[wp-edu] Finalizing plug-ins for our Wordpress MU offering

[Muro, Matthew]

Ken,


*         For sitemap generation, I would check out Google Sitemaps Generator<http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/>.  This is great, especially when you have thousands of links.

*         For SEO, many have recommended All in one SEO Pack<http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/>, though I have not personally used it.

*         Google has a plugin for Feedburner called FeedSmith<http://www.google.com/support/feedburner/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=78483> which may do what you want.  Again, I have not tested this myself.

*         When it comes to the email, however, it's a little harder to find something.  It all depends on how much control you want.  I have tested just about all of the email subscription plugins out there and while some work better than others, they never fully met my needs.  I ended up using MailChimp instead.  If you need to stick with Wordpress, you can check out Subscribe2<http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/subscribe2/>, Mailpress<http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/mailpress/>, and Post Notification<http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/post-notification/>.

Good luck!

Matthew Muro
Web Developer
UA Office of Web Communications


From: wp-edu-bounces at lists.automattic.com [mailto:wp-edu-bounces at lists.automattic.com] On Behalf Of DeBlois, Kenneth
Sent: Wednesday, December 16, 2009 11:41 AM
To: wp-edu at lists.automattic.com
Subject: [wp-edu] Finalizing plug-ins for our Wordpress MU offering

Hi Folks,

I haven't received a post from this list in a while.  I'm hopeful that I'll get some help from the folks out there.

We're in the middle of a pilot of Wordpress MU and getting ready to launch a full service.  Our goal is to provide a blogging platform to be used by:

-          Faculty as a teaching tool and a publishing platform to discuss there research

-          Student Organizations that want a blog instead of a website

-          Provide a web space for post-docs, graduate students, and others that want to discuss research online and want a simple publishing platform.

-          Administrative staff looking to share news, collaborate on projects, etc.

I'm working to get a solid set of plug-ins to meet the needs of our audiences and I wanted to check in with folks about plug-ins.


1)      Does anyone use buddypress (http://buddypress.org/) I'm trying to determine if it has value in our environment.  I'd love to know if other colleges/universities have considered using it and what they've decided.

2)      Do any of you have good plug-in recommendations for :

a.       Blog sitemap generation

b.      SEO improvements

c.       Connection to Feedburner

d.      Sending out an email that contains the post to any subscriber that has indicated they want an email.


To give you a sense of some of the other plug-ins that we are playing with, here is our list thus far:


So far we have these system wide:

-          Shibboleth for authentication

-          Simpler css - so blog owners can edit their CSS

-          cets_blog_defaults  - provides a ton of default blog settings

-          Akismet - for spam

-          Bad Behavior - for spam and hacks

-          Supercache

-          Site-wide feed 1492758394_wpmufeed.php

-          Extra Private blog settings 999830698_ds_private_blog.php

We allow blog admins to activate these plug-ins:

-          After The Deadline

-          article2pdf

-          Flickr Gallery

-          Grunion Contact Form

-          PollDaddy Polls

-          Popularity Contest

-          Shadowbox JS

-          ShareThis

-          SyntaxHighlighter Evolved

-          WP-PostRatings

-          WPtouch iPhone Theme

Thank you for any feedback!

Best,
Ken

Ken DeBlois
Online Communication Specialist
Brown WebServices

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