Hello University Blog Service customers!

The University Blog Service (UBS) has completed its transition to its new domain name sites.utexas.edu! This change highlights the service’s content management and general Web publishing functions; the new name was approved by the Web Technologies and Infrastructure governance committee.

Are you a current customers of UBS? You can rest assure that you blogs will work as they did before and will continue to be powered by WordPress. Plugins and themes will work as they always had. The domain change only affects websites with the URL blogs.utexas.edu/[websitename]; these can now be accessed at sites.utexas.edu/[websitename].  UBS websites with a custom URL have not been affected. 

Worried about published links with blogs.utexas.edu? Don’t be! All traffic to blogs.utexas.edu will be automatically redirected to its new location on sites.utexas.edu until August 2016.

Are you new to campus or only becoming aware of UBS? Sign up here for your own WordPress website!

Be sure to send your blogs related questions to help@sites.utexas.edu and stay tuned for updates!

Humbly yours,

The University Blogs Team

Goodbye to the widget called: “Twitter”. Hello to the new widget called: “Mini Twitter Feed”

We have disabled the older widget called “Twitter” because it is outdated and no longer supported by the developer.

Fear not! We are introducing a new Twitter feed widget called: “Mini Twitter Feed”.

With the new widget, you will also be able to display your Twitter feed in any post or page you wish using a WordPress shortcode!

1. First, activate the “Mini Twitter Feed” plugin from your Dashboard > Plugins > Click Activate.

2. Then, go to Appearance > Widgets and add the “Mini Twitter Feed’ to an area in your sidebar or footer.

3. Now it’s time to configure the widget: In the miniTwitter widget, click “Create a new widget”.

This will take you to your Twitter account. Login and click on the blue button: “Create Widget”

You will be presented with a small bit of HTML code, something like this:

-------------------------
<a href="https://twitter.com/SharkWeek" 
data-widget-id="365134152221200385">Tweets by @SharkWeek</a>

<script>!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],
p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id))
{js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+"://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"
;fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs");</script>

-------------------------

 

The box maybe difficult to see but the text will be selected. You only need to note the data-widget-id number and your Twitter username.

4. Copy and paste the code into a blank Word document or the text editor of your choice.

5. Look for the numbers assigned to “data-widget-id” as well as your Twitter account name.

6. Copy the data-widget-id into the Twitter Widget ID box.

7. Then, type your Twitter user name into the “Username” box.

8. Click Save.

Putting Mini Twitter feed on a page or post instead of the sidebar

If you want this on a page or post, use the Widget’s shortcode;

[minitwitter id="SERIESOFNUMBERS" width="250px" username="YOURTWITTERUSERNAME"]

 

Your shortcode will look something like this;

[minitwitter id="365134152221200385" width="250px" username="SharkWeek"]

 

Now your Twitter feed will appear inside in your post or page.

Have fun!

For more information about this widget, please see – https://wordpress.org/plugins/mini-twitter-feed/

As always, feel free to send an email at help@sites.utexas.edu if you have any questions.