We have upgraded the Maverick blogs. A few things have changed as a result of the upgrade. Please read the notes below pertaining to any features you may have been previously using.

New features

• New design
• Additional screen options
• Improved video embedding
• Integrated image editing
• New trash feature
• New themes
• Redesigned widget interface

Other notes

• AddThis Sidebar Widget
• Peter’s Custom Anti-Comment Spam plugin

New features

New design

You’ve probably already noticed this, but the Maverick Blogs now has a fresh new look, which you’re seeing now. But it’s not just for looks. The new design has some new features as well, like:

• A special section containing featured blogs, the newest blogs, and the most recently updated blogs, with gravatar images
• A search box in the page header
• A special “Start here” page, which walks users through setting up their blog simply by answering questions. See: Start here
• Helpful links in the footer, including a site map, links to other UTA sites, and the RSS feed
• A separate section just for support, so you know right where to go if you need help
• Removal of redundant content
• As well as other design elements to make the Maverick Blogs more appealing and easier to use

To see more, check out the front page:

http://blog.uta.edu

Additional screen options

When you’re logged into the dashboard of your blog, there is a tab in the top right for Screen Options. There are now more options available, such as customizing the number of columns displayed on the dashboard, and the number of items to display per page when viewing posts, comments, etc.

Improved video embedding

Previously, to post a Youtube video, you needed the Youtube plugin. Now, all you need to do is paste the URL of the Youtube video into your post, and the video will automatically appear when you publish your post. In addition to Youtube videos, videos from many other sites are now supported, including:

• Vimeo
• DailyMotion
• Hulu
• Google Video
• …and many more!

For more information, see:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Embeds

Integrated image editing

You can now perform basic editing on images you upload to Maverick Blogs. To edit an uploaded image, log in to the blogs and go to the dashboard for your blog. Then go to Media –> Library, and click on the image you want to edit. In the page that comes up, click the Edit image button. From there you can do simple editing such as cropping, rotation, and flipping.

New trash feature

When you go to delete a post or a comment, the link will now say Trash instead of Delete. When you send an item to the trash, you’ll see a new category at the top of the page for the Trash. From there, you can restore the item or delete it permanently. Items left in the trash for 30 days are automatically removed.

New themes

As part of the upgrade, we have added some new themes:

• Freshy

  

  Freshy comes with quite a few built-in templates as well as the ability to customize other elements such as the number of sidebars, menu links, and more.

• Illacrimo

  

  Illacrimo is a crisp 3-column theme with a bold style.

• P2

  P2 is a unique and innovative twitter-like theme. The above video explains it better than we could.

  Redesigned widget interface

  The widget interface has been completely redesigned. You can now edit widgets on the fly, have multiple copies of the same widget, drag and drop widgets between sidebars, and save inactive widgets so you don’t lose all their settings.

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  Other notes

  AddThis sidebar widget

  The plugin to add the AddThis sidebar widget was buggy and outdated, and has been removed. But don’t worry, if you want to add an AddThis widget to your sidebar, it’s easy. Just follow the directions in this link:

  AddThis – Get Your Button Code

  On a side note, the button will probably look better if you remove this part of the code:

  style="border:0"

  Peter’s Custom Anti-Comment Spam plugin

  This plugin has been replaced with an improved plugin, called WP-reCAPTCHA. If you were previously using Peter’s Custom Anti-Comment Spam plugin, you’ll probably want to enable the WP-reCAPTCHA plugin.