The Ardour project is pleased to announce the release of 4.1 with a great line-up of new features such as input gain control, Save As for projects, click-free changes to processor order and meter position, relative snapping, faster waveform rendering, Hi-DPI/Retina support and more! As usual, quite a few bugs have been mercilessly slayed. Encouragingly, we also have one of our longest ever contributor lists for this release. read more

The Ardour project is pleased to announce the release of 4.2. This is primarily a bug fix release, but the list of fixes is long, and we've also replaced the audio/MIDI IO backend for Windows with completely new code which we think will address some of the issues faced on that platform. This release also sees the return of downloads for Apple PowerPC platforms. There are other exciting changes waiting in the wings for 4.3, but we're already slightly off our monthly release schedule, and this long list of fixes merits a release of its own. read more

Did you know that with Wikispaces Private Label you can force all your wikis to use SSL or prevent your users from changing their usernames? Force All Wikis to Use SSL Encryption As site administrator for your company’s Private Label site, you want to ensure that all of the content on your intranet is secure. You’ve set your site permissions to private and now you want to go that extra step and make sure that all traffic between your computers and our servers is encrypted. You can do this by forcing all wikis on your site to use SSL encryption. To get started, you need to first enable SSL encryption on your site. You can do this by purchasing a wildcard SSL certificate. For more information, go to "Site Administration," the "Settings" tab, and then "Advanced Tools," or send us an e-mail. Once you have SSL set up, return to the "Advanced Tools" page and set "Force SSL" to "Yes." All traffic between your site and our servers will then automatically be encrypted. Prevent User Renames As the Private Label site administrator at your K-12 school, you want to easily manage your thousands of student accounts. This might mean maintaining usernames based on grade level and classroom, and preventing students from renaming their accounts. You can do this by going to "Site Administration," the "Settings" tab, and then "Users and Privacy." Here you simply deselect "Allow User Account Renaming." With this new setting, only administrators will be able to change usernames on the site. Try out these features and let us know what you think. And if you ever have suggestions for other security or control features you’d like to see, please e-mail us at help@wikispaces.com.

This month, we encourage you to check out three award-winning educational wikis on Wikispaces. These wikis have been used to interact with schools from around the world, share classroom activity, and turn online class notes into end-of-year exams. They’re great examples of how wikis can be used to create engaging learning experiences. Below are the winner and runners-up of the Edublogs Best Educational Wikis of 2009: Greetings From The World Arjana Blazic’s wiki bridges different cultures and continents by allowing educators and students to share their stories and cultures with others. Using tools like Glogster, students from around the world interact with their peers through images, videos, and text. Arjana loves using Wikispaces for this project: "Of all the Web 2.0 tools that I’ve learned about, I love Wikispaces the most because it conveys the true essence of Web 2.0 - collaboration! It’s amazing how easily we can work with students and teachers from all parts of the world…What’s more, even teachers that aren’t tech-savvy can easily use it and keep it running smoothly." Soar 2 New Heights Katie Heissenbuttel created this wiki for her fourth grade classroom. Over the past year, Katie has enjoyed watching her students’ discussions develop. Initially, students only answered Katie’s questions on the wiki but they soon began to comment and respond to their peers’ postings. As you visit the wiki, you’ll find student podcasts covering recent news events and individual pages showcasing each student’s work. Katie’s students are always excited to share their latest projects with their parents and parents really love the page of upcoming homework assignments. It’s a great example of how a wiki can transform learning into a community process. HUMS3001: Censorship and Responsibility Ben Miller, a teacher at the University of New South Wales, wanted his students to build learning materials for his course. He decided a wiki was the best platform to capture the group’s work over the semester. Ben chose to create his wiki on UNSW’s Wikispaces Private Label site as it gave his students a university-branded environment for their academic work. Students loved the wiki and after several weeks, were building most of the content for the site - summarizing theories on free speech, arguing their viewpoints, and highlighting censorship cases that they wanted to further explore. The final product was a rich body of knowledge that helped the students prepare for their end-of-year exam. We encourage you to check out this wiki and listen to Ben’s discussion about his wiki project.

