University Blog Service

There comes a time in a WordPress Theme’s life when it hears the call of the sea.

We are beginning our plans to review and retire old blog themes. This, in turn, will allow us to review and load newer and better themes.

We will keep you informed of our process and plans. Themes in production that are retired will continue to work but will no longer be available for selection in the Themes Appearance section.

We are excited about this process and bringing you newer themes with more features that are responsive to any device – smartphone, tablet, desktop, etc.

Stay tuned. Your University Blogs Team

The University Blog Team has created the UT Austin Responsive theme, a UT branded WordPress Theme for use on the University Blog Service. It is based off the theme called Responsive by ThemeID

You can check out this theme in action at the link below:
http://sites.utexas.edu/utresponsive/

Features include:

• UT colors
• UT Wordmark
• UT specific image
• Static homepage or Blog posts homepage
• 9 page templates, such as Blog, Blog Summary and Template based layout designs: sidebar/content, sidebar/content half, content/sidebar and content/sidebar half and full width page
• 9 widget areas
• Responsive design using fluid proportion-based grid system to adapt the design to the viewing environment (mobile, tablet)
• Theme Options to control the content, webmaster tools, logo management, social icons and 4 navigation menus.

For more information on the theme and how to use it, visit the theme’s page on the Blog Service:
http://sites.utexas.edu/utresponsive/

The University Blog Service is a WordPress Multisite platform available for use by current faculty, staff, and students (for non-course related purposes) at The University of Texas at Austin. Blogs can be created for individuals, groups, projects, or departments.

Have a question? Read about the University Blog Service and find help and the Service Level Objectives (SLO). Alternatively, you can submit a Service Now ticket by emailing us at help@sites.utexas.edu.

ITS has upgraded the University Blog Service!

What’s new in this upgrade?
Here are some of the improvements this upgrade will deliver:

• Easier video embedding
• Easier uploading
• New default theme, “Twenty Eleven“
• Built-in Image Editor
• More Customizable
  • Custom Backgrounds
  • Custom Headers
  • Custom Menus
• Global Undo via ”Trash” feature
• Performance Improvements

ITS is pleased to announce the launch of the University Blog Service, located at sites.utexas.edu. Faculty and staff will be able to create and edit blogs for individuals, departments, or other university groups at no cost to them.

The University Blog Service offers a number of features:

• URLs that are under the utexas.edu domain
• The ability to set blogs as publicly viewable, or privately viewable to a specified group of users
• Customization with one of 40 available themes
• The ability to track blog traffic through statistics

Faculty and staff can automatically create a blog from the University Blog Service page by logging in with their UT EID username and password. Departments, groups, teams, and workgroups can submit a request to have a blog created for them.

Faculty should be aware that the service does not meet the FERPA requirements for hosting Category-I data, and therefore the University Blog Service should not be used for academic purposes. Faculty who want to use blogs in the classroom should consider Blackboard 9, which launched on May 26 and is FERPA compliant.

The University Blog Service has been successful in a limited pilot program for the past six months, with over 200 new blogs created by a variety of university groups and individuals. The service uses WordPress MU, a multi-user version of the WordPress blogging platform.

If you encounter any difficulties with the University Blog Service, please contact the ITS Help Desk at (512) 475-9400.

Welcome to sites.utexas.edu. This is the first step in establishing an enterprise blog service for the University of Texas at Austin. During this initial phase, Fall 2008, we are limiting participation to select staff and departments for the purpose of appropriately scaling the hardware and tuning the software for wider campus adoption.

Want a few more details? Check out the Blogs and Wikis Project Description and don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any questions.