Welcome to wp4lib!

RE: Welcome to wp4lib!

2009-04-10T15:20:43Z

I provide free WordPress video tutorials on my website SeeHowTwo.com and these tutorials are based on my experiences with client needs (I develop websites exclusively using WordPress).

There are so many people giving of their time in the WordPress community and this is one way for me to help give back.

I'm also happy to provide advice to librarians through this forum and I look forward to participating in the discussion.

RE: Welcome to wp4lib!

2009-02-26T18:01:08Z

Hi and welcome, Greg! Your horror site is great--I am a wimp and will most likely not be reading anything on your lists, but they are an excellent resource. It looks like you've got several people contributing to the blogs for your library, which is also great. I'd be interested in hearing how you do training and how you designate or schedule or whatever--who makes the decisions about content and when it gets posted and that sort of thing. It's one thing we're still struggling with on our webteam.

I apologize for this rather late response--I'm trying to get caught up on all kinds of stuff here, and I finally got to your post!

RE: Welcome to wp4lib!

2009-01-13T17:01:25Z

Hello,

My name is Greg Fisher and I've been using WordPress for a couple of years now. my personal website, ...With Intent to Commit Horror is a pet project of mine -- a readers' advisory website dedicated to the horror genre.

The administration at Cleveland Hts-University Hts Public Library liked what I did so much they asked me to make blogs for the library system. You can view the readers' advisory blos here. However we have blogs for Children's Dept., Teen Dept., and soon we'll have blogs for the tech trainers, as well as listener's advisory (music) and viewer's advisory (movies) blogs.

I'm looking forward to participating in the group.

Thanks,
--Greg

RE: Welcome to wp4lib!

2008-10-28T22:11:46Z

Wow, that's a nice looking implementation! Color me impressed!

I pretty much gave up on widgets because of how much I wanted to customize the sidebar on our site. What widgets would you be interested in having? (Not that I can actually code such things--just curious!)

RE: Welcome to wp4lib!

2008-10-28T16:15:57Z

Hi! I use the free version of Wordpress and I love it. Our site is http://zblibrary.org. We actually have 4 WP sites that are combined into one. I pull the feeds off of the various sites to automatically update our library's Facebook and Myspace accounts. I do wish there was a lilttle more versatility with widgets, but can't complain.

RE: Welcome to wp4lib!

2008-08-26T19:37:28Z

Hi Donna,

Sorry I've been so long in responding to you -- school just started here last week and it has been a little hectic!

We just did a bookmark promoting the idea that our "virtual branch" is always open even while the Cody library is closed in preparation for its move to the new library. We haven't seen any real uptick in visitor numbers, but we'll see.

I'm also trying to encourage everyone to put the URL of the site in their email signature, on any sign they make, etc., as a way of getting it into people's heads.

Laura

RE: Welcome to wp4lib!

2008-08-26T19:31:18Z

Hi Susan,

When you set up your blog, go to Options-->Discussion, and you'll see a bunch of different options for how comments will work. I have a spam filtering plugin (Akismet; I've also used Spam Karma 2) that gets rid of most of the spam, and other comments get emailed to me, and I can decide to post them or not.

Good luck with your teen blog, and let us know how it works out!

Laura

RE: Welcome to wp4lib!

2008-08-23T18:49:30Z

Hi Susan,

We moderate our comments (though we don't have a lot.... yet). There are a couple of ways to do that with Wordpress. You can set it so that all comments have to be approved before they appear (this is what we do). You can also set it up so that the author can post directly once they have a previously approved comment, or to require the comment author to fill out a name and email.

Wordpress also seems to be pretty good at detecting "spam" posts. You have the option to review these, and if they are not spam you can redirect them.

RE: Welcome to wp4lib!

2008-08-23T18:40:42Z

Hi Laura - your are correct, http://lplteens.wordpress.com/ this is our teen page. (I should have put that in my original post - shame on me!)

You are correct about the mucking around. We are using the "free" version at this point, so we are quite limited with what we can muck with.

