Education – My Blog

Are special characters in your tweets breaking accessibility?

admin — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 08:48:40 +0000

I’ve been seeing a lot of Twitter accounts, both regular user accounts as well as brand accounts, using fancy, math and other symbol fonts in their tweets. These characters are all legal, and part of the Unicode standard. Akin to using a screenshot from a notes app in your tweet, we should take a closer …

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Automattic, the company that runs WordPress.com and many other services like JetPack, WooCommerce and more has received $300 million USD in funding from Salesforce. From TechCrunch:

Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce and soon Tumblr, has closed a $300 million funding round at a $3 billion post-money valuation. The Series D round has a single investor, Salesforce Ventures.

First off, congrats at Matt Mullenweg and the Automattic team on this round. That’s a large investment and Salesforce is an interesting, and sole partner in this investment. This will improve services, integrate new acquisitions like Tumblr, and create more jobs. All good things. I’d love someone to invest anything let alone several hundred million dollars in my company.

VentureBeat says this about the deal:

Reading between the lines, it’s not hard to see why Salesforce would invest such a gargantuan sum in a company best known for blogging. WordPress currently powers one-third of the web, which includes everything from small-time bloggers to publishers and online retailers. And several products in Automattic’s arsenal hint at the reasons Salesforce has elected to invest in the company.

What does this mean for you?

The question I’ve been thinking about all morning is this: what does this fundraising mean for those of us who use, develop for, and are deep in the trenches with WordPress. I think the answers are good and bad.

To start, it means more ads. I don’t mean display or text ads are going to start populating WordPress. Instead, you are going to see an increase in the promotion of Automattic’s services and offerings in products like WooCommerce, product directories and more, putting their products in front of tens of millions of WordPress users, admins and developers.

You may have already seen this in action. This Spring, WooCommerce started pushing their plugins and add-ons as “recommended extensions,” and surprise, they’re all Automattic/WooCommerce owned ones. About this new type of “ad,

Automattic Gets $300M Investment, Now What?

admin — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 08:48:40 +0000

Automattic, the company that runs WordPress.com and many other services like JetPack, WooCommerce and more has received $300 million USD in funding from Salesforce. What does this mean WordPress going forward?

The post Automattic Gets $300M Investment, Now What? appeared first on HighEdWebTech.

Last year, I wrote about my experience of getting to 500,000 public story views on Snapchat. While fully acknowledging that I am not Snap’s target demographic, it’s been interesting to watch the rise, dip and potential rise again of this company. This is a critical time for the social media platform, as new networks like TikTok are gaining a lot of steam globally, especially in higher ed.

Today, I write to let you know that earlier this summer, I crossed the million public story views milestone. On my Snapchat. I know, it’s nutty.

It’s strange to think people around the world have watched 40 days worth of my content. My content? It’s not terribly interesting. It’s a lot of food shots taken while I’m travelling and vinyl I’ve been listening to lately.

Observations on a million Snapchat views

First, Snapchat isn’t dead. While it’s certainly not aimed at me and people my age, it’s still used heavily by its younger users. My oldest is nearly 18 years old, and most of the time his phone is open to Snapchat or Instagram. It’s a big communication tool for one to one and group chats.

Second, the analytics available to power users haven’t changed all the much. I wrote about Snap’s analytics tools when they first launched last year and the tool hasn’t evolved. The stats are still top level, and while they’re interesting (location, interest), they aren’t much more than superficial. There isn’t much in the way of actionable intel here to work with or make decisions with. Snap tells me I’m popular in Greater London as well as my public Snaps are 7x more popular than average amongst people who are fans of cricket. I dig cricket, but I’ve never posted a Snap or story about cricket. There’s a lot of room for improvement here.

Third, consistency is key when it comes to views. When I was posting regularly, often daily, I would get more views, often to the tune of 7-10k views per story. I haven’t posted much this year, and that number hovers between one

What I’ve Learned from a Million Public Story Views on SnapChat

admin — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 08:48:40 +0000

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Yeah, that’s a slightly clickbait-y title, but these are scary times. Schools are cutting programs, scaling way back and in some extreme instances, closing altogether. It’s hard to go a full week without seeing an article in the news about the impending death of higher education.

Is higher ed dying? No, I don’t think so. Is it sick? Yes, I believe so.

I recently read this news story about big companies like Google, Apple and Netflix no longer requiring college degrees for its employees. This quote jumped out at me:

Apple CEO Tim Cook recently said that about half of Apple’s US employment last year included people who did not have four-year degrees. Cook reasoned that many colleges do not teach the skills business leaders need most in their workforce, such as coding.

