Obscene or Irrelevant Comments?

You can fine tune your comment blocking strategy by using custom spam filters, blocking any comment based on keywords of your choosing.

  1. Go to Settings > Discussion.
  2. In the “Comment Blacklist” section, enter the keywords you want to block, one word per line.

Note that any comment that contains any of the blocked words will automatically be blacklisted.

 

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How to create Menus

One of the really cool things that WordPress 3.0 includes is the ability to create custom menus. You can build your menu from any combination of Page, Category or Custom URL. This takes the organization and presentation of your content to a whole ‘nother level. Seriously.

  1. Go to the new Menu option in the Appearance subpanel:
  2. Enter a name for your menu (this doesn’t show up anywhere), and click on Create.
  3. Select menu items from existing Pages and/or Categories, and click on the Add to Menu button.
  4. You can also add any URL as a menu item using the Custom Links panel.
  5. The menu items you’ve added appear in your menu as drag-able objects. Simply click and drag to reorder your items. You can even create a drop-down menu by placing menu items under another item, indented.
  6. Finally, in order to activate your menu, you need to select it in the Theme Locations panel and save.
  7. My menu from this example (using the TwentyTen theme) looks like this:

Enjoy your new menu!

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FTP Problems?

Here are the most common solutions to FTP problems you may have with the education webserver:

  1. Reboot your computer and try again. Sometime connections between your workstation and the webserver become frozen, which is fixed with a simple reboot.
  2. Toggle the Passive FTP setting: If it is checked, uncheck it and try connecting again. If it is not checked, try checking it or turning it on. For Dreamweaver users it is under Manage Sites > Remote Info.
  3. VPN: For security reasons, you must be on the KS network in order to FTP. If you are on campus, don’t worry about this. If you are at home, you need to first connect to VPN in order to FTP. Click here to check your IP address, if it starts with a 10.x.x.x, you are on the KS network and should be able to connect.
  4. Proxy: The latest Apple Security Update changed a proxy setting that causes problems for OSX users trying to FTP. To fix, go to System Preferences > Network > Advanced > Proxies, then uncheck the “Use Passive FTP Mode (PASV)” checkbox. Click on OK, then Apply.
    Picture 266

If these tips don’t help, check if you can reach the webserver itself. Try browsing to your website, if you cannot view your website in your browser, try viewing another website on the server like http://kapalama.ksbe.edu. If you can’t view any of these websites, you may have been blocked by the webserver’s IDS (Intrusion Detection System). Don’t feel bad, this is an unfortunate by-product of server security: a balancing act of trying to keep the bad guys out while allowing the good guys in. Contact the Help Desk and request to be removed from the blocklist.

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Video for your blog

When creating videos for posting to your KS Blog, you’ll need to keep the filesize of the video file around 6 MB.

Here are some options you can use to try and compress your video without losing too much quality. When exporting or saving your video:

  • Set resolution to 400×300 or even smaller, 240×180 (the smaller the resolution the lower the quality)
  • Choose mp3 as the audio compression
  • Use mono versus stereo for audio settings
  • Try mpeg4 or H.264 for video codec used in the exporting

You can also embed videos posted to other video sharing websites such as YouTube or Vimeo by following the instructions here.

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How to embed Voicethread videos

How to embed Voicethread (and other flash) videos:
Note that this will not work for all flash video sites, it depends on how open the video site chooses to be.

1. Copy embed code from Voicethread, find URL to video within the embed code (highlighted text):
Picture 36

2. When writing new Post, click on Flash button (silver f, second from right) in toolbar:
Picture 112

3. Paste in URL from embed code:
Picture 37

4. Enter 400 for width, then 300 for height when prompted.

5. Publish your post and test.

6. Pau!

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Help! I have comment spam…

Congratulations, this means that your KS Blog has found its way into the blogosphere. Once a blog gains “visibility” in search engines it will become the target of comment spam ( http://codex.wordpress.org/Comment_Spam).

The good news is by default, comments are moderated, so they never make it to the blog’s public view (please do not change this setting). The blog admin simply has to delete the offending comments. We are currently using several anti-spam technologies which catch most of the comment spam, but some will still make it through. This is a normal part of blogging.

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Adding YouTube videos

1. Click on the yellow “A” or “Media” button on the toolbar:
Picture 112
Picture 111

2. Paste in the YouTube video URL, then click OK:
Picture 114

3. Publish your post and enjoy!

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How to Add Files to Your Blog

Ever wanted to share documents on your blog? Posting PDF or Word documents can be a snap, just create a new Page or Post and follow the instructions below:

On the Add New Post page, above the area where you enter your post contents you’ll see the Add Media section:

Add media

Click on the star icon (last one), then browse to the file you want to upload, select it then click on Upload. Enter a caption or description if you want to (it’s optional), then click on the Insert into Post button on the bottom. If the Link URL field is blank, you’ll need to first click on the File URL button before clicking on Insert into Post.

Add media dialog

A hyperlink to your document will be created in your post. Pau!

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Can’t Login to Blackboard?

You can reset your Blackboard password using the following steps:

  1. Visit the Blackboard login page at http://bb.ksbe.edu, and click on the Forgot Password link.
    bb forgot password
  2. Enter your First Name, Last Name, and Username (or Email) and click on Submit.
    bb forgot password step2
  3. If it finds your BB account, the system will email you a link that you can use to reset your password. If your account cannot be found, contact the Help Desk.
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