You can say good-bye to the hassle of removing one member from your wiki at a time. Wikispaces now allows you to administer members on your wiki in bulk! As an educator preparing for the new semester, you can easily remove your previous students from your wiki before adding new students. Or as the organizer of a growing wiki, you can quickly promote a new round of organizers to help you manage your work. You can now take advantage of bulk management when: Removing members from your wiki Promoting or demoting members or organizers on your wiki Approving pending membership requests To use these new features, log in as your wiki’s organizer, go to "Manage Wiki" and then to your "Members" page.

Did you know that tagging your files can make them easier to find and add to your pages? In this post, I’ll show you how to use tags to help organize the hundreds of files on your wiki. What is a tag? First, let’s go over a little vocabulary. Tags are a simple way to categorize and classify pages and files on your wiki. When you assign a tag to something, it’s like putting a label on it. Let’s say I were a teacher who wanted to keep track of all the different homework assignments I upload to my wiki. I might tag each new assignment I upload as "homework." I can then search for this tag and find all the files that I have tagged "homework." Tags allow me to search across my hundreds of pages and files easily. How do I tag a file? To tag files on your wiki: Go to "Manage Wiki" and then the "Files" page. Select the option "Show Tags, History, and Size." The tags for each file will appear under the file name. To tag a file, click the "edit" link under the file name and type your new tag - "homework" or "homework week 2″ or "Jason." Once you are done, click "Save" to save your tags. Note: You can add as many tags as you would like to a file. If Jason uploads his homework assignment to your wiki, you may want to tag the file as both "Jason" and "homework week 2″. You can then find this file when you search for all of Jason’s work or for all of the week 2 assignments. Now that I’ve tagged my files, how do I find them? There are several ways to find files tagged in a particular way. In this post, I’ll focus on two: searching for tags and filtering your files by tags. To search for tagged files, simply type the tag into the Search box in your wiki’s sidebar. You’ll see the tag listed in the search results. Click on it to see all the pages and files with that tag. You can also filter your files by tags to find the one you want. To do this, edit a page and go to the "File" tool in the toolbar. On the right-hand side of the file upload tool, you will see "Filter by Tag" and "Find Tag." You can use these options to narrow down your search to just a few files. Once you find the file you want, click on it to add it to your page. Give it a whirl! Now it’s your turn. Go ahead, tag your files, and see how much easier it is to find your students’ assignments or your marketing case studies out of the hundreds of files on your wiki. We’d love to hear what you think about file tags or any other feature. Feel free to email us with your feedback at help@wikispaces.com.

You asked for ways to delete your old files before the new school year begins or to lock those 50 pages before you invite your colleagues on board, and we listened. Our new bulk management tool makes it even easier to manage your files and pages - without the tedium of administering pages and files one at a time. What bulk management options do I have? As an organizer of your wiki, you can now: Delete your files and pages in bulk Lock and unlock multiple pages at once Bulk approve, remove and promote members on your wiki How does bulk management make my life easier? We are all busy. Bulk management lets you spend less time managing your wiki so you have more time for family, friends, or even uploading those company reports to your wiki. Just a few clicks and you’ve removed all your unwanted pages and documents. To use these bulk administration features, go to your wiki, "Manage Wiki," and then to either your "Pages" or "Files" page. Let us know what you think with an e-mail to help@wikispaces.com.

Deleted your page by accident? Now you don’t need to e-mail us - you can restore the page yourself. With your wiki’s new Recycle Bin, you can easily find and restore recently deleted pages. To restore a deleted page, make sure you are logged in as the organizer of your wiki. Go to your wiki and then "Manage Wiki." Under the "Content" heading on that page, you’ll see the new "Recycle Bin" icon. When you click on it, you will see your recently deleted pages. Select the ones you wish to undelete and click "Restore."

Man. Man! Growing up is fun. Five years ago, two friends talked six adventurous souls into building a scant handful of wikis. And look at us now: over 4 million members with more than a million and a half wikis, and we just keep growing. It goes without saying (but we’ll say it anyway, because that’s how much we mean it) that we couldn’t have made these five years happen without you. So thank you for being so great, for your endless enthusiasm, and for the way you keep building wikis that make us excited about what we do. To mark the occasion, we’re turning this blog into a celebration. So you can look forward to posts later this week that show how our numbers have changed over the past year, some of the accomplishments we’re most proud of, and highlights of some of those truly fantastic wikis that you guys keep building. Here’s to another five years — and many more!