Most of our publicity for the site has been word of mouth. Whenever we have a teen at the reference desk, we take the opportunity to show them the page. Because we keep our teen events up on the page, it's a great way to point them that direction.

Our flyers that are posted around the library also list the teen page url.

We're looking at doing a bookmark of some sort promoting the teen page.

The statistics page on WordPress has been handy. It's nice that it shows referring pages. This allows us to see how/why others are coming to the site.

We're having fun with it. We're hoping we might be able to get a "heads up" on assignments from the schools - we'd like to then provide information on the page relating to the student assignments with links to our catalog resources on the topic.

We're always looking for new ideas for promoting the site.

RE: Welcome to wp4lib!

2008-08-21T19:58:52Z

We're finally setting up a (small) YA area in our library. We've had a very stagnant page on our website for teens & in conjunction with our new area, we're doing an overhaul on the teen page (called "ya!") I want to include a blog where our teens can write in comments or begin a discussion. I was planning on using Wordpress, since I used that for my blog during an Overdrive conference. I'd like to know if anyone else is doing this, and if there is a way to moderate (or if necessary - edit) comments before they are posted.

RE: Welcome to wp4lib!

2008-08-18T15:35:01Z

Hi Donna, and welcome! I'm guessing that <a href="http://lplteens.wordpress.com/">this is your teen site</a>. It looks great! I know one of the disadvantages of wordpress.com is that you can't muck around with it as much as you'd sometimes like -- e.g. you can't add a catalog search box. But it looks like you've got plenty of content on there for teens to explore, and that's great that your numbers continue to go up! What kinds of things do you do to publicize it?

RE: Welcome to wp4lib!

2008-08-18T00:15:53Z

Hi all! My name is Donna and I work at the Livermore Public Library in California. We currently use WordPress for our teen page. It's been a good tool and while we don't get much in the way of comments from our patrons - the number of hits/visits has been increasingly steadily since we started.

I'm looking forward to getting ideas from others as well as sharing!

This is a great idea for a group - Thanks!!
Donna

RE: Welcome to wp4lib!

2008-08-12T21:35:13Z

Welcome, Kevin and Sia! Glad to see you here, and I'm sure we can all learn something or other from each other.

RE: Welcome to wp4lib!

2008-08-09T15:52:46Z

I'm Sia Stewart, director of a small public library in Massachusetts (pop. 12,500). I use WordPress for our staff website. I don't have a lot of time to put into it, and I'd love to learn from other librarians to speed up my learning a little. We're thinking about using it for our public website as well.

RE: Welcome to wp4lib!

2008-08-08T19:15:00Z

Great idea for a group!

I'm Kevin Briody, WebJunction's marketing director - as such, I'm not really involved in building WP directly for libraries, but I have been an avid WP user for a couple years personally and it's what we use on BlogJunction. It's perhaps my favorite web application, and hopefully I can contribute some here.

RE: Welcome to wp4lib!

2008-08-08T15:14:11Z

Oh, how bizarre. I will try to join my group, then! And don't worry, I don't think we're checking anyone's cred. Interest and a willingness to make mistakes strike me as plenty of cred.

RE: Welcome to wp4lib!

2008-08-06T16:06:04Z

--Laura,

I really am not stalking you on WJ.

I don't think I have the cred to actual participate in the wp4lib group, but hope to be able to pick up some good tips.

By the way, it is completely counter-intuitive, but you may actual have to join the group that you have created, even after you create it. Right now you do not seem to be showing up as a member.

all the best,
Sheila

RE: Welcome to wp4lib!

2008-08-06T15:30:25Z

Also, feel free to introduce yourself here!

I'm Laura Crossett, and I live in a tiny town in Wyoming and run the Park County Library System website. I've been running my blog on WordPress for several years, so it seemed like the natural choice when I was casting around for something to use for our library website. I'm psyched about sharing ideas with other people who are doing the same thing!

Welcome to wp4lib!

2008-08-06T15:19:35Z

We are a nascent group. Feel free to submit ideas/questions here or add to our wiki or join our discussion group.