Introduction

The Hyperaudio Plugin can create transcriptions (or subtitles) from audio files and video files. It allows the viewer to skip to various parts of the text and immediately listen to the place where the cursor points.

If your audio file is very large, you can convert the audio to a video file using YouTube or hosting it on SoundCloud (proprietary) or Spotify Podcast (currently free).

Watch video to see how to convert audio files to youtube video:

Step One

There are most likely many ways to implement this plugin. In this example we will use YouTube and SavSubs.

First, we need to create the transcription file. The best format to use is SRT.

For YouTube conversions, go to https://savesubs.com/sites/download-youtube-subtitles

Fill in your YouTube URL and click on “Extract Links” for SRT file type (highlighted below):

You should see the following after clicking on Extract Links:

Click on the SRT box highlighted above and your file will be downloaded to your computer.

Step Two

Now that we have the transcript file in a SRT format, go to your site’s Dashboard and click on Settings>>Hyperaudio.

You should see the following:

Hyperaudio uses shortcodes to display transcripts. Please note the example highlighted at the top. Copy the example and paste the shortcode into your page or post. Click publish so that you do not lose it.

Next, you back to Settings>>Hyperaudio. Scroll down to the converter.  This is where you need to paste your SRT file in order to get the hypertranscript that you need.

Open your SRT file in a text editor and copy the entire file into your clipboard. Then paste it the space labelled “Paste Here”. Choose SRT as the file format. Hit the Convert button.

At this point you can click on “Rendered View” and edit the transcription. You will probably want to capitalize the beginning word at the start of each sentence.

Next, go back to “Markup View” and copy the entire hypertranscript file to your clipboard and go back to your page or post where your shortcode was saved. Now you need to make the following changes.

  • Overlay the example’s “span” tags with your hypertranscript data that is in your clipboard. Be careful not to lose the tags at the end. You should just overlay the “span” tag.
  • Find the embed code of your YouTube video. Click the share button and copy the URL that is located inside the iframe code.
  • Past the embed URL into the src attribute on the first line of the shortcode.
  • Your shortcode is now complete. Click on update

Your should now see the results below:

[Music]

[Music]

welcome to ready get set a series of

five short videos designed to give black

and racialized youth and their families a better understanding of the justice system and how to navigate it this video

is how community supports can change

your outcomes delta family visor center consists of youth justice workers reintegration workers and also family counselors the roles are supported in black and also racialized youth and their families the team at delta is passionate about helping the youth and the families working by identifying each of their individual needs

community supports can make a difference in your outcomes with court they can help improve your outcomes by providing many specific supports that will show the judge that you are serious about changing your path community supports can provide you with the support letters which you can show to your lawyer as evidence that there are agencies and people who will vouch for you they can provide free programs which demonstrate your personal commitment to changing your behavior youth justice workers can refer you to the relevant services servers i mentor on your journey and be an important confidential non-judgmental

person you can talk to about your situation they can explain and guide you through the justice process tell you some of your options and support you and your family during this time they can provide free counseling and other supports for you and your family’s well-being as you go through this process some community agencies can also assist your family by providing short-term relief in terms of access to food and gift cards

other agencies include urban rest solutions for youth initiative think twice somali women and children network and also peace builders they provide support to youth by working closely with the family resource center

i’m chelsea from albia neighborhood services ans and i’m the youth balance prevention coordinator there we are really excited about our new partnership with the eu justice centers as we’ll be able to provide wraparound services to both the youth and their families who are experiencing core issues or legal matters through this partnership we will be able to provide satellite support for those who don’t have access to the physical court space or technology they’ll be able to do it right here at the hub

the northwest justice center understands that community supports are an integral part in assisting residents with navigating the justice system ultimately the goal is to reduce charges and provide a system that supports youth

and families in navigating these processes

luminous a community agency that is very visible in the courts assists youth and families to navigate and link to community support that are culturally relevant wrap around services to support

them with their needs

colvin makes internet access critical and we know that lots of families have been having challenges making appearances for court due to this issue