That’s worrying, but not surprising. It’s challenging to quickly pivot at enterprises as large as a university. Apple can decide tomorrow to stop making X and instead make Y. That’s a much harder thing to do for us.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately as we go through the college search process with our oldest child. I’ve been focusing like never before on outcomes and cost, and what kind of experience my son will have. I wonder what the experience will be like 5 years after that for my younger son. Expect a large number of posts in the coming months about my experiences of this search process. I know how the sausage is made, so I’ve been both surprised and downright shocked at what some schools are doing to reach potential students. That’s a (series of) post(s) for another day.

I watched this video last week, and while I disagree with some of what Patrick Bet-David is saying in it, some of makes a lot of sense, especially the parts about speed, memory and technology changing so fast that some programs are out of date before they even start. Have a watch and let me know what, if anything, jumps out at you and what parts you think are applicable.

Backup Series: Why, How, and Where to Store Your WordPress Backups

admin — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 08:48:39 +0000

If backing up your website isn’t a key part of your strategy, it should be. You can’t afford for your site to be down if something happens. With regular backups, you can mitigate those issues.

The post Backup Series: Why, How, and Where to Store Your WordPress Backups appeared first on HighEdWebTech.

WordPress version 5.3 released last week. In this release, there are changes in the way WordPress handles very large image uploads. Previous to 5.3, the software would allow you or your users to upload images of any size into the media library.

This in and of itself is not a problem, but many sites and themes did not have automatic image and/or thumbnail image sizing setup. These sites often just embed that full size image into a page, template or post and scale it down with CSS or hard-code it in the image tag. In version 5.3, WordPress will size down images over 2560 pixels high and wide down to a max of 2560 pixels (in either direction.) That means your 4000 pixel wide image would be sized down to 2560 pixels wide and scaled horizontally proportionally.

Here’s a snipped from the WordPress.org blog talking about the change:

When a new image is uploaded, WordPress will detect if it is a “big” image by checking if its height or its width is above a big_image threshold. The default threshold value is 2560px, filterable with the new big_image_size_threshold filter.

What’s important to note is that the original uploaded image is not discarded. It will still be stored in the system, and you can access it using the original_image meta value. It can also be accessed by calling this new function: wp_get_original_image_path(). This is important to remember if you have limited storage available.

For most users, they won’t notice this change. It will help file size and improve download speeds. However, there are use cases where you need to be able to get at the big image. Yes, you have those new functions, but that will mean having to back into your theme or plugin.

To that end, you can disable the resizing by adding this filter to your functions.php file:

add_filter( 'big_image_size_threshold', '__return_false' );

Even with this change in image handling, you should be optimizing your images regardless. This new change will not affect existing optimization setups

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WordPress 5.3 and Large Image Uploads

admin — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 08:48:39 +0000

WordPress version 5.3 released last week. In this release, there are changes in the way WordPress handles very large image uploads.

The post WordPress 5.3 and Large Image Uploads appeared first on HighEdWebTech.

On one hand, I get it. These characters can make your tweet stand out and breathe some life into your message copy. This comes with a catch though. Those special characters can break accessibility. This includes being able to be read by screen readers and other speech tools.

Here’s an example I’ve seen recently. I want to be clear that I’m not attacking them, just using them as reference. Go Cavs!

Celebrating ???????????????????? seasons!#Cavs50 x #WelcomeHome pic.twitter.com/GwBN729lwk

— Cleveland Cavaliers (@cavs) September 28, 2019

Why is this bad?

In that tweet from the Cleveland Cavaliers, you can see the word “fifty” is actually small caps unicode characters. It’s a cool effect, but it can wreak havoc in screen readers.

Why are these characters bad? First, they were designed as mathematical and other symbols, so screen readers either skip them (which happens when I use my Mac’s speech feature) or read out to the user the symbol equivalent. You can see a great example in this video:

You ???????????????????? it's ????????????ℯ to ???????????????????? your tweets and usernames ???????????????? ????????????. But have you ???????????????????????????????? to what it ???????????????????????? ???????????????? with assistive technologies like ????????????????????????????????????? pic.twitter.com/CywCf1b3Lm

— Kent C. Dodds ???? (@kentcdodds) January 9, 2019

What about using Emojis in your tweets? They are

Backup Series: Where Should I Store My Backups?

admin — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 08:48:36 +0000

In the last post of our series on backups, we’ll explore where the best place to store your backups is, and whether that’s in the cloud or on your server.

The post Backup Series: Where Should I Store My Backups? appeared first on HighEdWebTech.

It’s time for the third and final post in our series on website backups. If you’re just jumping in now, take a few minutes to review part one here and part two here.

So far, we’ve talked why you need to be backing up your website, and not relying on your web host or server provider. Second, we’ve talked about how often you should be backing up your site. Now, it’s time to explore where the best place is to store your backups. This is a critical decision and the good news is you have lots of options, including free and paid options.

Let’s talk about them from worst to best, in my opinion.

