University and automatically put your blog into this mode.
3. You can export your blog using the export function in the blog admin menu so that you can take your content with you.
4. You can choose to have your blog deleted in which case you need to contact us and tell us at blogs@warwick.ac.uk.

If your graduation is more than 8 weeks after finishing your course, you will need to specifically tell the WGA that you want to be able to sign in and access their web site as usually this doesn't happen until your graduation.

Your Warwick account expires 8 weeks after your course ends and you'll then need to register with the WGA web site and follow the instructions above to get access to your Warwick Blog.

: 24 Jul 2006 11:52 |  Tags: ITS |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Unplanned downtime

Blogs, together with all other IT systems in the university, have been unavailable for much of today. Early this morning there was a fire in an electricity sub-station in Earlsdon. This caused a high voltage switch on the University's inner power loop to blow, which took out power to some buildings on campus including the main ITS machine room.

When the power was switched back on it blew an electrical circuit board in the ITS machine room. Electricians worked throughout today to replace this component and power has now been restored to the room.

So far the campus network, internet connection, web services (SiteBuilder, Blogs, Forums, etc.) and most of the core components that allow customers to log on to their workstations have been restored. The SquirrelMail email service for students has also been restored.

The GroupWise email service remains unavailable as is the ResNet service and the FARGO data server. Work will continue on restoring these and other systems throughout the weekend.

John Dale : 17 Mar 2006 18:55 |  Tags: ITS |  Comments (65) |  Close comments |  Report a problem