OER Wordpress Plugins

CETIS UKOLN OER Hack Days

= WordPress and OER - A list of tools, workflows and hacks =

How to evaluate a plugin ?
Go to http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/


 * Compatibility with the latest version ? should be version 3.0
 * When last updated ?
 * Is it past version 1.0
 * Is the number of people who rate it > 1
 * Have people tested that it works with different versions ? There is a sidebar for voting - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/
 * Do the settings appear in the right place in the dashboard? a post plugin should have settings that appear in the post area ..

= Cool plugins that may help =

Setup a new content post type and then importing a feed of OER content
A simple workflow for ingesting content into WordPress. The scenario might be a Politics or Engineering research team using WordPress as a blog but also wishing to host a series of related OER video lectures that they've found at an OER repository such as [OpenSpires http://openspires.oucs.ox.ac.uk]/Jorum/SocSci

Plugins:


 * "Custom post type UI" plugin - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/custom-post-type-ui/screenshots/ by Brad Williams - Tip: 'Watch the screencast help video'
 * (version 0.7 only)
 * "FeedWordPress" plugin is simple and flexible Atom/RSS syndication for WP - Version 2011.0211.2 | By Charles Johnson http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/feedwordpress/
 * (latest version rated as 'broken', but works for us ...)

Steps:

1) Install "Custom post type UI" plugin and setup a new content post type "Movies" 2) Install "FeedWordPress" plugin 3) Find an RSS feed of the OER material and import in with FeedWordPress. 4) Map the feed in FeedWordPress to the content post type "Movies"

See the FeedWordPress post preferences:



Widget for showing Custom Posts in the side bar etc: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/featured-post-type-widget/

Photo Dropper http://www.photodropper.com/

Allows you to search Flickr Creative commons images from within the Wordpress dashboard. Works BUT would be nice to change the type of license.

= Displaying News and OER content in the sidebar area =

here is a list of simple plugins that we looked at ...

Bringing news from the Guardian into WordPress http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/the-guardian-news-feed/

Custom fields - How can they help with extra metadata
Dublin Core - how does this fit ...

Custom Post Types
This is a way of setting up a new database of posts that are around a certain content activity perhaps movie reviews or video posts or OER content

Display them
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/featured-post-type-widget/

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/post-gallery-widget/

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/promotion-slider/

How to get the content into the blog
Tricks for ingesting the material include:

Simply use the "Press This" tool. "Press This Reloaded" plugin. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/press-this-reloaded/

Wordpress.com - What can it do and what can't it do ?
WordPress doesn't allow you to install plugins / widgets or javascript ! Therefore your hacks are limited.

There are a limited set of bundled plugins - the RSS tool is probably the best - good for pulling in a feed of OER from Xpert/Jorum/Learning Registry

WordPress is a great tool - but these plugins make it even better for OER



What we have done

 * New OER bookmarker and bookmarklet (platform independent and runs on mobiles) as "FavOERrite plugin
 * Reviewed populating WordPress with feeds from OpenSpires video etc.
 * Fed WordPress using FeedWordPress and Custom Post Type UI and displayed using Featured Post type
 * Plugin to search against Xpert RSS API
 * reviewed tons of plugins that are good for OER CC work - e.g. photodroper
 * dublin core work