Blogs.IFAS is a strategic communications digital space that serves as a platform for UF/IFAS Extension, Teaching, and Research employees to directly post content to share with their clients and stakeholders. If you have not taken a tour of Blogs.IFAS we encourage you to do so. We currently have more than 700 bloggers feeding content regularly into more than 100 blogs! Below you will find some helpful links:
Contact webteam@ifas.ufl.edu to learn how we can help you with your next web initiative.
Need access to a website or blog, please submit a WEB OR BLOG HELP request?
Copyright law protects the owner of creative materials from unauthorized use of his or her work. U.S. copyright laws protect literary works, musical or sound recordings, and pictorial or graphical designs. Prior to using any creative works that do not belong to the University of Florida, please make sure you have the proper license and/or permission from the owner of those works.
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The Communicator Awards 2022 awards the Blogs.IFAS Website Redesign!
IFAS Web Services is thrilled to announce the launch of Blogs.IFAS 2.0. We’ve updated the look and feel and added features that will allow greater interaction to encourage readers to browse and read more of the amazing blog content you all have created!
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Blogs.IFAS 2.0 Features & Functionality Training: https://mediasite.video.ufl.edu/Mediasite/Play/3c6449e563164305acacba922beb15f21d
This training includes:
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Many of the improvements for Blogs.IFAS 2.0 were “under the hood”, including coding the site in HTML5, improving accessibility, improving YouTube analytics tracking, and other performance enhancements. These improvements help ensure that users can find our blog, use our blog, and stay on our blog.
And many of the updates you can see achieve these same goals, as well! We have updated the look to be sleek and modern to ensure users know that this site has fresh content.
The navigation is re-designed to retain more users and encourage browsing.
The homepage includes more blog posts and a new section for Featured Blogger, to highlight our bloggers on a weekly basis and give readers a chance to see the people behind the posts.
On blog posts pages, readers now have the opportunity to interact in a new way…with our new “heart” button!
In addition, related posts will be displayed below blog posts to encourage readers to explore more Blogs.IFAS content.
On Author Bio Pages, bloggers now have the option to include a Subscribe button that is unique to their blog posts, allowing subscribers to get updates on their posts. Also, if the blogger has written or participated in any blog series, they are displayed on their Bio Page distinctly below their posts.
Authors will also now have the ability to be listed as co-authors on a single blog post.
Congratulations to all the winners of our 2021 UF/IFAS Blogger Awards!!! With all of the amazing bloggers who are a part of the Blogs.IFAS community, it was not easy to pick the winners! Thank you to everyone who participated. Here are our winners in each category. Read more about them on the Blogs.IFAS Award Winners Announcement.
Most Impactful
Winner: Ana Zangroniz
Post: What Goes Up Comes DOWN! Alternatives to Helium Balloons
While many written pieces address the detrimental outcomes of helium balloon releases, this piece by Ana Zangroniz takes it one step further and offers creative alternatives, prompting readers to change their behavior. This post encourages readers to embrace more sustainable approaches to celebrations and special events.
Quirkiest Story
Winner: Dr. Bonnie Wells
Post: Unearthing the World of Cemetery Turf Care
This post provides unique insight into turf management in an area not often considered: cemetery turf care. Dr. Wells’ post also includes interesting facts she learned along the way, including historical people laid to rest in Brevard County, as well as a local unsolved murder mystery.
Best Series
Winners: Carol Wyatt-Evens, Mindy Hanak, Kevin O’Horan
Series: Edible Gardening QOTW
The posts in the Edible Gardening series provide solutions for the lives of community stakeholders. By developing content based on questions received at the Edible Gardening webinars, the series authors promoted collaboration and community at a time when it felt disrupted.
Freshness Award - Blogger
Winner: Ralph Mitchell
Ralph Mitchell's posts are informative, entertaining, and frequent! His writing style is fresh and engaging, making it fun to learn about new topics related to horticulture.
Freshness Award - Blog
Winner: Escambia County
The agents at Escambia County have worked hard to develop quality blog posts—and they are posting with amazing frequency! Readers return to the Escambia County blog for the great content and new posts.
Freshness Award - District
Winner: Central District
The Central District of County Extension Offices wins this award for having all Counties in the District actively posting. Thank you to the following Counties: Flagler County, Hernando County, Lake County, Marion County, Orange County, Osceola County, Putnam County, Seminole County, St Johns County, Sumter County, and Volusia County
Thank You to All Our Bloggers!
We want to thank all our bloggers—your contributions help improve the lives of Floridians and beyond!
Having an author profile can boost your readership and let readers know a little about you. Here are our recommendations for a great author profile, including how to format your email to avoid spam.
