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

[Matthew K. Gold]

HI Kenneth,

Some of my colleagues and friends at CUNY have already replied to this thread, but I thought I'd mention the CUNY Academic Commons (http://commons.gc.cuny.edu) because we chose to forground the social networking capabilities of BuddyPress into our site conception and design.  The site is built on WPMu/BuddyPress/BbPress/MediaWiki, but the center of it is really the group/profile functionality offered by BuddyPress.  Many new BP plugins are making it easier and easier for groups to communicate with one another in various ways (one can now easily create a blog that is pre-populated with authors drawn from a BP group, for instance).  BP is still maturing as a collaborative platform, but it already offers some very useful functionality.  

Good luck with your project and please let me know whether I can answer any questions.

Best,

Matt

---------------------------------------------------------
Matthew K. Gold, Ph.D.
Project Director, CUNY Academic Commons (http://commons.gc.cuny.edu)
Assistant Professor of English, New York City College of Technology, CUNY
Interactive Technology and Pedagogy Doctoral Certificate Program, CUNY Graduate Center

300 Jay Street 
Brooklyn, NY 11201
(718) 260-4972
mgold at gc.cuny.edu
http://mkgold.net


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: DeBlois, Kenneth 
  To: wp-edu at lists.automattic.com 
  Sent: Wednesday, December 16, 2009 12:41 PM
  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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