If there’s one blogging feature I am absolutely loving at the moment, it’s the ability to schedule posts. There are times when I have loads of ideas for new blog posts but I don’t necessarily want to publish them all at once. With the scheduling feature in WordPress 2.5, I can write when I feel like it, and choose to publish at a later date.

It’s very useful for posts that you know you want to publish soon but you want to add a couple more links to or a little bit more content before publishing, as well as meaning that you can spread posts out more evenly instead of having a mad frenzy of posts one day and then nothing for the next two weeks (I know I have been guilty of this in the past!).

It’s also a great feature for institutional blogs; sometimes you may want to write a blog post about something but don’t want to release it until a certain date (e.g. following implementation of a new resource or publicising a particular event). In the past I’ve written drafts but often forgot to publish them at the right time, blog scheduling makes it so much easier.

I’m certainly very thankful to WordPress for such a great addition to their blogging software, the only slight confusion was that when I was first playing, I didn’t realise you had to set the status of the post as “Published” even though you don’t want to publish it until a certain date or time. Now that I’ve worked it out though, it really is useful.

I guess the title of the post is pretty self-explanatory really; Joeyanne.co.uk has recently had a redesign. A few days before Easter I trawled the web for inspiration and came up with a very random mix of ideas that I wanted to incorporate into my new design and came up with a very rough brief. I wanted round corners, clearer options for subscribing, a cleaner page with less columns and a greater concentration on the main content, lots of icons and a better font, as well as a huge long list of other requests. Working with the designer was very enjoyable although I may be slightly biased as the designer also happens to be my boyfriend, Chris! It was amazing to see my rough list of ideas transformed in a great new blog design. I’m over the moon with the results – it’s everything I was hoping for and more.

Those of you who read the blog via RSS, please take a visit to the new site and let me know what you think. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the penguin at the header of the page is due to my fascination and slight obsession with all things penguin.

The redesign coincided with the release of WordPress 2.5 so I have also upgraded to that and I have to say I’m so far very impressed. I’m sure it will take a bit of getting used to as the navigation has changed considerably, but it seems to make more logical sense now and I’m noticing more features (I’m not sure if they’re new or I just hadn’t noticed them before but the ability to edit the permalink is a nice little feature as is the ability to set a certain date and time to publish a post, which could be particularly useful at work with certain events to promote).

All in all, it’s great to have a nice new design on the blog and a new admin screen too (I just wish I could find more time to blog about all these “to blog” ideas I have in my head every day!). Thanks ever so much Chris for all your help.

Well, the point has finally arrived where I get to blog for work! One of our academic schools is concerned by their low student support results from the most recent student survey, and have approached the Learning Centre asking what we can do to help.

A large percentage of their students are part time (almost 70%!) so one of the problems in the past has been that they are unable to visit the Learning Centre very regularly so aren’t fully aware of our services. This is particularly true for those students who work full time and only come into the University in the evenings when our services are limited.

We’re hoping to embed some information skills sessions into their new modules when they revalidate next year, but in the meantime I’ve been set the task of improving the support by setting up a blog and will hopefully be improving the subject web pages and VLE support also.

Blogging for the Learning Centre is very different from my personal blogging, I’m using it more as a sort of noticeboard at the moment to make sure students are aware of the different services we can offer but hopefully in the future it will grow to be a place used for feedback and discussion via comments too.

I’ve chosen to use WordPress again, and have hosted it on their web space. I have to say I’m very impressed with just how easy it is to get started. It was relatively easy using their software on your own hosting but for beginners, WordPress’s own hosting package is great. I am also addicted to checking the stats which are built in, hopefully I’ll get over that soon! Big thumbs up to WordPress though, I’ll definitely be recommending it to beginners who want to start blogging.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading and research into new developments in Web 2.0 recently, partly due to my career (I think you may have guessed that from the blog title!) and partly through my own interest. I thought it was about time I got myself a blog and used it properly. I’m intending to use it to store and share useful titbits of information I find as well as recording things within life (e.g. my progress in my studies!).

I initially decided to use Blogger as I have a personalised Google account anyway, however Blogger didn’t seem to want to work with the hosting I have (courtesy of my boyfriend Chris, thank you), so WordPress it is. I’m having a bit of a play with the themes and suchlike, I’d like to think of it as a learning experience and learn a bit more code whilst I’m at it so I’m trying to choose a theme close to what I want but add my own touches too.

Anyway, enough blabbering – welcome to Joeyanne Libraryanne!