Freshy could be a good theme choice for student blogs. For formative assessment purposes, it’s good if visitors to a blog can comment not only on Posts, but on any Pages the student has created. We’ve learned that not all themes support Page comments. For example, Craig’s All About Birds page is enabled for comments, but in his current theme, 3K2, we don’t have an option to leave one.
We already know too, of course, that students value the ability to change their own header image.
This morning I noticed that Mark, a student at MGS, has adopted the Freshy theme for his blog. He’s found that you can add your own header image by providing the URL for the image – it’s in the Advanced Options for Freshy. Thanks Mark!
Combined with Freshy’s support for comments on Pages, this means Freshy is a good choice for student blogs where comments on Pages are important.
Hi David,
I’ve tried the Freshy theme for my students’ new History homework blogs but rejected it for a reason I can’t quite remember. Does it produce an RSS feed for comments on pages as well? If so, that would be great as I’m monitoring what they do through my Bloglines account…
Also, Ollie Bray pointed out in the comments to my post WordPress MU vs. Elgg Spaces that you’re working on a guide to WordPress MU. Fancy a bit of collaboration? 😀
Hi Doug
I have got two feeds to Bloglines from my AH class who are using the Freshy theme. However I just tried to add a third and I get “No feeds were found. Please verify that the website publishes an RSS feed.”
Looks like there is a problem somewhere.
Hi Doug,
WordPressMU treats Pages pretty much like Posts, as far as I can tell, so I expected that the RSS feed for comments on the blog would include both. But, of course, I didn’t know.
I do now, though, having tried it. Here’s the feed for comments on our “themetest” blog. You’ll see it’s cheerfully picking up test comments on a page, as well as on a Post. I don’t think it’s going to matter what theme you’re using.
https://www.edubuzz.org/themetest/comments/feed/
On this subject, I did notice the other day that by default 3K2, a popular theme, doesn’t appear to accept comments on Pages. This is easily fixed by changing the template the Page is based on – at Create time or later – to another named something like w. comm, which enables comments.
Yes, we’re starting to put together some bits and pieces of guidance. It’s really only now that we’re getting a good handle on where the gaps are. First step is going to be to answer a few of the common questions that have emerged in the form of some guidance for the Helpdesk people. Anything we do will go online, and you’re welcome to share it. Would be good if we could avoid re-inventing wheels!
David