One more co-working session to help everyone finish this semester!
On Thursday, May 16th from 12:00 P.M. to 1:00 PM, join the OpenLab team for the final co-working session of the Spring. You bring the work, we’ll bring the friendly presence in the Zoom session (plus we’ll bring work, too).
As with the previous co-working hours, this space can help support you focus on the work you need to finish–in this case, your goal is finishing everything for the end of the semester. If you’re teaching, bring your grading! Or invite a student to join so you can co-work as they finish their project or study for that last exam. Or bring a friend and race to finish your to-do list!
You can work silently in the main Zoom room or move into a breakout room to talk with a collaborator or with one of our team members if you have specific questions we can help you with.
We hope this co-working session is useful for you–and let us know how else we can help!
Photo credit: “frog” by Daz Smith via Flickr under the license CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Deed.
With the semester winding down, the OpenLab Team invites you to join the OpenLab Open House! Come share your successes from this semester, ask questions, and learn from each other about the OpenLab.
The OpenLab Open House will be on Friday, 5/10/24, from 2:00-3:00pm via Zoom. All are welcome.
Photo credit: “Balloon” by oliver gartmann via Flickr under the license CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Deed.
On April 16, we released version 1.7.76 of the OpenLab. It included a new feature, two new themes, a few bug fixes, and a few minor theme and plugin updates.
New feature
We’re excited to announce a new feature on the OpenLab homepage called ‘What’s Happening at City Tech’. This includes headlines and events from the City Tech News feed, adding another format for sharing information about events and showcasing the great work being done by and for the City Tech community.
In addition, if there are any active City Tech alerts, such as weather-related closures, these will appear in an ‘Alerts’ section above the news feed.
New themes
We added two new themes, Astra and Twenty Twenty-Four. Astra offers many options for customization, but also looks good out of the box. It would work well for course, project, club, and portfolio sites.
Twenty Twenty-Four is a full site editing theme, similar to Twenty Twenty-Two. You can find out more about both themes and full site editing in OpenLab Help. Full site editing offers a very different site editing experience than the other themes on the OpenLab, but provides more flexibility and control. Twenty Twenty-Four is designed to showcase visual and written work, and for more advanced users it would work well for a portfolio site.
Bug fixes
There were three bug fixes included in this release.
One was preventing the option to use an existing site from appearing during the creation of a course, project, club, or portfolio.
There was also a bug causing issues with the display of the OpenLab footer when choosing to hide the WordPress admin bar to non-logged-in site visitors (found in the settings of a course, project, club, or portfolio profile).
Finally, we fixed an issue where the Yoast Duplicate Post plugin added a ‘Copy to a new draft’ item to the admin bar on OpenLab sites. This partially overlapped with the ‘Publish’ button and ‘Save draft’ link on posts and pages.
The weather is getting better, but there’s always more work to do! Let’s get together TODAY to work and check things off the to-do lists we all have–or take some time to make to-do lists!
The OpenLab Team is hosting a co-working session today, Friday, March 15th, 10:00-11:00AM. Join us to cowork in what we hope is a welcoming space that helps as you focus on accomplishing what you need to finish. Bring whatever you want to work on, OpenLab related or not. We’ll bring bring work, too, plus some good energy for checking things off to-do lists.
You can work silently in the main Zoom room or move into a breakout room to talk with a collaborator or with an OpenLab team member if you have specific questions we can help you with.
Please share this opportunity with colleagues and students–all are welcome. We hope this co-working session is useful for you–and let us know how else we can help!
Stay up-to-date on OpenLab news and make use of our many opportunities for support right here on The Open Road!
Give your site a facelift and test drive our new theme, Typology. This text-based theme looks great with or without images and allows for a lot of customization. Learn more in this recent Spotlight post about themes, and about the Typology theme in February’s This Month in the OpenLab. Let us know if you’re using it and we may feature your site in the future!
Sign up for Open Hours, designed to give one-on-one support to students, faculty, and staff with questions.