If you have a blog series, it will display below your blog posts. Reach out to webteam@ifas.ufl.edu for more information on developing a unique blog series tag and displaying your blog series on your Author Bio Page.
You can edit your profile by clicking on your username in the upper-right corner when you are logged in to WordPress. Biographical Info is your profile and your Avatar is your profile image.
Three simple steps!
Read more about Getting Started on BlogsIFAS.
Featured images on blog posts must be either 1650x470 pixels or 1338x357 pixels. Reach out to webteam@ifas.ufl.edu if you encounter any issue uploading your featured image.
A variety of photo editing tools can be used to crop your photos to the required size. For many of these tools, our team has developed video tutorials to help guide you through the process:
Photo Release Form
The tags you assign to your blog post will help search engines to better understand what your post is about.
For a list of commonly used tags and their importance, check out the UF/IFAS Blog Tag Lexicon.
The categories you assign to your blog post determine where your post is organized:
Writing a blog series is a great way to break up content into easy-to-digest posts and get readers excited about upcoming content. Here are the ways to identify a post as part of a series.
Follow this guide to Create a Blog Series and Add to Your Author Profile.
A post that is part of a blog series will have one or all of the following:
*A series is required to have a unique tag to identify the series. Ensure your tag is unique enough to only capture your blog series. Reach out to webteam@ifas.ufl.edu for guidance on developing your series' tag.
Reach out to webteam@ifas.ufl.edu to ensure our series appear on your Author Bio Page!
Yes! The Delay Publish option can be a great way to manage when your posts are published. You may want to use this option when you have several posts ready at once, but you don’t want to publish them at the same time. It is a best practice to publish only one post in a day: this will allow your content to be displayed in multiple email digest alerts, giving readers additional opportunities to find your posts. You may want to delay publishing for another reason. Follow these steps to Delay Publishing a Blog Post
The webteam already has analytics running on your blog so if you would like access to them please use the following steps. Both Google Analytics and Google Data Studio can be used to provide analytics for blogs.
Access Google Analytics
Notes
Google Data Studio
Google Data Studio is an alternative tool for accessing Google Analytics. This tool is currently available for County agents, but if you are interested in accessing your data through this view, reach out to webteam@ifas.ufl.edu.
Access Google Data Studio
Notes
Some users receive an error when trying to access their Google Data Studio Report. If this happens, try logging out of Google or access the report from a different browser.
Resources
Adding Video Content to Your Blog
The best way to include a video in your blog post is to first upload it to YouTube (if your unit does not already have a YouTube account you can create one for free), then you can easily embed the video within your blog. This has the added bonus of YouTube captioning your video for you, providing ADA compliance and allowing users to turn on captions when needed.
Viewing Video Play Events in Google Analytics
You can access statistics for video play events on videos you have embedded on your blog posts. Follow directions here for How to View Video Play Events for Blog-Embedded Videos.
Recording & Editing Videos for a Blog
You may want to edit out the first few seconds of your video--perhaps you were getting your camera set up or you were giving attendees extra time to arrive for a live stream. Check out the following video tutorials for great ways to trim out unnecessary video content and help keep viewers engaged!
Recording & Posting an iPhone Video:
Recording & Posting a Zoom Meeting:
UF/IFAS YouTube Channels
Visit the UF/IFAS YouTube Channels for videos you can include in your blog posts related to your content.
Follow these tips when writing your blogs to ensure that all users can read them:
Have you ever struggled to come up with topics for your blog posts? Try out these...
Top 5 Blog Brainstorming Questions!
For more tips on what to blog about and which blog formats perform better than others, check out this blog post or this shareable one-pager on What to Blog About!
For more ideas for your blog, check out the Blog Events Calendar, also at the bottom of this page!
After you write a blog post, we encourage you to promote it on your social media accounts.
Tag the UF/IFAS social media accounts in your posts:
Also, here are some great hashtags to include in your posts!
For more hashtag recommendations, check out UF/IFAS Hashtag listing
To ensure your blog post appears in the Master Gardener blog, all Master Gardeners should tag their posts with the tag "Master Gardener Volunteer". For bloggers with non-ufl.edu email addresses, the Master Gardener Coordinator will post their blogs on their behalf. New Master Gardener Coordinators can submit a Web Services Request to set up this access.
Tag: Master Gardener Volunteer
All Florida Sea Grant agents should include these categories and tags on their content to maximize post visibility:
To ensure your blog post appears in the Florida Master Naturalist blog, tag your post with the tag "Florida Master Naturalist Program" and/or "FMNP".
Tag: Florida Master Naturalist Program, FMNP
Additional training webinars are available at https://branding.ifas.ufl.edu/training/
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