We’ve just rolled out some great new features onto Edublogs Campus – which will make it considerably easier for your community to find content on your site!
Displaying these features on your homepage is as simple as:
1. Go to Pages > Edit in your main blog’s dashboard
2. You should see three new pages – Blogs, Site Search and Tags
3. Now check out your Campus homepage and presto! The pages should now be displaying on your homepage.
4. And, on the off chance the pages don’t auto created all you need to do is quickly open up the Blogs page in Edit Page mode and click Update Page
Here’s a quick overview of each.
Blogs Directory
One of the things we’ve been asked a lot for of late has been a simple, attractive way of locating blogs on your site!
Well, you asked, and we answered – introducing the Blogs Directory.
The Blogs Directory displays all the blogs on your entire Campus site alphabetically and in a paginated form on its own Blogs page on your homepage.
Now your community can quickly locate a specific blog and then click on the link to check out that blog!
Alternatively you can search for a blog URL using the search option!
Check it out in action on Edublogs @ Caroline Chisholm Catholic College!
Please note:
- To display avatars your blog users will need to upload their blog avatar via Settings > Blog Avatar.
Global Site Search
So you want a tool that that allows anyone to search across your site – without the need to Google etc?
Here it is!
On your Site Search page, you simply need to whack in your search terms and you’ll get a beautiful paginated listing of latest posts containing that term… with avatars attached!
Check it out in action on Literacy 44!
Please note:
- This feature only searches posts on public blogs — any posts on private blogs (only visible to logged in users) isn’t searchable.
- To display avatars your users will need to upload their avatar via Users > Your Avatar.
Global Site Tags
And the best for last — Global Site Tags!
This powerful and elegant tool allows you to do three things.
First up it provides you with a global tags widget so that you can simply show a beautiful tag cloud on your homepage or your users can add it to their blog!
Just go to Appearance > Widgets and add Global Site Tags widget to your blog sidebar.
And it auto creates a page called “Tags” on your Campus homepage which gives you a full size page view of them too.
Check it out in action on Literacy 44!
Please note:
- Tags on private posts display on the Global Site tags page but if you click on the link and no posts are listed this means they are all posts on private blogs (only visible to logged in users).
- To display avatars your users will need to upload their avatar via Users > Your Avatar.
Other Info That’s Good To Know
To get the most out of these features you need to either:
- Use a blog theme on your Campus homepage that includes navigation links at the top of the blog to pages
- Or add the Pages widget to the sidebar of your Campus homepage via Appearance > Widgets
Here’s our Top 3 Tips For Designing Your Homepage to help you get the most out of your Homepage!
And on the off chance you don’t want to use one or more of these features on your homepage — just go to Pages > Edit and un-publish the page you want to remove.
For WordPress MU users you can download these features from WPMU DEV Premium:
If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider 
Subscribing For Free!