In keeping with our birthday tradition, let’s take a look at the numbers behind the site. We’d like to start with the big numbers: In the past year, we have almost doubled our total registered users to 4.46 million. And the number of wikis? 1.8 million — again, almost twice last birthday’s number. Wow! And if those numbers aren’t big enough for you, since March of 2009, we’ve had 642 million pageviews and nearly 72 million unique visitors. In the past month alone, we’ve had more than 74 million pageviews and nearly 8.8 million visitors. Honestly, we just can’t get used to numbers like that, they’re so big. Not all that long ago, it was a banner day if we hit 100,000 edits. But now, that’s what we call "Tuesday." We were excited, though, when we hit 144,354 edits in one day on March 2. And between 10 and 11 a.m. on February 23, we had 11,597 edits in a single hour, beating out the previous year’s best by more than 25%. Or, without the editorializing: March 2010 March 2009 All-Time Registered Members 4,468,404 2,244,700 All-Time Wikis 1,804,063 905,127 Pageviews 642,412,469 381,589,973 Unique Visitors 71,808,285 40,079,863 30 Day Pageviews 74,673,090 51,486,418 30 Day Unique Visitors 8,804,730 7,396,158 But we can’t take the credit: It’s because you are working so hard, building wikis that make people excited to participate. So thank you, everyone. We can’t wait to see what the next five years will bring. Pageview and visitor stats are from Google Analytics and are through March 15, 2010. Tell us what you think with an email to help@wikispaces.com.

If you’ll indulge us, we’d like to steal your screen for a minute to boast about the great stuff we’ve done over the past year. It’s been twelve months since our last birthday, and we’ve put in a lot of work to make it easier for you to build the wikis you need and more fun to collaborate in them. Take a look at just a few of our favorite accomplishments: Our Private Label service is better than ever We made all of our premium features available to every new Private Label site, so that organizations of all kinds can have the functionality they need to be successful. Now all new Private Label customers get our most powerful features, including Single Sign-On and our full API. We’re finding more and better ways to integrate with the systems you already have in place for course management, project management, authentication, whatever. We built plugins to let your Wikispaces Private Label site authenticate against Moodle and ISS/Active Directory, and have made it easy for you to set up integration with any authentication system. It’s easier to build and manage your wikis, even across huge organizations, when you build a site-wide template based on an existing wiki. Now you don’t have to build the same infrastructure over and over again — all your pages, files, and permissions are packed up and ready to copy to other wikis on the same Private Label site. We made it simpler to manage your wiki We built a new tagging system that makes it so much easier to keep track of the hundreds of files and pages on your wiki. Now it’s a breeze to view or change tags directly on the wiki page — no matter who posted the original tag. And we made it just as easy to tag your files, so you can find what you’re looking for with no trouble at all. New custom page permissions make it possible — heck, even easy — to decide who can view or edit right down to the page level, not just for the whole wiki. We gave you the power to manage your files, pages and users in bulk. Now you don’t need to go through the headache of deleting all of last year’s pages one…at…a…time. Instead, you can just pick them off the list and click one button — and you’re done. Our interface got prettier and easier We added premade color palettes to the Look and Feel tool so you can set an entire color theme with the click of a button. You can either stop there, or use our color scheme as a shortcut to personalize your wiki your own way. And now the Preview button displays your color changes, too. The editor toolbar is better than ever. We moved the tools you used less often into unobtrusive submenus and used the space we saved to label the Link, File, Widget, and Table buttons. Our new File Picker makes it easier to find the files you’re looking for. Now you can flip through pages of your files or search for files by name. Or you can filter by tag, so it’s easy to track down files in the way that makes sense to you. We added a feature that lets you take any page, or even an entire wiki, and convert it into a great-looking PDF. Now it’s easy to print professionally formatted copies of your wikis, save them for archiving off-line, and share them — even with people who don’t have access to your wiki. …and we still love hearing from you. Let us know what you think with an e-mail to help@wikispaces.com.

