After completeing several of the multimedia assignments from DS 106, I tried posting them to the DS 106 site because I am proud of them and I  wanted to share them with other DS 106-ers (if you haven't seen them, you can find them on my blog post from June 10th.)  To post on DS 106, you have to create an account with DS 106 and provide the URL address to the category that you post your DS 106 assignments to in your blog.  You also have to add assignment-specific tags to your DS 106 projects in your blog so that the site coordinators can easily retrieve your work and post it under the corresponding assignment. But, with Weebly, the blog platform I use, the things that they call tags aren't really tags - they function as categories.  So I contacted Alan Levine, one of DS 106's coordinators, and asked him for help.  Here is what he said:

"The problem I see in weebly is that there is no RSS feed for your category, so there is not a way we can read in just your ds106 content. It means we cannot syndicate that blog into ds106 because it includes content that is not related. I will investigate what I can, but weebly is not set up to use tags/categories they way other blog platforms do. But by all means, keep creating."

So, if you're a Weebly user and you've been having trouble posting your DS 106 work, now you know why.  Although I was disappointed with this discovery of Alan's, I was very much impressed at how thorough he was in getting to the root of the problem.  And I thought it was really nice how he still encouraged me to keep making DS 106 projects.  For future reference, if you have any questions about DS 106, he's your go-to-guy!

This isn't the first time I've encountered a problem like this - where I can't do something on Weebly that you can do with other blogs.  In Dean Shareski's Subscribing to Comments video, he mentioned that, as of right now, there is no known way to track comments on Weebly blogs.  Don't get me wrong, I'm really happy with my site - I chose Weebly because it appeared to be really user friendly and that has definitely been the case.  And, Weebly is always adding new features.  But, I think if/when I create another blog, I will branch out and try a different program.  Or maybe I'll create a blog just for my DS 106 work with a different program.  Have any Wordpress or Posterous users had success posting their work to the  DS 106 site?  Also - has anyone had any other user-unfriendly Weebly issues like this... and if so, have you found ways to get around them?
6/13/2012 03:55:54 am

Yes.

Wordpress is pretty easy. I use Posterous for ds106, and only Posterous, and although Jim got it added to the ds106 feed last year, the comments wouldn't function with the aggregation on their main WP blog.

Some people have had success using Feedburner, but I haven't.

Also, for our POT Certificate open online class, I used the same format as ds106, with the FeedWordpress plugin. Participants using their own WP blog had no problem. For the others (WP.com, Edublogs, Blogger) I worked on a tutorial page (http://pedagogyfirst.org/addingyourblog.htm). Edublogs, which we allowed last year, was even more complicated with feeds/tags/categories.

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6/13/2012 04:39:33 am

Weebly seems fine for many blogging needs; the way ds106 is dependent up the way a site generates RSS- if you set up a weebly solely for your ds106 work, that would be okay.

It is because we syndicate in blogs for people doing ds106 work, that is the only way we can aggregate is subscribing to your blog., Many people actually blog about non ds106 topics, so doing your work in that kind of space requires a way to generate an RSS feed from a tag or category.

This is the way we pull in the examples for the assignments, we do not search the internet for the tags, just the blogs that are syndicated in to our site (I am looking at a possible way to add single pieces of work, no promises)

We have people using Wordpress.com, Typepad, blogger, tumblr, posterous, self hosted wordpress

More importantly is we appreciate you and others in dead's class trying out these activities!

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6/13/2012 04:57:20 am

I also have a Weebly blog and did notice that my stuff wasn't showing up on DS106. But I wasn't surprised because a few days earlier I noticed on the "School Isn't Like A Job" blog comments that people who had linked to that post in their own post, had their blog show up in the comments section. Mine didn't. So I figure that's a similar issue which I was a little sad about because it doesn't let people know you're writing about or linking to their work. I was thinking about emailing Weebly to see if it is something they can do on their end!

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6/13/2012 02:25:39 pm

I use weekly to create my webpage but I blog through both wordpress and blogger, so I use all three. Each program has things I really love and limitations that drive me crazy. I think the setup I have right now with the weekly webpage, the wordpress professional blog and blogger personal blog is working for me but it does involve quite a bit making different programs work nice with each other. Sorry to hear you had some problems but I sure do like your blog it is visually very pleasing.

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6/14/2012 01:58:50 pm

Thanks Ms. Ginther. Just curious, but do you find using the three blog platforms to be more time consuming than it would be to just use one? And if so, is it worth it, to you?

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Jess
6/18/2012 06:47:19 am

Denine, thanks for the heads-up! I, too, use Weebly, because I thought it was so user-friendly. I didn't have any problems creating my account, whereas with other sites, I had way too many problems. As with you, the next time I go to create another blog, I am going to try a different site- one that is more well-known and compatible. One that I don't have so many problems trying to embed different items into my blog. Glad to know I am not the only one struggling!

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6/18/2012 11:11:08 am

Your work is beautiful but I am sorry for all the aggravation you are experiencing. I jumped in on week #4 and still find tagging and labeling difficult. Fortunately, my blog that was set up for me is wordpress.

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