WordPress multisite for Enclave Harbour at i live in science land

WordPress multisite for Enclave Harbour

Enclave Harbour’s website will serve up additional content for its workbook such as videos to act as alternatives/supplements to going in-world and current event links for each activity. the site is now set up as a “networked” multisite WordPress blog. up until a few month’s ago, those were called multi-user blogs. sites like the Huffington Post are WordPress multisites that allow dozens, even hundreds, of blogs to exist under one domain name

the idea for us is that each science field trip activity will be its own blog so that it can have multiple pages. it’s more of a website using WordPress as a CMS (content management system) than a blog because i don’t think subQuark will enable comments. each “activity blog” has its own URL like this: http://enclaveharbour.com/desalinationplant (it’s a live link but only has default content atm)

the theme we use randomly selects header images for the main site - pics below (the twenty eleven WP theme)

so now you know about multisite blogs! w00t! it took subQuark a night to get it set up, seems it’s a bit harder than a default setup, but pretty straightforward with a little Googling

this idea could work well for teachers or an OpenSim grid. teachers can allow students to make their own blogs (not a novel idea, teachers have embraced blogs as effective teaching tools for years) and you can set it up so that users create their own blogs – imagine something like InWorldz or 3rd Rock Grid with a Huffington Post type blog! the main blog can be configured to be an aggregator of all the networked blogs and make for a pretty fresh site!

of course there is administrative overhead and this is probably not what most OpenSim grids wants to focus on

apart from the Huffington Post example, CUNY uses one for its graduate programs and that site serves up the grad school website PLUS all of the professors’ courses as individual blogs! =)

Very cool, ener!

Graham Mills

26 Jan 12 at 2:41 pm

thanks! wordpress is pretty amazing, so it’s not me. i do like that it is self-hosted and would like to find a reasonable way to also host our own video rather than using YouTube

Ener Hax

26 Jan 12 at 2:47 pm

checked out your EnclaveHarbor site and video. Very nifty!

My Sis (who teaches 8th grade told me her school bans YouTube completely).

Araxie Longoar

26 Jan 12 at 11:31 pm

Nice and original enviroment! Opensim as science museum is a excellent idea, the analogical teacher is boring if you compares the possibilities to teach that Enclave Harbour provides you. Also, could be the solution to kids who lives in far villages.

Kind regards.

Montnegre

27 Jan 12 at 1:26 am

thanks Araxie and Montnegre =)

cool on the 8th grade teaching – much of Enclave Harbour centers around middle school science, particularly Earth Science and also Physical Science (subquark taught middle and high school, then later taught college)

the YouTube ban is pretty common at schools and i understand why, but it’s a shame too

the initial scope of Enclave Harbour is as supplemental science work for students to do from home (for anyone from home school to municipal schools)

27 Jan 12 at 7:43 am

wonderful idea! As Montnegre said, could be interesting for long distant education.