In a way, it’s not just us turning five this week. Sure, we set the table, but you guys brought the cake. The way we see it, this is your birthday, too. So we talked to some people who’ve seen us through a few birthdays: Vicki Davis, one of the founders of Flat Classroom, has been with us since 2005, and Dan Beeby, an educational technologist at Columbia University, has been with us since 2007. "The keys to our future as a human race lie in the untapped potential of true, ethical, meaningful collaboration," says Vicki. And that’s what we’ve seen, in these five years: people bridging distances, bringing nation to nation, classroom to classroom, tying plan to execution and the past to the future. As Dan points out, in higher education they’re even breaking down silos between semesters: "It’s easy to carry one semester to the next, just by renaming the wiki. So the original work the students have done isn’t lost forever in a course management system." Without all those barriers, so many things are suddenly possible. The horizon is closer, and it’s broader than ever. And that’s the thing, really. It’s not just that your work keeps us going: it’s that the ways you work challenge and inspire us. A few people who’ve done some truly excellent things in the past year (or more) told us what they’re up to. We bet you’ll think their wikis are as cool as we do. TheScienceClassroom Among other things, Jody Bowie’s high school students are actually writing their own textbook. Their work is visible to the public, so you really should check it out, and let Jody know that he’s managed to bring "new meaning to the idea of teaching students to ‘consider their audience’ when writing:" I see this project as a way for students to begin to create an online portfolio. In fact, I had a student who wanted to know if she "could use the wiki project to show her previous writing work" for a summer workshop in which she was participating. I said, "of course!" Mr. Bruce’s History Two and a half years ago, Larry Bruce decided to give his 9th and 10th grade social studies students a more global perspective on collaboration along with a solid education in U.S. History. With student portfolios, a classroom calendar, and a posted curriculum, he’s done just that: From small-scale partner assignments (Inaugural Addresses) to larger collaborative tasks where students worked with classmates from other class periods asynchronously (The Big Kahuna), our wiki was a place to publish. Simply put, our wiki WORKS for us. As my students mastered introductory elements and uses, I kept reinventing how we (collectively) employed the platform. Genefish Steven Roberts, Assistant Professor in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington, wanted to share science. So he gave his students a place to keep their lab notebooks online: We use it for almost all aspects of our research activities including protocols, location of resources, and general communication. One key aspect is that all members maintain an electronic lab notebook using Wikispaces. This allows everyone (including the public) to follow what we are doing in real-time. Garmin Oregon Complicated devices like the Garmin Oregon outdoor handheld GPS device can be confusing. To help, Scott Dresser created a community that acts as a reference space and a forum for Garmin Oregon owners. Integration with a wide range of media types is one thing that I like about Wikispaces; support for different kinds of media, file downloads, and video helps a lot when you are trying to present information to new users. Since I have multiple wikis and a related Wordpress blog, one thing I wanted was an integrated search function using Google custom search. Wikispaces custom templates allowed me to easily integrate a search function that searches results across all of my sites and returns relevant results. Some closing thoughts It’s exciting, this birthday thing. Because, as far as we’ve come, there are always more challenges, and better ways of looking at things — and we’re learning about that through you. At Columbia, Dan tells us, they’re constantly finding new and better ways to work with the wikis on their Private Label site. "It’s an iterative cycle. We assess what the instructor is looking for and make suggestions. We expose the weaknesses or strengths, then make changes the next time." And, whether you’re working in a university, or a school district, or a company or non-profit, or just building a community around the things that you’re passionate about, it’s been exciting for us to watch you do just that. And now we’ll let Vicki drive it home, because she really says it better than we ever could: I wish Wikispaces a heartfelt happy birthday for their fifth year. In the five years with Wikispaces, they continue to respond and grow and help us press forward to the true collaborative editing environment that has become the gold standard of what we do in the Flat Classroom projects. We create and we collaborate and that is also what Wikispaces does. Thank you, Vicki, Dan, Jody, Larry, Steve, and Scott. And thank you, too, to all the rest of you out there, for all the amazing things you’ve done in these last five years. Happy birthday, from all of us to all of you. Let us know what you’re doing with your wiki or Private Label site: help@wikispaces.com.

