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

Wed Dec 16 21:56:38 UTC 2009

Hi Ken:

I¹m happy to share what we use on Blogs at Baruch, but I probably can¹t get to
writing it up until next week.  If it slips my mind, feel free to shoot me
an email to remind me.

Best,
Luke

**************************************************
Luke Waltzer, Ph.D.
Project Manager for Digital Learning
Bernard L. Schwartz Communication Institute | Baruch College | CUNY
Lucas.Waltzer at baruch.cuny.edu
137 E. 25th Street, Room 320
New York, NY 10010
(Office) 646.312.2069
(Mobile) 347.885.9461

From: "DeBlois, Kenneth" <Kenneth_DeBlois at brown.edu>
Reply-To: <wp-edu at lists.automattic.com>
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:54:43 -0500
To: <wp-edu at lists.automattic.com>
Subject: Re: [wp-edu] Finalizing plug-ins for our Wordpress MU offering

Thanks Matthew (and Joseph),

I found Joseph¹s complete list of plug-ins to be very useful.  Matthew, are
you willing to share your list?  Anyone else?

Thanks!
Ken

From: wp-edu-bounces at lists.automattic.com
[mailto:wp-edu-bounces at lists.automattic.com] On Behalf Of Muro, Matthew
Sent: Wednesday, December 16, 2009 2:40 PM
To: wp-edu at lists.automattic.com
Subject: Re: [wp-edu] Finalizing plug-ins for our Wordpress MU offering

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, it¹s 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 haven¹t received a post from this list in a while.  I¹m hopeful that I¹ll
get some help from the folks out there.

We¹re 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.

I¹m 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/) I¹m trying to
determine if it has value in our environment.  I¹d love to know if other
colleges/universities have considered using it and what they¹ve 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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