FAQs

Working with Sites

I’m trying to embed a YouTube video in my post or page, but the video won’t embed and all I see is a link to the video.

  • In order to avoid this, be sure to copy and paste the correct YouTube link.  Instead of copying the “share” or “embed” link, copy and paste the URL directly from your search engine’s search bar.
  • Occasionally videos do not allow embedding, although this is rare. You can check on the YouTube video page.
  • For more information on embedding video, see our help on Adding video to your Site.

I tried to upload a file to my site and I’m getting an error message that the site has reached its size quota.

  • In order to provide the best possible service, all sites on the OpenLab have a size limit of 300MB per site. While in most cases you won’t reach it, you might find that if you have a lot of media–particularly large photographs, PowerPoint presentations, or perhaps video–you will exceed your site quota.
  • If so, you should consider external solutions for sharing large files on the OpenLab.
  • If you have a lot of video, you’ll find that your site is more responsive (and looks better), if you upload your video to YouTube or Vimeo and then embed the link on your OpenLab site.
  • Please be sure to resize images!  Rarely do images on the internet need to be full size, and in fact the default width for sites tends to be about 600 pixels wide.

I’m trying to comment on a post, but I can’t.

  • Are you logged in to the OpenLab?  The site might be set to only allow commenting by logged-in users.
  • If you’re logged in and you still don’t see a place to comment, it could be that the administrator of the site or the author of a post has disabled comments on that post.
  • If you are the site administrator, you can always enable comments for individual posts if the author has accidentally disabled them.  Go to Dashboard > Posts.  Hover over the post in question and choose Quick Edit.  Make sure the Enable Comments checkbox on the right-hand side is checked..

Content from my Site is appearing in a Google search but I don’t want it to.

  • You can change privacy settings anytime on the Profile page of your Course, Project, Club, or Portfolio.  Under Site Privacy Settings, choose “Ask search engines not to index this site. Your site should not show up in web search results.”
  • If your site has already been created and active, do note that there will be a delay (usually a few days, but sometimes longer) before the results disappear from Google searches.
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