there are two locations which youth and

families can go to access virtual court

supports luminous located at their finch west location as well as alvia neighborhood

services which is located at the rexdale

hub

youth and families can go to one of the

two hubs and access

internet for court appearances find out information about their court case and

get supports from youth justice workers

and those assistants

he partners in this northwest justice

initiative include delta family

the justice center satellite locations

city of toronto justice for children and youth legal aid ontario and mental health and

social work services community supports can make a big difference when you’re in court so please make sure to check out all these valuable resources

this series has been developed by delta family with support from the ministry of the attorney general and partners delta family provides culturally relevant free youth justice and counseling services to black youth and families and has served diverse communities in northwest toronto for 40 years

…

The WPDiscuz plugin super-charges the way comments work on your WordPress site,. It enhances your users’ discussion experience and keeps them engaged by offering multiple ways to embed images, videos, social icons, and text. There are three colorful layouts to choose from:

The comment textbox comes with a toolbar for easily adding rich text and images. Roll over the icons to see what they do:

 

There are numerous powerful options and settings to explore that control the discussion environment:

On the Comment Content and Media Settings page, you can enable shortcodes and use them in your comment so you can, for example, embed a video.

The Easy Appointments plugin provides a way to embed forms and calendars within a WordPress site. The plugin uses three preset fields: Location, Service, and Worker. The labels for these can be easily changed. For example, Location could be changed to Office, Service could be changed to Meeting Type, and Worker could be changed to Professor.

The trickiest part of this plugin is set up what are called Connections. A connection pulls together the dates and time slots that are available for the particular Location/Service/Worker. In the form below, you specify what days of the week appointments are possible, the beginning and ending times, and the number of slots available within this time range.

 

 

To set up an appointment on your site, ,create a page and add a shortcode to generate the following form:

To avoid spam, you probably want to make the form only available to members of the Commons, or else password protected.

Another shortcode can display a calendar of appointments:

 

If you have posts or pages that are long, you might want to offer your readers a way to go up to the top of the article. Yes, if you know HTML, this can be done with an anchor tag. But the Simple Scroll To Top plugin makes such a function a breeze.

Once you activate the plugin, go to the Settings page. Here you can customize where the button will be shown and what it will look like. There are 10 symbols and 4 backgrounds. They are all from the FontAwesome library, so there are 40 variations for your scroll to top button. You control the size and color and on which pages it should appear. The button only appears when your reader is scrolling down. This is extremely useful if your reader is using a tablet or mobile device, where scrollbars are less than effective.

Here is the setting page:

 

 

Each WordPress post or page has exactly one “Featured Image.” Depending on the template used by your theme, this image may appear at the top of your post, on the side, or not at all. On a page that aggregates your posts or pages (perhaps by category or tag), the featured image adds interest to the listing. If missing, it throws off the appearance of the page.

That is where the Default Feature Image plugin can be useful. If a page or post does not have a featured image, a default image will be assigned.

The default image is set up in the Media Settings on the WordPress dashboard:

 

Shortcodes Ultimate is a Swiss Army knife type of plugin. It can do many things – it “is a comprehensive collection of various visual and functional elements, which you can use in the post editor, text widgets or even in template files. Using Shortcodes Ultimate you can easily create tabs, buttons, boxes, sliders and carousels, responsive videos and much, much more.”

It works with both the Block Editor and the Classic editor. You can embed posts into other posts, create “spoilers” (i.e. view/hide content), retrieve parts of posts or pages via category or tag – the list goes on.

In the Block Editor, the plugin is accessible via the open and close brackets icon-  “[ ]” after you select the shortcode block:

 

 

In the Classic Editor, it is an option on the tool bar.

 

After clicking the icon, you will see the entire collection. There is a convenient search bar to help locate what you need, as well as a “Filter by Type” option. The shortcodes marked in red are only available for the premium version of the plugin

 

The following video will help you get started with this plugin:

 

The EmbedPress plugin claims to be able to embed content from over 100 sources, including Google, Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, and a host of others. It will embed PPTsm PDFs, Docx, and many other types of files.