Attend one of our workshops sponsored by City Tech’s Undergraduate Research program: Presenting Yourself Online on 3/5 and Using OpenLab for Your Research Project on 3/19.
On February 13, we released version 1.7.74 of the OpenLab. It included a new theme, a few minor plugin and theme updates, and a bug fix.
New theme
We added a new theme called Typology. It allows for a lot of customization in Dashboard > Theme Options, but also looks good as soon as you activate it, without needing to make any changes.
Help documentation for the theme is coming soon, but there’s also good documentation from the theme authors.
Bug fix and other updates
There was a bug in the Discussion forum that appears on a Course, Project, or Club profile that was preventing any pages beyond the first page of discussion from showing. This has been fixed.
We made a few small text changes on the sign up page. One was to clarify that when we ask for your email address to sign up it won’t be displayed publicly on your Profile. We also adjusted the text in the avatar upload section to make it more clear that an avatar doesn’t have to be a picture of yourself – it can be anything that represents you or your interests.
On January 23 we released version 1.7.73 of the OpenLab. It included some new features, as well as updates to all existing themes and plugins, including BuddyPress and WordPress, the two primary plugins that power the OpenLab.
New Features and Functionality
We created additional post privacy options that appear on public sites, allowing you to choose from three different privacy options, for more fine-grained visibility choices when working in the open:
Everyone: This is the default setting, which matches the setting of the open site.
Site members: Only logged-in members of the site can see the post.
OpenLab members: Only logged-in members of the OpenLab can see the post.
You don’t need to activate anything. These options will appear automatically when a site is set to either “Allow search engines to index” or “Ask search engines not to index this site.”
We added a space for uploading an avatar when people first create an OpenLab account. We’re hoping this will encourage more members to add an avatar to their profile. It doesn’t have to be a picture of yourself – it can be a pet, a drawing, a photograph, or anything!
During the process of portfolio creation, the name and URL of the portfolio has always autofilled with the creator’s first initial and last name. It was possible to change it, but most people did not. In order to better protect members’ privacy and support people’s autonomy in how they choose to be identified on the OpenLab, we removed these default values so that portfolio title and URL must be filled in at the time of creation. People can choose to use their real name or their Display Name, which may not be the same.
Plugins
We added four new plugins, and retired one plugin, CM Tooltip Glossary, in favor of a more accessible glossary plugin. The new plugins are:
TranslatePress We recently added the GTranslate plugin, which allows you to add an automatic translation option to your site. TranslatePress allows you to translate it manually, for a more accurate translation.
Reading Time WP This plugin adds an estimated reading time to posts and pages.
WP Reading Progress Used alone or together with Reading Time WP, this plugin adds a progress bar to posts and pages, indicating to the reader how far along they are in the text.
Name Directory This plugin allows you to create a glossary, or multiple glossaries for your site. You can also allow others to submit glossary entries.
Bug Fixes
We fixed an issue where the ‘Favorites’ dropdown in the OpenLab Toolbar was being skipped when navigating the site with a keyboard.
We made a few fixes to the OpenLab Attributions plugin to improve keyboard navigation, and to fix an issue preventing existing attributions from being edited.
– As always, please contact us with any questions!
The semester is nearly over, but there’s so much left to do! Let’s work together to finish something and get closer to being done!
The OpenLab Team is hosting a co-working session today, Friday, December 15th, 1:00-2:00PM. Join us in what we hope is a welcoming space that helps as you focus on accomplishing everything you need to finish. Bring whatever you want to work on, whether it be OpenLab related or not. We’ll bring bring work, too, plus some good energy for checking things off your to-do list.
You can work silently in the main Zoom room or move into a breakout room to talk with a collaborator or with one of our team members if you have specific questions we can help you with.
Please share this opportunity with colleagues and students–all are welcome!
Photo credit: “Not a yellowjacket” by cotinis via Flickr is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0 Deed
