Nebraska Libraries on the Web

photo by Oskay

Hi! My name is Craig Lefteroff and I’m the new Technology Innovation Librarian at the Nebraska Library Commission. I’ll be posting blog entries on this site periodically and also assisting you with your websites when needed. If you do have any problems or suggestions, please contact me by phone at (402) 471-3106 or (800) 307-2665, or by email at craig.lefteroff@nebraska.gov. I’m excited to work with all of you and help you develop sites that will show your patrons all that your library has to offer!

As some of you may have already heard, April 30th will be my last day with the Commission as I have accepted the position of Director of Technology with Do Space in Omaha, NE.

This project is something I have been with since conception and has been one of the highlights of my time here at the Commission. If there was one project I could take with me this would be it.

For the foreseeable future, your new contact here will be Diane Wells. Diane has also been with the project since the beginning, just behind the scenes. (If I’ve ever said to you “let me look into that and get back to you” that probably meant that I needed to discuss the issue with Diane.) Starting May 1, if you have any questions or problems with you site, just drop her a line and she’ll be happy to help.

Thanks for all of your support and I look forward to watching your sites continue to grow in the future.

Well folks, it looks like it was the SEO plugin that was causing the problem so we’ve had to completely uninstall it. Everything should be back to normal at this point. If not, please let us know.

11 Feburary 2015 9:20pm

We believe this problem has been resolved now.

11 February 2015, 4:10pm
We have discovered that Web sites are loading but if you click on a blog post’s title to get to the full post, browsers are timing out. We are aware of the problem and are actively working on a solution.

We’ve upgraded to WordPress 4.1. There’s just one thing that you’ll probably notice: the icons available when you click on an image that’s been inserted into a post or page. Here’s a short video that describes the change.

Here at the end of 2014 I get the pleasure of announcing three new sites: Three rivers Library System, Walthill Public Library, and Wisner Public Library. These three additions, along with the closing of the sites for the Meridian, Northeast, and Republican Valley library system sites, brings our 2014 total to 70. Here’s to increasing that number in 2015.

We successfully completed the upgrade to WordPress 4.0 early yesterday afternoon and from this end saw no problems. If you notice anything out of whack please let me know ASAP. However, there is one caveat as mentioned in yesterday’s e-mail to everyone:

There is a small chance that some themes will “reset” their sidebars. If any content disappears from your sidebars check the “Inactive Widgets” section of your Widgets page on the Dashboard. More often than not, missing content has been moved there. This shouldn’t happen but there is a small chance sidebar material will completely disappear and will need to be recreated. Unfortunately this is unpredictable at best so I can’t give anyone a more specific heads up than I’m doing here.

My next step is the training videos. Most of them are done, but not all. Today and tomorrow I’ll be uploading the ones that are complete to YouTube, posting each as their own blog post, and updating the list on the Online Training page. For any video that doesn’t yet have a new version, I’ll leave the old version up and mark it accordingly.

And, for those of you that prefer print materials to learn from or to have as a reference I’d like to point you to the WordPress 4.0 User Guide from interconnect/it. They have a free download version of their user manual and it is a great resource. (There are some minor differences based on the customizations we’ve made but you probably won’t notice them all that much.) Just head on over to their site, click the big Get it Now button, then select the free version. I’ll also be linking to this on the Online Training page for future reference.

I’m in the office today, but Diane is not and she’s the one that runs the server. I don’t expect the upgrade to cause any problems but on the off chance that something does go wrong, Diane’s the person I need around to help fix things. So, we’ll be delaying the upgrade until tomorrow. Thanks for your understanding.

Just wanted to post a heads-up for everyone. We will be upgrading to WordPress 4.0 on Monday, November 17, 2014. There won’t be a lot of differences but you’ll notice a few. Mostly I just want to make sure you’re keeping an eye out for any problems as results of the upgrade. We’re not expecting any, but I’ll be in the office all week just in case.

All participating libraries, libraries interested in participating, and anyone else interested in or currently using WordPress are welcome to join us at the WordPress Users Group meeting to be held at 3:30pm on Thursday, October 9th. This meeting is very important for anyone participating in Nebraska Libraries on the Web as I’ll be discussing the changes in WordPress 4.0 which will be installed for participants shortly after the conference. Diane and I will also be available to answer any questions you may have about WordPress and the future of this program. We look forward to seeing you in South Sioux City!