John McLear » Blogger http://mclear.co.uk My mission: To encourage effective use of ICT in Schools. My main focus is on ages 3-11. Sat, 04 Feb 2012 14:22:04 +0000 en hourly 1 http://primaryblogger.co.uk/?v=3.3.1 WordPress.com Vs PrimaryBlogger Vs Self Hosted Vs Edublogs http://mclear.co.uk/2011/09/03/wordpress-com-vs-primaryblogger-vs-self-hosted/ http://mclear.co.uk/2011/09/03/wordpress-com-vs-primaryblogger-vs-self-hosted/#comments Sat, 03 Sep 2011 12:15:19 +0000 Admin Admin http://mclear.co.uk/?p=3687

WordPress is the only CMS you should be considering if you are serious about a long term investment. I know Google fan boys will say how Google Sites is free and okay but when the key thing about Google products is that when you decide to leave you can’t take your content elsewhere, it’s closed source, it’s closed off. Google is Microsoft episode 2, we can debate this further but the fact is that if you use posterous, typepad or Google Sites you will be burned in the future.

Schools often ask me how they should be hosting their blogs, should they use wordpress.com, primaryblogger.co.uk or self hosted? I’m biased as I work on primaryblogger but I still feel like it’s worth answering the question.

Bad things about wordpress.com:
No Embed so no embedding primarywall, primarypad, wordle, voki etc. [Excludes youtube and vimeo]
No XMLRPC so no ability to use mobile apps such as classdroid.
You can’t use your own domain IE myschoolblog.com
You can’t heavily modify themes so changing the layout of your blog can be difficult.
No plugin uploads so you can’t access the millions of plugins available in the wordpress Codex.

Good things about wordpress.com:
No need to worry about growth, wordpress.com can handle millions of requests per second.
No need to worry about upgrades or updates.
Preview new versions of WordPress.
All of your data is backed up and protected for you.
Comes pre-loaded with a spam filter.

Bad things about PrimaryBlogger:
No ability to upload your own plugins, you have to put a request in via the community

Good things about PrimaryBlogger:
No need to worry about growth, PrimaryBlogger can handle millions of requests per second.
Can use your own domain name.
Comes pre-loaded with Edu-Focused plugins and themes
Has a community of edu-users
Each blog post gets manually read by a human
No need to worry about upgrades or updates.
All of your data is backed up and protected for you.
Comes pre-loaded with a spam filter.
PrimaryBlogger publishes all of it’s plugins and development open-source so the WordPress community can enjoy using them.

Bad things about self hosted:
You have to worry about scaling which can be a huge technical hurdle
You have to worry about upgrades and updates.
You have to worry about spam.

Good things about self hosted:
You have completely control about how to configure your blog.
Can use your own domain name.
You can integrate your blog with your own authentication mechanism.

Bad things about Edublogs free:
No ability to embed youtube video, animoto, vokis etc.
Your blog has a big edublogs advert on
Limited number of blogs per account
Limited access to themes
Very limited storage space
Dashboards can be unreliable
No stats
No Forum support
All of the plugins are kept closed source and sold through WPMUdev

Good things about Edublogs free:
Edublogs is a big community
You can pay more to get more features, storage etc.

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]]> http://mclear.co.uk/2011/09/03/wordpress-com-vs-primaryblogger-vs-self-hosted/feed/ 4 Zemanta – Quickest way to add images and links to your blog posts http://mclear.co.uk/2010/04/04/zemanta-quickest-way-to-add-images-and-links-to-your-blog-posts/ http://mclear.co.uk/2010/04/04/zemanta-quickest-way-to-add-images-and-links-to-your-blog-posts/#comments Sun, 04 Apr 2010 19:52:16 +0000 Admin Admin http://mclear.co.uk/?p=568
Image representing Zemanta as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

I have just been playing with Zemanta and I am pretty impresssed.  Basically as you create a blog post it suggests images and related articles to include.  Teachers and pupils could easily use this to bring pictures and links into their blog posts.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

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]]> http://mclear.co.uk/2010/04/04/zemanta-quickest-way-to-add-images-and-links-to-your-blog-posts/feed/ 0 Primary School Blog – Adding widgets, content and changing themes http://mclear.co.uk/2009/11/27/primary-school-blog-adding-widgets-content-and-changing-themes/ http://mclear.co.uk/2009/11/27/primary-school-blog-adding-widgets-content-and-changing-themes/#comments Fri, 27 Nov 2009 16:12:00 +0000 Admin Admin http://mclear.primaryblogger.co.uk/2009/11/27/primary-school-blog-adding-widgets-content-and-changing-themes/ A quick video showing how easy it is to make a great blog for your school!

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  3. How to make a primary school blog in 90 seconds
]]> http://mclear.co.uk/2009/11/27/primary-school-blog-adding-widgets-content-and-changing-themes/feed/ 0 Shibboleth / SSO blogging @ Primary Blogger http://mclear.co.uk/2009/09/22/shibboleth-sso-blogging-primary-blogger/ http://mclear.co.uk/2009/09/22/shibboleth-sso-blogging-primary-blogger/#comments Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:10:00 +0000 Admin Admin http://mclear.primaryblogger.co.uk/2009/09/22/shibboleth-sso-blogging-primary-blogger/ I’m currently in the process of doing a test of shibboleth integrated blogs. Shibboleth is a single sign on system currently adopted by Ja.net.
The idea is once I have this working then I will put it live on Primary Blogger.
I am hoping to have this up after the IDP and SP for School Email which is due in early October so probably somewhere around the mid November time depending on how cold it gets here and if I can stay alive without any money for central heating!!
Please buy School Email to keep me warm :)
Thanks!
Q. What does this mean to me as a user?
A. You will be able to login to Primary Blogger with your Schools username and password, it will basically save administration effort and make full class/school blogs far more easier to manage!

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]]> http://mclear.co.uk/2009/09/22/shibboleth-sso-blogging-primary-blogger/feed/ 0 Being the first http://mclear.co.uk/2009/04/28/being-the-first/ http://mclear.co.uk/2009/04/28/being-the-first/#comments Tue, 28 Apr 2009 12:44:00 +0000 Admin Admin http://mclear.primaryblogger.co.uk/2009/04/28/being-the-first/ The guardian published an article by some dude who said blogging and wikis are good for Primary schools. I dunno, are they? If so, who cares? At least 20% of the people who read it will believe it. If those 20% are influential then mebbe 10% of the UK Primary schools will want access to a blog or so..

Anyway, the article was published 7 days ago. In 7 days we have launched a Wiki and a Blog product:

PrimaryWiki and Primary Blogger

This is a great example of how quick a company can move and this is how fast other companies in education should be moving!

If you have an idea you want to implement quickly then just get in touch and we will be happy to help!

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