Hello onMason users,

We’ve spend the time over the break thinking up new ways to improve onMason and considering how to make the platform better than ever.

We know that there has been some confusion with system downtime last semester and we have reviewed the problems and we do not anticipate them happening again. However, we are constantly testing and reviewing and we hope soon to take measures to make onMason even faster. In addition, we’re talking with ITU and DoIT to create a monitoring system for the site as well as insure that your support questions will always make their way to us.

If you’d like to help support onMason, don’t forget to tell folks about the platform, how you use it, and its importance. Pass along the info to DoIT, your department, your professors or your friends so that we can all work together to make onMason better.

As you may have noticed, some of our functionality is still down after the last update, we’re working on getting everything back in tip-top shape, but in case we don’t know, don’t forget to report all errors that you encounter. Keep an eye on this blog, we’ll be creating a page to document known issues and solutions soon.

Stay tuned to this blog to hear about more upgrades and further progress.

– The onMason Team

Hello onMason users,

As you are aware, the onMason system has been experiencing some unexpected downtime over the last few days. We’ve been able to track the problem down to issues with our server’s firewall, which have proved temporarily resolvable.

The team at the Office of Student Media has been working hard to find the cause of the problem, however, we have not isolated the exact issue that has been causing the repeated periods of downtime.

Due to continuing problems with our server firewall, there may be further downtime until the system regains full stability.

In order to remain updated on the situation, we advise you to check our Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/onmason. We are also working with DoIT and Learning Support Services to have outage alerts visible on other Mason sites as well as help provide you with a point of contact for any questions you might have. You should e-mail the onMason team with any questions at gmustudentmedia@gmail.com.

Remember the onMason platform is maintained by The Office of Student Media at GMU. ITU does not support the platform and will not be able to answer most questions you have. If you have any issues with the system while it is running, please file a support ticket. If you need to contact someone while the system is down use the e-mail above.

We will keep you notified as we resolve the issue.

– The onMason Team

Hello all,

onMason was down briefly today, from sometime around 1:00 p.m. to 5:45 p.m. We’re currently unsure of the reason why the server went down, however we are investigating the incident now and it should not happen again.

We’re sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused, we understand that the sites you create are important and that it is important that they remain up.

Thank you,

-The onMason Team

The onMason platform has been upgraded to WPMU2.8+. At this time we are seeing some plugin issues which are undergoing repair. We anticipate full functionality returning to the site by the end of the week.

If you experience any problems, it appears our Support plugin is currently malfunctioning. Please leave a comment on this post and we will respond to you as soon as we can.

EDIT: The Support plugin is now working. Please direct any questions or bug reports to that area in your backend.

We are currently transitioning from WPMU2.7 to 2.8. You may notice some errors and decreased functionality (like on this blog) as we prepare the site for the upgrade. Do not be alarmed.

The following new features have been added to onMason via plugins:

• Use aggr to embed RSS feeds in your posts.
• Create footnotes.[1.Using the FD Footnotes plugin, like this]
• Private WP allows you to lock down your blog to make it invisible.
• Publish2 is a link journalism tool. It has been auto-activated over all blogs as part of the testing process. If it is interfering with your blog, you can now turn it off from your plugin panel.
• Riffly Video/Audio comments has been activated over all blogs. It gives all onMason blogs audio and video commenting systems by default. You can turn it off, or replace the commenting system using DISQUS
• VodPod integration: VodPod is a site that allows you to collect and bookmark videos from any number of websites. You can now activate the VodPod plugins and display your VodPod gallery using a widget or by typing [Insert Video Gallery] into your post.
• You can activate threaded comments from the plugin page.
• You can now activate a Flickr widget to display your Flickr stream on your blog.
• You can now go to your widget page and activate a widget to display your delicious stream.
• You can display your Twitter stream using a new built-in widget. (Issues with Twitter’s API may cause tweets not to show up.)
• You can create polls using the PollDaddy Polls plugin, made by the creators of WordPress.
• Trackback and Comments RSS feeds are now available through the Subscribe to Comments page.
• Users can now subscribe to your blog via e-mail when you activate the Subscribe2 plugin.

We have also launched support for ScholarPress, a set of plugins developed by Mason’s own Center for History and New Media. The first plugin is WPBook, which allows you to generate a Facebook app that will allow others to add your blog to their Facebook pages or profiles. The second plugin is called Courseware and allows you to manage a class using your onMason blog. You can use Courseware to “add and edit a schedule, create a bibliography and assignments, and manage general course information.”

Please report any problems or issues you have with the new plugins.

As of today, onMason rolls into open beta.

As you may have noticed there were a number of duplicate themes in our theme directory, as well as templates that were not working or previewing correctly. Some of these duplicate themes were being maintained for testing purposes, while others were there in error.

However, theme issues should now be resolved. There should no longer be any visible theme errors or duplicate themes. If you see any, please report the errors via the support tab in your backend.

All media uploads should once again be working as normal.

Due to onMason’s switch to a new server, our file upload system is not working. If you are intrested in posting a video or audio file, you can upload them to Drop.io and use the embed functionality to place code in your post that will display your media.

Here’s how to get your media online during our temporary outage for the media library:
–Go to the URL
–Click Add Files
–Click Create a Drop
–Allow the file to upload
–Roll over the area with the file name on the site.
–Click the arrow.
–Select the embed option
–Copy the code
–Paste the code into your post (but make sure the post is in HTML mode).