Since 2012, the Centre for Innovation and Excellence in Learning has supported two WordPress installations under the banner, VIUBlogs. One of these installations was intended for students (studentblogs.viu.ca), and one was for use by University employees (wordpress.viu.ca). The two separate installations were created because, at the time, we could only technically connect to either student or faculty user authentication protocols and were unable to allow both groups to login to one instance of the service. Additionally, we imagined that faculty and staff sites might have a longer shelf-life and contain more scholarly information.
Advances made in VIU’s IT systems in 2017 mean that authentication of VIU accounts have been streamlined, and there is no longer a need for two separate authentication processes. Since January 2018, students have been able to login and create sites at wordpress.viu.ca. Feedback from faculty indicate that the wordpress.viu.ca service lends students’ sites a more professional feel.
We also are now seeing instances where students require access to sites created by faculty and staff, for collaborative projects, course sites, or while engaging in work-study opportunities. For these reasons, and to eliminate redundancy and confusion in having two instance of the same service, the Centre will only support one installation – wordpress.viu.ca – for both student and employee sites as of August 2018.
The studentblogs.viu.ca platform will no longer allow the creation of new sites starting in August 2018, to coincide with the start of the academic year. From this time, all new sites for faculty, staff, and students should be created in wordpress.viu.ca.
Students who have existing sites in studentblogs.viu.ca will still be able to access and edit their sites until August 2019, but will be prompted to contact the Centre to re-establish their blog on the main wordpress.viu.ca. There will be no mass migration of content. As many sites are created for assignments and then abandoned, the Centre will only migrate sites that students request. In August 2019, sites created in studentblogs.viu.ca will be live, but users will not be able to log-in or edit.
In August 2020, studentblogs.viu.ca will be taken down. The contents of this system will be archived in the event that former students request content from their site.
Se the timeline below which details the process for removing studentblogs.viu.ca.
Students that need assistance with exporting or migrating their site can use this resource or get in touch with the Centre for Innovation and Excellence in Learning. If you have questions, comments, or concerns about this change, please email us at learnsupport [at] viu.ca.