Once you’ve activated the plugin, you will see “EmbedPress” option on your dashboard. Here you can simply paste in the URL of your content and hit generate. If you are able to embed it, you will see the shortcode is automatically created. just paste it into your post or block.

 

EmbedPress also integrates nicely with the Block Editor. Select the EmbedPress block, paste in the url, and hit embed:If EmbedPress

If EmbedPress doesn’t work for your content, check out Embedding Content From Other Sites for alternatives.

There is a big change in the way widgets are handled with the release of WordPress 5.8.

Previously, Commons members added widgets to “widget areas” (sidebars, footers, etc.) by going to Appearance>>Widgets or to Customize>>Widgets. There they found an array of widgets, some provided by WordPress, some provided by the theme, and some provided by plugins. Members could simply assign these widgets to each widget area or edit the way those widgets are displayed.

That functionality is now gone with WordPress 5.8, but it can be restored by activating the “Classic Widgets” plugin. This plugin will restore the old-school way of using widgets. Simply activate the plugin and you are good to go.

In efforts to make all content display as blocks, WordPress introduced Block Widgets, which are still controlled by going to Appearance>>Widgets or to Customize>>Widgets. You cannot create Block Widgets if you have activated the Classic Widget plugin. The interface is quite different – instead of picking widgets from a list and deciding where they display, members will need to use blocks. Click the plus sign in the desired widget area:

 

You are not limited in using just blocks that are categorized as “Widgets.” You can use any block that you want. There is also a block called “Legacy Block” – you can choose from a drop down which widget you want to display. Legacy widgets have optional heading fields. For all other blocks that you add, you will need to add a heading block if you want a heading above your block widget.

 

 

Often, site admins want to show social buttons on their sites so that readers can easily share content. There are a number of options available on the Commons to do this.

  • Check if your theme has this functionality built in.
    Since social buttons are so widely used, many themes have this functionality built-in. Before you start looking for plugins, check out your theme. You may or may not like the way the buttons are displayed, but there may be options to change their look. There are two places to look:

    • Widgets – your theme might come with a widget that can be configured to show the buttons you want. These would typically be displayed in a sidebar or a footer.
    • Menus – your theme might have a social menu built in. Our default theme, Twenty-Twenty has an optional “social” menu designed to display social buttons in the footer. You can display it in any menu location.
  • DYI – create a social menu and use the navigation widget to display it in a sidebar or footer. This requires a little more work. You will probably want to use icons rather than text.
  • Use a plugin
    • Atomic Blocks – this library of useful blocks has a block called “Sharing Icons“.
    • WP Social Sharing – This is an older plugin, but it is still effective. Best for those who use the classic editor. Buttons appear either on top or bottom of the post.
    • JetPack – Among its multiple uses, this plugin allows you to add social sharing buttons to pages and/or posts. Find this functionality under the “Sharing” tab.
      Learn More About JetPack

      The Jetpack plugin is actually a bundle of plugins that have been developed for WordPress.com.

      Please don’t be fooled! All the plugins are free to use. Many times along the installation process, you will be encouraged to pick a premium plan and pay money to WordPress.com for features that will not be available on the Commons. Make sure to choose the free version of this tool when activating Jetpack.

      Please note that you will need to create a WordPress.com account to use JetPack. You do not need to have a WordPress.com site. Just register here, get your id/password, and you are ready to activate Jetpack.

      After installing the Jetpack plugin on your site in the Plugins area, Jetpack will be added to the Dashboard menu (screenshot, right). Visit this Jetpack area in the Dashboard and go through the process to activate Jetpack.

       

       

      When activating JetPack, you will see the various paid options but you do not need to pay for this tool. Scroll down all the way and click on “Start for Free” (image below).

       

       

      If you have a WordPress.com account and are logged in, once you click “Start for Free” you will activate Jetpack and re-routed back to your Commons Site.

      If you need to create an account, click on the option highlighted above.

