Category: Primary Blogger

PrimaryBlogger stability

Posted on by primaryt

Primaryblogger’s stability should now be 100%.  The bug that we isolated was due to a rogue plugin and some compression being applied without our consent.  Apologies for the slightly rough 24 hours.  We have learned a lot while applying the required fix (rm stupidfilename.php) and we will be having some strong words with the developer.  

We feel it’s important to stress that we host over 2000 school blogs on PrimaryBlogger and we have a lot of complex technology in place to ensure we can offer the service free of charge.  PrimaryBlogger is far from being an “out of the box” or self hosted wordpress solution. Here is a video explaining a problem we had previously and a bit about the infrastrucure we have in place to deliver your blogs!

Moderating Blog posts and comments on PrimaryBlogger

Posted on by primaryt

When it comes to being e-safe online without thwarting creativity PrimaryBlogger has your back.

Moderation of comments:
a) Spam filtering software detects unwanted spam.
b) Pupils cannot see unmoderated comments.
c) Teachers moderate comments.
d) Pupils can only see approved comments.

Moderation of posts:
a) Teachers can receive emails when a new draft is published by a pupil.
b) Teachers can select to moderate posts before a pupil publishes it to the internet.
c) All posts on PrimaryBlogger are checked by a human after being published

How to achieve a free digital signage solution with WordPress

Posted on by primaryt

I have written before about how WordPress can be used as a digital signage solution but never gone into much detail.  I figured the prompt Charles gave me was enough to get me to publish something more verbose..  So here goes…

1. Create a wordpress blog..  I recommend schools use PrimaryBlogger (I’m massively biased) as it has all the plugins already available..

2. Next, goto plugins and activate Showtime Slideshow.

3. Create a new post, Paste in [showtime] to the body of the post

4. Click add an image, upload some images that you want to be visible on your home page slideshow.  Click save all changes

5. Select a suitable theme, remove any widgets you don’t want..  [See Appearance] — I used “Strange little town” in the example.

6. Is your slideshow too fat/thin?  You can change the settings in Media -> Showtime Slideshow

7. To bring in a sliding animated news feed goto plugins and enable Vertically scroll rss feed

8. Click widgets, drag the scroll rss feed widget over to your sidebar.

9. Enter the RSS feed of your choice..  If you don’t know any then maybe use the RSS feed from your blog or from the CBBC news feed or something..

Alright, that’s it..  Visit your blog, press f11 to go full screen and then go from there..

You will probably want to add more widgets and play around more with the objects available on the screen, you can do this by tinkering and having fun 🙂

Enjoy!