UPbeat

News for and about University of Portland faculty and staff.

Wordpress

Attention WordPress Users: Recurring Maintenance Window and New User Group

WordPress is a great way for UP community members to create sites. We use it for class blogs, event sites, professional pages, and so on. It’s also the most popular system for creating a website in the world. In fact, according to the latest estimates over 33% of all websites on the entire internet are running WordPress. This popularity also means WordPress is a prime target for hacking and malware. With that in mind, Academic Technology Services and Innovation has decided to rethink our efforts toward keeping WordPress sites up to date with the latest security and bug fixes.

Going forward, our plan is to reserve morning hours of the first and third Fridays of each month for maintenance. That means the next window is AM hours on Friday, September 20. While we will always do our best to keep downtime to a minimum, it’s possible that UP WordPress sites will be inaccessible for part of the maintenance periods.

It’s important to Academic Technology Services and Innovation that our plans for WordPress work for those of you who are blogging, publishing, reading, and creating. If you would like to give feedback, get notified when WordPress will be unavailable, or learn more about using WordPress, please join our new listserve group.

Thanks for your understanding as we work to keep our campus computing resources and data secure. Questions or concerns? Please contact atsi@up.edu.

Information Services: WordPress Downtime and New Editing Experience

UP WordPress (sites.up.edu) will be down for maintenance on Wednesday, July 31, from 8 a.m. to approximately 3 p.m. The system will be updated to the newest version of WordPress for improved performance, security, and reliability. During the downtime, some back end systems will also be improved and updated.

With the new version of WordPress comes a new and updated content creation experience. The traditional “what-you-see-is-what-you-get” text editor has been replaced with a new block-based page building editor. This gives you, as a WordPress content creator, more flexibility and control over the look and layout of your site than ever before. For further info please see this excellent primer video on Lynda.com.

If you are a site admin and feel you or your site contributors are not ready to move to the new editor, the “Classic” editor can be restored for you on a site-by-site basis. Please fill out the form below with the full URL of the site to request the Classic editor.

For any questions, concerns, or to request training on using the new editor, please contact atsi@up.edu.

 

 

 

WordPress Wednesdays Start Feb. 18

wordpress-logo copyAcademic technology services will offer a new weekly lab to to help UP community members work on their WordPress sites. Starting Wednesday, Feb 18, come by the information services training lab in Franz Hall room 010 to get help with websites or blogs. Technicians will cover posts, pages, menus, widgets, headers, themes, and anything else needed to manage UP-hosted WordPress sites. On request specific topics (such as particular themes or plugins) can be covered in detail. Drop-ins are welcome but please register, as seating is limited and priority will go to registered attendees.

To register visit the Virtual Learning Center at vlc.up.edu and login with UP username and password. Click “Workshops” on the navigation menu, and find the next upcoming WordPress Wednesday lab and click “Register.”

For any questions or additional information, please contact Ben Kahn at kahn@up.edu.