When working with a new tool, I always appreciate watching someone else use it before I jump in. With this in mind, we’ve created some new Private Label tutorials for all of you. We introduce you to a Wikispaces Private Label site and show you how to set permissions, invite your members on board, and more. Sit back, relax, and imbibe some site administrator knowledge. An Introduction to Your Private Label Site Become familiar with your Private Label site and learn to edit your wikis. Introduction to Site Administration Become familiar with the site administration features on your Private Label site. Setting Site-Wide Permissions Determine who can access or view content on your site by setting site-wide permissions. Customizing Your Site’s Look Change the overall look of your site to create a branded look for your organization. Creating Wikis on Your Site Create wikis for all your classrooms, departments, or projects. Bringing Your Members on Board Invite members to individual wikis or create accounts for your users up front.

Whether you’re new to Wikispaces Private Label, an old hand at running a successful site, or just curious about what a complete wiki environment could do for your organization, we’d like to invite you to our Private Label Webinar at 4 p.m. PDT on April 20. Sarah has prepared a little something for everyone, from a simple introduction to our administrative tools to some great advice on how to organize your site for maximum success. Plus, we’ve invited Aaron O’Shannessy and Lisa Hayman from BRIDGE, a cross-cultural learning project, to show us what they’ve done with their Private Label site. BRIDGE is using Wikispaces Private Label to build a  lasting bond of learning and cultural understanding between schools in Australia and Asia. So their perspective should be very exciting. Once again, that’s April 20, at 4 p.m. PDT. We’d love for you to join us. Let us know you’re coming.

Just this morning, we gave away our 300,000th free classroom wiki! This classroom has joined over 2.4 million other educators and students in one of the largest educational communities on the internet. Way back in January of 2006, we pledged 100,000 free classroom wikis to primary and secondary educators. We were so excited by the response that, when we hit the mark in September of 2008, we decided to keep going and give away 250,000 more. Over the past four years, while we were working hard to get wikis into your classrooms, we’ve seen others make offers of free wikis, free social networks, and other online services for education, only for those offers to end. But we keep getting bigger and better, in part because giving away free classroom wikis is crucial to what we do as a company. The thing is, free really can work. But first, the offer must be genuine, sustainable, and well managed, and it must be central to a company’s business strategy. For us, there’s no need to spend money on a large sales force or expensive marketing programs. Schools and districts buy our Private Label service because their teachers and students love our free (and private — and ad-free) wikis. "Doing well by doing good" is most meaningful when the good you do leads directly to your success. Building a business like that is harder than it sounds. We’re proud to say that’s what we’ve done. Please join us and make sure your favorite K-12 educator is in the loop. Spread the word by sharing this blog post or retweeting our Twitter tweet.

Sometimes we look at what someone is doing with Wikispaces Private Label, and it really makes us go, "Wow!" Actually, that happens a lot. But sometimes we manage to wrangle a chat with the people who built the site and wrestle their secrets from them. And when that happens, we put up a new case study. In Oakland County, Michigan, the Birmingham Public School district is challenging old-fashioned notions of pedagogy and really looking forward to 21st-century ways of teaching, and thinking about teaching. They’re using their Private Label site as a platform to bring tools and ideas together, and to give teachers, students, and even parents a place to collaborate and get involved. A well-structured site was just the beginning. Since 2008, the teachers and students of the Birmingham Public School district have been learning from each other what makes a successful educational site. And now you can learn from them, too. Read the case study here, or share some of your own secrets for wiki magic below.

On Wednesday, May 5, at 11 a.m. PDT, our very own Sarah Cove will be presenting at a Techsoup.org webinar on wikis. She and her fellow presenters will be discussing wiki basics — what they are, what they do, why they are so cool — with particular emphasis on the role of wikis in libraries and nonprofits. If you’re in a nonprofit and have been looking to learn a bit more about wikis, this is a great opportunity to see what they can do and how they can be used in a nonprofit setting. And you’ll get to hear from people who have actually been using them in their work: find out what they’re doing with wikis, how they got started in wikis, and more. This is a rare chance to talk about wikis from the unique perspective of nonprofits, so don’t miss out: sign up for the free webinar.