Not The Best

When using your backup plugin or script, you may see email as an option for your automatic backups. You shouldn’t send your website backups to your email address. First, email can be insecure. You could leave your data exposed as it travels the internet. Also, some email providers may block the reception of large backup files. Only use this as a last resort.

Slightly Better

Storing your backups locally on your server is also an option. This is fine for quick backups before you test or upgrade a plugin, for example, but it’s not a good long-term location to store your backups. If something happens to your web hosting server, your files may also be affected. It doesn’t take much to break a server, especially on a shared hosting provider, where resources are oversold and security is lax. If a drive fails, or a site is hacked, your backups could be, at best, lost and and at worst, compromised. Don’t store them on your hosting server.

You may also run into issues if you are trying to migrate or copy your site. I was recently working with a client and we needed to make a copy of their site. I was surprised to find a dump I made of their site was over 25GB, even with excluding the media folder of WordPress. It turns out, they were storing their backups locally, so the plugin I was using to migrate the site was including those local backups.

Getting Better

Setting up the files to automatically send to another server or service such as Dropbox is a good first place to get your backup plan going.

Several plugins like Updraft will allow you to store your backups in a service such as Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, or Google Drive. These are good places to store your files as you start on your backup journey. However, services like Dropbox may offer only a certain amount of free space, so keep an eye on your quotas. You should also be aware that if you use something li

Backup Series: How Often Should You Backup Your Website?

admin — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 08:48:36 +0000

It’s great you are backing up your website. The next challenge is to determine what’s the right backup schedule, which can vary depending on many factors.

The post Backup Series: How Often Should You Backup Your Website? appeared first on HighEdWebTech.

In the past, I’ve written extensively about improving the performance of your WordPress site. That’s very important work you can do, as speed matters. But what happens if something happens to your site? What if you’re hacked, or the hard drive on your server dies? These are all common events that could leave you high and dry with all your website content gone. Backups will be your best friend should any of these tragedies occur. In this three-part series, we’ll explore how and why to backup your website.

Why should you backup your WordPress website?

A key part of any web strategy should be how to protect your site, and a big part of that is backups.

If you’re using WordPress to manage your website (and you should, it’s a great tool), you have to worry about many pieces and parts — from pages to posts, media to plugins, there’s a lot to keep updated. Backups are key to this.

You should be backing up your WordPress site. Period, full stop. If you are relying on your hosting provider to do it, you may be disappointed. They may not be backing up all your data often enough. Site backups are something that you can easily do yourself, and setting them up will bring you peace of mind.

As you’ll see below, there are many choices when it comes to storing your backups.

Plugins Can Help

There are several backup plugins available, many of which are free or have a free tier. I am a user and fan of UpdraftPlus, one of the more popular WordPress backup plugins. It’s a set it and forget it tool that will backup your site files, media, plugins, themes, and more on a schedule you determine.

The only negative about Updraft is that it likes to nag you to upgrade to their paid plan. I have no problem with a plugin developer asking folks to update, but Updraft does it a lot. Credit to Updraft though — they share details here on how to hide their nag messages.

In addition to Updraft, there are many backup plugins, both free and paid, available to download. These include plugins such as BackWPup, which behaves similarly to Updraft in that you can control where you wo

The Future of Live Events in Higher Ed

admin — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 08:48:35 +0000

This year has been much different than we all expected. Obviously. Sorry for the hyperbole, but it’s true, especially when it comes to hosting events in higher ed. We all saw our large planned events like admitted student open houses, commencement, alumni reunions, lectures and more postponed, done on Zoom, or cancelled. I have sat …

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I have sat through many Zoom events this spring and summer as the parent of an incoming freshman college student. Some were great. Some were OK. Some were bad. There are just so many variables when it comes on online events, especially when it comes to having multiple people participating from multiple locations. There are so many variables when it comes to people’s webcams, lighting, microphones, echos, backgrounds and more. These variables means that our events don’t have a consistent look and feel.

Perhaps we need to rethink how we’re doing live events in higher ed, and not just during a pandemic. Let’s be honest, this won’t change once this pandemic ends or a vaccine is available. People are going to be apprehensive of large gatherings for the foreseeable future.

I watched a live event this past weekend that really opened my eyes to new ways to do live events, and it came from a Scottish rock band called Biffy Clyro.

Before I go much further, I’m a big Biffy fan. I’ve seen them four times, I’ve got all their albums (many on vinyl.) Last week, they released their eighth full length album, A Celebration of Endings. Traditionally, a band would release an album and do promotion around the world, including live shows. Since just about every live, in-person event is cancelled, it’s forced artists to find alternate ways to connect with fans and promote their work.

Biffy Clyro are no different. In addition to an acoustic series earlier this summer, the band promoted a live worldwide event where they would be playing their entire new album live. Prices started at $20 and went up from there. Costs were slightly higher if you ordered a CD or vinyl along with your purchase.

I will admit I was skeptical at first about the even