ELCA Web and Multimedia Development Blog

Tips and other useful ideas

WordPress Template Update

Posted on November 1, 2010 by Len Mason

No sooner had we finished the WordPress template for congregations,  than WordPress came out with a version update. WordPress 3.0 is a huge jump from 2.x and has added many benefits and ease of use to its users.

The whole point of offering a template to our congregations and others who need a jumping off point to get their Web site started was to make it easy. WordPress 3 does just this. Our template, created for WordPress 2, is not able to take  advantage of the new features.

In light of this monumental upgrade, and in wanting to offer our congregations the most simplest of templates to understand and use, we have decided not to make the former template available, but instead to create a new template based on the latest version of WordPress, taking advantage of it’s new easy-to-use features.

One such feature is the ability to drag and drop pages and posts into a navigation menu. This includes dragging items under other items to create drop down, fly out, sub-navigation. All without knowing any programming. This feature alone is reason enough to create a new template based on WordPress 3.0. Indeed, navigation has been a stumbling block for many WordPress users in the past. For more on the latest features offered, check out the WordPress site.

Thank you all for your patience. When working with third-party applications, there is some flexibility needed. But the result will be something many more of our church office workers and volunteers working in our congregations will be able to take advantage of.

Sites Update: New Homepage, Spam Protection

Posted on October 7, 2009 by Len Mason

A couple of new items have been implemented today. We are now highlighting the five latest posts from your blogs at http://blogs.elca.org. Have a look! The more you post, the more homepage face time you get! (MU developers: this was done using the sitewide recent posts plugin.)

Secondly, in addition to Akismet comment spam killer, I have installed some more protection. This should kill a lot of spam before it makes its way to you to have to approve or deny it. It also adds CAPTCHA to the comment field. You’ll notice the “churchy” words I picked if you take a look. (MU Developers: I used the Farms comment spam pack to accomplish this.)

Happy blogging!

Special thanks to @andrea_r for her help!

ELCA WordPress Users Support

Posted on October 7, 2009 by Len Mason

I am starting a new category of posts that I hope will help our growing number of Bloggers. In case you did not know, the ELCA has a new platform for our blogs. WordPress is very versatile and has already proven to be an upgrade from our previous solution.

We are also rolling out a custom ELCA theme for congregations and synods to create small- to medium-sized Web sites with the church’s branding and useful features. WordPress is not only a great blog platform but an excellent Content Management System.

This category of posts will automatically update into the Dashboard of our in-house blogs, and primarily be geared towards helping our churchwide office users and admins use and maintain their new blogs. But it is also my hope that these posts help those outside of the churchwide offices to gain a better understanding of how to use and implement WordPress in their setting as well.

If you haven’t subscribed to this blog yet, please take the time to do so. And please tell others who are interested in Web Development to sign up also, won’t you?