Remember.You are responsible for only posting videos and audio, and any other content, for which you retain ownership or own the rights to publish on the Web. Don’t steal. That’s not nice.
Many thanks to James Farmer of edublogs.org for his tireless work over the past few weeks.
A complete revamp of the PRblogs.org software platform is essentially finished. I’m still looking around to find any possible quirks that may have arisen. Please feel free to comment with any problems you may encounter. The Flickr plugin is a little goofy right now, for instance. We’ll get it.
Also, we have our own PRblogs Forums coming up. Thanks, James. That will allow us to better communicate our FAQs and report any bugs. I’ll alert you when that comes on-line.
Frequent users have likely experienced sluggish service and downtime at various times over the past few days, especially. I apologize for the interruptions in service. We are growing and experiencing those unfortunate growing pains. I believe this upgrade solves those problems.
Also, we can’t forget that PRblogs.org is a free service. Still, we want to bring you the best service. Your patience is appreciated.
PRblogs.org is hosted, along with almost 65,000 other blogs, at edublogs.org. James has been our benefactor all this time. We are very lucky and grateful to have his assistance. I hope to have further news in the coming days about other positive movement for PRblogs.org, too.
PRblogs.org, like edublogs.org, is free to all. No ads. James has recently launched Edublogs Premium, an even more robust and affordable enterprise option for edublogging. Check that out if you are interested in something for your school or enterprise, for example.
There are new tools for posting videos, audio, photos and more. Podcasting is now possible at PRblogs.org.
Here is one example of how video may be posted to your PRblogs.org site. This is the Singapore version of the Dove Real Beauty Self-Esteem Fund video. I use it because it is also using the new divShare Wordpress Plugin. It is the new plugin that enables PRblogs.org to accomplish complete podcasting (video and audio) capabilities.
DivShare is “a free file hosting service for everyone. No registration required!”
They claim - and I have no reason to doubt them :) - the following:
It’s easy:
1. Upload a file
2. Get your download link
3. Spread the word!
Features:
So, please go check out your blog - or get a new one. We welcome all public relations and marketing communications students, faculty and practitioners to our community. Check the RSS Feed for PRblogs.org community posts, too.
New, and about time, I have the feeds for the overall PRblogs.org community.
The following feeds will provide the latest 20 posts and 20 comments generated throughout PRblogs.org. I may expand that to 30 or 40. Let me know what you think.
The Comments feed will reveal much of the spam traffic we’ve been getting. It will take time, but I’m going through and engaging Spam Karma on all sites. Have to do that until I can find a way to have it automatically engage on all new blogs. We’ll get it all cleaned up.
If you are using Firefox, for example, you may just click on the links and see the post links and a brief excerpt.
PRblogs.org is dedicated to providing free blogs to all public relations and marcom (marketing communications) students, educators and practitioners that wish to explore blogging.
We welcome all public relations/marketing students, educators and practitioners to PRblogs.org.
Lately, we have experienced a large surge in what would best be described as blogs with the aim of promoting a business venture online, that are not PR firms or practices. I want to reiterate that these blogs without a PR / marcom specific focus are not the purpose and focus of PRblogs.org.
There are plenty of free blogging sites that seem to allow these sorts of blogs. We are not one of them. Please note, I differentiate between these blogs - legitimate efforts to promote a business, any business or product/service - and the following version of SPLOGs. However, we don’t want either in PRblogs.org. Just because your blog may have been deactivated, that does not mean I’m accusing you of creating SPLOGs. But, your blog did not meet the mission statement for our community. So, it was deactivated.
We do want people that are writing about their PR/marcom firms, PR/marcom practices or students and educators writing about the discipline of public relations and marketing communications. That is the very specific focus of PRblogs.org.
Further, anything posted at PRblogs.org that is clearly a SPLOG, or spam blog, will be deactivated.
This should not be an adversarial experience for any of us. Lately, I’ve received some pretty vulgar and threatening emails from individuals that have posted such blogs as I’ve described above. So, I’m restating our mission and purpose in the hope that people visiting our community will read the stated purposes and abide by our community standards.
If you are a public relations/marcom student, educator and/or practitioner, please sign up using the form in the sidebar. We are happy to provide a free blog for your endeavors. All PRblogs are ad free. There are no fees. Our site offers easy to use software. It is hosted. There is no need to download anything.
PRblogs.org is dedicated to providing blogs to all public relations students, educators and practitioners that wish to explore blogging. To that end, we also always try to provide the most appropriate tools to use within those blogs. Today marks a new addition to PRblogs.org.
To further the use of PRblogs.org for the purpose of learning, sharing and incorporating PR practices into blogging, we now offer the SimpleSMPR plugin from Shannon Whitley of PRX Builder. I have modified / edited the template release provided with SimpleSMPR to create this post.
So, today anyone may create a blog at PRblogs.org and use the SimpleSMPR plugin by activating in the Admin area. In addition, you may use the Viper007Bond.com Viper’s Video Quicktags to further enhance posts and releases with video from YouTube, Google Video and iFilm. Beyond these tools, PRblogs.org also offers the use of Sidebar Widgets to make creation of a unique sidebar and custom blog. Finally, regarding the SimpleSMPR releases, you may also download the Media Tools to easily access and use the elements of releases created with the SimpleSMPR plugin.
Personalizing your sidebar has long been a request by users at PRblogs.org. Well, we’ve finally made that possible. This will add significant functionality and likely please existing and new users.
Fiddling with plugins, I’ve been able to get Widgets to work on PRblogs.org.
Pretty cool. Visit the example blog at widgets.prblogs.org to see how they look. In the sidebar, you will see - from the top:
a text widget pointing to an image file,
a text widget holding Constantin’s code to search for all PR blogs,
the Google search widget,
an RSS feed widget, and
a del.icio.us feed widget.
Pretty nice, huh. Currently widgets only work on some themes. See below for those that work now. We’ll fix more up for you over the coming week.
I’ll be going through and identifying themes that will work with widgets. All don’t, by the way, and it will likely take awhile for “all” to be made widget friendly. But, I’ll come back and identify the ones I find that work both with widgets and WordPress MU, the versions of WordPress we are running at PRblogs.org.
I’ll consider adding other widgets, if you wish to suggest them. I’m thinking that I’ll not put the PHP execute widget in as that is a security issue. But, there are others out there and I’m open to considering them, if you wish.
Update: Themes that work with widgets on PRblogs.org are now these…
"The practice of public relations is fluid, and ever changing such that through the years, we've seen pitches go from faxes to emails to now RSS," said Jeremy Pepper, founder, POP! PR Jots.
"The latest trend is blogging and wikis, and in this new era of consumer generated media, the incoming account coordinators need to know how to use these tools - and PRblogs.org is one such forum where Auburn students, and others, can show future employers that they understand the change in PR and are ready to be part of it."
Jeremy Pepper - Director, Social Media Strategist, Weber Shandwick Worldwide
Neville Hobson writes, "What better way to help students of PR and those just entering the profession to get some practical experience and knowledge of blogging than by providing them with their own blog, for free? Robert French at Auburn University has done just that with PRblogs.org, a free blog hosting service for anyone in the profession, whether a student or a practitioner. Not only do you get your own blog but you also become part of a growing community."
Neville Hobson, ABC, is a communicator, blogger and podcaster, one of the leading European early adopters and influencers in social media communication for business. He blogs at NevilleHobson.com with commentary and opinion on business, communication and technology, and co-presentsFor Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report (www.forimmediaterelease.biz), a twice-weekly business podcast at the intersection of online communication, business and technology, which he began in January 2005.
