Multiple blog sites for children

[pooley]

Well it's finally come, the ICT coordinator has asked to meet with me tomorrow to talk about setting up individual blogs for year 5/6.

 

So my question is, does anyone know what their school/teachers are using with theirs?

 

Ta

 

Si

[robjduk]

If you use Google apps for education you can use Blogspot, safe in the knowledge you can control passwords.

[witch]

We have the same question but we use Office 365 not GAfE

 

Anyone?

[pooley]

Yeah we don't use google apps. Happy to pay a small amount for the service but would rather go off a recommendation.

[MkII]

We have the same question but we use Office 365 not GAfE

 

Anyone?

 

Sites has a blogging section. It's supposedly controllable. I'd like to hear how people get on with it.

[witch]

Hmmm. Good point. Will have a look

[mowgli82]

I've setup a wordpress site on an old box. its only accessible in school.

[witch]

Looking at the instructions on how to create a blog in Office 365, we are missing the actual blogging section. I don't know if it is that it hasn't been rolled out yet or what.

[3s-gtech]

Wordpress multi-site can have LDAP authentication, though you have to pre-create the users and the individual blogs. You as admin can manage them centrally. It may be overkill for what you need, if GAFE etc can do it.

[MkII]

Looking at the instructions on how to create a blog in Office 365, we are missing the actual blogging section. I don't know if it is that it hasn't been rolled out yet or what.

 

Hmm we have it on our Office365 site

[witch]

Hmm we have it on our Office365 site

@mark Where are you seeing it? I went to profile and it should be at the bottom according to the article I read but it isn't

[MkII]

Hi witch

 

Hmm it is on mine. It's in 'Delve'

[ijk]

Wordpress multi-site can have LDAP authentication, though you have to pre-create the users and the individual blogs. You as admin can manage them centrally. It may be overkill for what you need, if GAFE etc can do it.

 

This is feasible.

 

Our current set up is a Centos server (within the school's LAN) running Virtualmin that hosts Wordpress, MediaWiki and the Roundcube webmail client. I use bulk create tools to create users in Virtualmin (Linux user accounts with email) and repeat this for Wordpress and MediaWiki, replicating the Virtualmin usernames and passwords in those two systems, so the users see the same username and password for each system. Not quite SSO, but oaky.

 

The Wordpress blogs are exposed to the Internet for viewing only.

 

There's a fair amount of admin involved in that, but it isn't a terrible task in a Primary school of 300 users. Nevertheless a different approach is desirable and I've chosen to go an LDAP route.

 

So far I have Virtualmin set up to create and store users in LDAP and a multisite Wordpress installation that can authenticate against the LDAP server, however LDAP users can log into any blog, which is not what I wanted but not necessarily terrible since I've not discussed the parameters with the staff yet. Maybe that'd be acceptable; and why not?

 

MediaWiki will also authenticate against LDAP, but I've not successfully configured that yet.

 

In both cases I think that my design of the LDAP directory and how I've configured Virtualmin to create usernames may be the issue and ultimately it's probably solvable.

 

I've explicitly chosen not to have LDAP=AD and I am going to be running two directories.

 

If anyone else is going this route I'd be very happy to share experiences.

 

Nic

Edited November 11, 2015 by ijk

[witch]

Hi witch

 

Hmm it is on mine. It's in 'Delve'

 

Nope