Indivisible Network

Free WordPress hosting for Indivisible chapters

Indivisible Network

Weekly Update, 5/7/17

c–updates–

Lots of action in this update (especially since I missed last week’s). Site email – I discovered that automatic email notifications were exceeding my mail service’s quota, which sometimes caused delays in my receiving feedback. That’s been addressed, and I should hear from you more quickly and reliably. Login security – I enabled a small – but I think important – security improvement on the login screen. Normally, if someone enters the wrong login information, WordPress will say either there is no user by that name, or that the password for the (correctly entered) username is wrong. This is a bad security practice, and I’m amazed that WordPress has this as the standard behavior. The reason it’s bad is because continue reading

Weekly Update, 4/23/17

Chris–updates–

This past week on Indivisible.blue: I updated to the new WordPress core maintenance release, version 4.7.4. From the release notes: This release contains 47 maintenance fixes and enhancements, chief among them an incompatibility between the upcoming Chrome version and the visual editor, inconsistencies in media handling, and further improvements to the REST API. For a full list of changes, consult the release notes and the list of changes. I installed a new theme (Bento), and a new plugin (Page Builder plugin). I also updated 3 plugins and 1 theme. Lastly, I worked with the patient admins of the Bryan-College Station (TX) site, as we worked through some wrinkles with the security plugin that temporarily locked them out of their site. continue reading

Weekly Update, 4/16/17

Chris–Uncategorized, updates–

I’ve been meaning to start posting updates about all the things happening here at Indivisible.blue for some time, and haven’t managed to get it going. But here goes! I’m going to try to post at least a quick blurb every week, just to be on a regular schedule. One big step for the network took place in early March: I doubled our (admittedly small) server capacity. Increased usage was causing occasional database crashes due to lack of memory, so we went from a server with 512MB RAM and 20GB disk (costing $5/month), to another with 1GB RAM and 30GB disk (costing $10/month). That change only took one button click and a server restart, which is one of the reasons I continue reading

Akismet activated for all sites

Chris–announcements–

Thanks to prodding from a site admin (hi, Shea!), I dug in tonight and got the Akismet comment-spam blocking plugin activated for all sites on Indivisible.blue. Which means that spam comments left on your sites’ posts will now automatically be filtered out. Admins of individual sites don’t have to do anything, no API key to sign up for or enter. (If you want to adjust the couple of options, visit “Jetpack -> Akismet” on your dashboard.)

Twitter account

Chris–announcements–

I’m still getting things together around here, but if you want to keep up with what’s new, you might want to follow my brand-new Twitter account: indivisibleblue.

Learning WordPress

Indy–how-to–

Here are some recommendations for sites, books, and courses to help you get going and make the most of your WordPress site on Indivisible.blue. Suggestions and contributions always welcome! Note: If your site is hosted here, you can skip info about finding a hosting company, installing WordPress, and registering a domain; we take care of all that for you. WordPress Made Simple – website with some good information on basic concepts WordPress Beginner Videos – free with registration Lynda.com’s WordPress Essential Training – 5 1/2 hrs of video training (costs, but free trial available) Treehouse’s WordPress Basics – 100 minute video training (costs, but free trial available) WordPress: The Missing Manual by Matthew MacDonald WordPress To Go by Sarah McHarry

How to add social media links

Chris–how-to–

You want to make it easy for visitors to find you on social media networks, and here’s how to set that up. This process can be a little different with each theme. For starters, here’s how to set it up in the default “twentyseventeen” theme. From your Dashboard, hover your mouse over “Appearance”, and click “Menus” Click the link, “create a new menu” In the box by “Menu Name”, type a name, like “Social Links Menu” and click either of the “Create Menu” buttons Now that you have a menu, you can add custom links to it. On the left-hand side, click “Custom Links” to open up that section In the “URL” box, type or paste the URL of your continue reading

Welcome

Chris–Uncategorized–

I moved this post! Now it’s right here (sorry for the extra click).