11.02
Regarding academic blogs as well as student organization blogs and some other non-academic use.
Nate has WordPress structured into 2 separate “zones.” One zone is blogs.butler.edu and lives on a server called MALLARD. Although we have a case for unique blogs every so often, most blog requests are for academic (classroom) use and are benign. As long as the client agrees that search engine indexing can remain off, there should be minimal barriers to receiving a blog for these purposes. Examples of non-academic blogs that are in the other zone are blogs such as booth.butler.edu and thebutlercollegian.com websites. So, essentially, we can do blogs by DIRECTORY name OR DOMAIN name.
Nate mentioned something about one solution and EPICS, CAESAR, but I have no idea what that meant??? There was a discussion of bringing “external” blogs in. There was also a strong idea of generating some sort of “showcase” for the default location (blogs.butler.edu) to show some of the best blogs being run on our install. A listing of all blogs at least, but preferably something a little more visual and engaging to demonstrate what people are doing with their blogs.
During one planning meeting, a list of concerns/issues was generated that needed thought, options, decisions, policy, documentation, etc.
- patching
- backups
- testing
- restoring
- upgrading
- templates (this is an urgent one because we really need something to give everyone)
- errors
- policy (academic vs. other)
- governance
- security
- process (requests)
- maintenance (hardware/software)
- user support (service level)
- space usage monitoring
- performance monitoring
- training
Could the Help Desk be folded into this equation somehow? Could they offer any type of end-user support for WP blogs in the long run?
This just in, an article concerning WordPress security. Sent to me by Dan Shaffer.