      Once you click “Approve,” you should see the following:

       

      Then you will see the following section added to your Dashboard. Click on Settings to get started with JetPack.

       

      Highlighted below are the Settings for the various plugins in the JetPack bundle. Click on each tab to explore the possibilities.

      JetPack provides a nice stats plugin that you can use to track your readers.  It also provides Latex support for mathematical notation, and a bunch of other plugins, many of which are similar to other plugins on the Commons. Many members use JetPack’s “Subscription” plugin to allow people to subscribe to their sites and receive email notifications when a post is published. See more about Subscriptions.

       

      In Jetpack’s “Sharing” menu, you can  add new widgets to your site  to pull in Twitter an other social media feeds.

    • Share This Image – if you want to only share an image and not the text of your post or page, this plugin is for you.
    • Social Stickers – this is a “Follow Us” widget that is configured to take viewers to your social networks. Buttons appear if you provide the link to your site on Twitter, Facebook, Vimeo, etc. 
      Learn More About Social Stickers

      Interested in showcasing your social media networks on your site? We recommend using “Social Stickers,” a simple plugin that allows you to show which social networks you use. There are over 50 social networks to choose from, including: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, and YouTube. You can also select from one of five themes, which change the visual style of the social network icons.

      Follow these steps to display social networks on your CUNY Academic Commons WordPress site:

      1. Click on the “Plugins” menu in your WordPress dashboard, search for “Social Stickers” in the directory, then click “Activate” under the Social Stickers plugin.social stickers2. Customize the settings in Settings>Social Stickers (*Please note – you will need to enter your username(s) before you can pick your theme).sticer1
      2. Add the widget to one of your sidebars or footers in Appearance>Widgetswi

      Your social networks should now display on your site and look something like this:

      this

 

Commentpress lets readers comment on each paragraph of a document or respond in-line to other comments. Developed by the Institute for the Future of the Book, it is a terrific way for writers to solicit and track critiques of their work, from either a controlled or open group of readers:

Annotate, gloss, workshop, debate: with Commentpress you can do all of these things on a finer-grained level, turning a document into a conversation. It can be applied to a fixed document (paper/essay/book etc.) or to a running blog.

The documentation for CommentPress  (written using Commentpress) shows how documents can be structured (title page, table of contents, pages, posts, numbering, etc.) and is a great resource once you’ve got the tool up and running.

Getting Started with CommentPress

CommentPress is a WordPress plugin. To get started, activate CommentPress Core on the Commons. Once activated, your theme will automatically switch to the CommentPress Modern theme. We recommend using this theme.  (Your other choices are the Default CommentPress theme and the Flat CommentPress theme.)

CommentPress will only work with themes created by CommentPress.

If you deactivate CommentPress Core, your theme will switch back to the Commons default theme (currently, Twenty-Twelve).

To configure CommentPress, go to Settings>>Commentpress. Be sure to check the box to “Create All Special Pages.” All the other default settings are fine to begin with. You can always come back to the setting page to fine tune your site. By default, CommentPress uses pages as chapters for its Table of Contents.

Readers may comment on an entire page or post, or on a specific paragraph within the page or post. There is no approval process for comments, but members must supply their name and email address (and optionally, their website’s URL) to comment. To avoid spam, make sure to install and configure Akismet or some other spam filter. To control the pool of responders, you might want to set up your site as private, and invite the readers you want to join.

A CommentPress Example

by Mitchell Stephens, Professor of Journalism, New York University

“This paper is designed to be a conversation. I am presenting a collection of some of the more controversial ideas from the early chapters of my book on the history of disbelief. The ideas are organized loosely around a single theme: the Roman leader Pompey’s forced entry into the most sacred place of the Jewish temple. At issue are the origins and prevalence of doubt, even at the heart of religion.

The paper is also an experiment. The Institute for the Future of the Book has devised a new format, through which readers can engage with me and with each other, directly alongside the text. This site is a rough prototype. Each of the paper’s twelve sections has a dynamic margin to the right of the text. There, you can post responses to individual paragraphs, and also annotate the text with links and references to related materials. … “