We upgraded our WordPress blog to the 3.0.4 version recently (yeah!).  There is one small change you will notice when you try to add widgets to your blog – you can’t “drag & drop” widgets anymore – they must be installed manually.

To add a widget to your blog:

1.  On the dashboard page, click on the “Screen Options” in the upper right side to enable accessibility mode.

2.  On the Widgets page, click on the “Add” link next to the widget that you’d like to add.

3.  Select the sidebar for the widget and the position of the widget in the sidebar and click on the “Save Widget” button.  The widget will appear on your blog.

4.  That’s it. Hopefully WordPress will add this feature back in a future release.

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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We are excited to announce that Mediawiki is sporting a new look or “skin.”  Now when you order a MediaWiki from Apps.gov NOW the default skin or theme will be “MonoBook.”  MonoBook was recommended by our users and had been used as the default skin for Wikipedia.

Existing wikis cannot change their current skin (Cologne Blue) to MonoBook, unfortunately.  However, you can sign up for a new MediaWiki page and copy and paste your content from your old page to the new one.

We welcome your recommendations for improvements!  Please post your recommendations on the Help Forum.

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Did you know that you can create your own URL (a custom URL) for your blog?

A regular URL, created through APPS.gov NOW, has a pre-determined structure, such as “blog.citizen.apps.gov/abc.”

A custom URL can be any URL for which you can create and register the web domain / URL on your Domain Name System (DNS) server.  For example, this can be “nameofyourblog.gov.”

Your agency’s CIO has to approve the custom URL that you would like to use.  Then, your system administrator will need to create the DNS entry for the URL.  Your DNS entry needs to point to the IP address that will be sent to you in the “activation required” email.  Note that you will have to click on the link in the “activation required” email in order to finalize the site creation process.  If your URL has been approved and created, it takes the same amount of time for your site to be available as getting a regular URL, through APPS.gov NOW.

Note: Custom URL requires that you have access to DNS technical expert to support and manage the domain.  Alternatively, you can use Apps.gov NOW domain and your blog will be up and running in approximately 5 minutes.

(4 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Do you know that you can access various reports by clicking on the Reports link on the Apps.gov NOW page?

By clicking on the links under “Pick a Report” you can select:

• Deployed Tools by Agency
• Top Ten Active Tools
• Usage Statistics of Tools

Currently, 350 federal government employees from 64 federal agencies have registered for wikis, blogs and forums. More importantly, many federal agencies have deployed Apps.gov NOW tools and these numbers are growing.

(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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To help you get started, we created a short MediaWiki Tutorial where you can learn how to create a MediaWiki page and how to navigate the menu.  You can also learn how to change preferences and password; reset the password; create and delete a user; and change user rights.

You can watch the entire tutorial or skip to the sections you want by clicking on the topic in the Outline, which you can find on the left side of the player.

We would love to hear from you!  Please complete the short survey about this tutorial by clicking here so we can improve it.

You can find more information about MediaWiki in our MediaWiki Administrator User Guide, located on the FAQ page of citizen.apps.gov.

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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We have upgraded to WordPress 3.0.3 and now offer Blog Custom URL’s.

How do I get a Custom URL?
Your agency CIO has to approve the URL that you would like to have. Then, your system administrator will need to create the DNS entry for the URL. To learn more about getting your own Custom URL visit our FAQs.

Reports dashboard offers a quick view of what’s happening site-wide
We have also added a new Reports tab on the storefront that features the top 10 active tools each month as well as a plethora of site wide and tool specific statistics. Please let us know what other reports you would like to have available on the Storefront.

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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You can review the latest APPS.gov NOW webinar below.

Let us know your questions over at the help forum, citizen.apps.gov/help.

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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We have been working hard to put the finishing touches on new tools for the storefront – wikis and forums. We’ve built two wikis (MediaWiki and TWiki) and two forums (phpBB and MyBB), so that’s four new tools to help you better interact with your public.

Although there isn’t much difference between the two wikis and the two forums, we wanted to give you options and a chance to pick which tool best suits your engagement needs.

MediaWiki runs on the same software that drives Wikipedia, the huge user-created Encyclopedia, while TWiki allows you more control in assigning different levels of access to your users.  PhpBB builds community by allowing your users to assign ratings to each other, while MyBB’s community can rate each other’s ideas and posts.

We’re excited for you to check out these new tools when we launch them on September 30th.  Let us know what you think. Sorry state and local govvies, these tools are only for federal agencies.

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @GovNewMedia.

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