Have you ever wanted to know more about this "Private Label" thing we keep talking about? On May 20 at 10 a.m. PDT, we’ll be holding a free informational Private Label webinar, and all your questions will be answered. At least some of your questions. That is, the questions relating to Wikispaces Private Label. We’re going to take a look at some of the basics of site administration and the ways a Private Label site could be used in different organizations. Or, if you want to see some of the flashier stuff or have a specific question about Private Label sites, there will be a live product demonstration and Q&A. And Sharon Betts from Maine School Administrative District #52 will be on board to show us what a real Private Label site looks like in action. If you’re free on May 20 at 10 a.m. PDT, you should definitely stop by. Sign up for the webinar.

We know how hard you work to get your pages just so: a lot of thought goes into how you arrange pages for lesson plans or project briefs, and a lot of work goes into building those pages. Page templates are a great way to make all that planning go farther without any extra work. So what are page templates, exactly? A "page template" is a special kind of wiki page. Just like any wiki page, you can edit it, put text and images on it, embed widgets into it, save it — and then go back to edit it some more later. But it’s special because you can use a page template as a foundation for as many new pages as you would like. What can I do with page templates? Most new wiki pages are empty by default. But if you use a template when you’re making a new page, that page will already be filled with whatever text, images, widgets, and formatting you built into the template. Say, for example, you have several groups of students working on a lab. You know that they’ll all be taking the same steps, and recording the same kinds of observations. Create a template called Lab Notebook. Then, when the students are ready to create new pages to keep their records, they can start a lab notebook page that you know will prompt them to record the right items in the right places. Or say you are using your wiki to plan a conference. You’re going to have several different breakout sessions on each day, and you want to have individual pages for each breakout session. If you start by building a Breakout Session page template, you won’t have to bother formatting each page by time-consuming page. Just pick the template off the drop-down, and you’re ready to go. Well, that makes sense. Now how do I use them? Nothing could be simpler: go to Manage Wiki > Templates, and name your new template. If you want, you can build your template based on the content of a page that you’ve already done. Edit the page template the way you would edit any other page, and hit Save. When you make a new page with the New Page link in the action bar, pick the template you want from the Use a Template drop-down. When you start a new page by following an existing link to a page that doesn’t exist yet, select the template from the drop-down list before you hit the Edit button. Either way, everything you built into the page template will already be on the page by the time you start editing. If you ever want to make changes to one of your templates, go to Manage Wiki > Pages and find the template on the list. You can tell which pages are templates because it says so right in the page name: my Testing page template, for example, would be space.template.Testing. Changing a page template won’t do anything to any pages that already exist; it will just have those changes ready for the next time you use the template. Let us know how your wiki uses page templates below or with an email to help@wikispaces.com.

Odds are, as a dedicated Private Label site admin, you’re spending a fair bit of time building wikis, maintaining wikis, and talking to your wiki organizers about ways to make wikis even better. And you’ve probably run into some wikis that are so successful that you know your users will want to make similar wikis again and again. Which is why we suspect that, if you aren’t using wiki templates already, it’s because you don’t know about them. We thought that this would be a great time to remedy that. Fair enough. Tell me about "wiki templates." Happy to oblige. A wiki template is the answer to the question, "This wiki over here was really successful, and we’d like to use it again. How can we do that?" It lets you copy all of the pages, files, and settings (with the exception of individual page permissions) from your successful wiki into as many new wikis as you want. Let’s say you’re running a Private Label site for your nonprofit. You are setting up local volunteer offices around the country or world, and you want to make sure that every time someone opens a new office, they have a wiki that’s pre-packed with all the reference files and pages that you already know are going to help them. Set up a New Local Office wiki template, and all that work is already done. Or say your school wants to have e-portfolio wikis for each of its students. Just set up an e-Portfolio wiki template, and they can open their wikis and get to work right away. I like the sound of that. We thought you would. How do they work? Go to Site Administration > Wikis and follow the View and Create Templates link. There you’ll be able to manage any existing templates, or create a new template based on any wiki in your site. A wiki template is a designation that you assign to a wiki — much as you would promote a site user to site admin, or a wiki member to a wiki organizer. Any wiki on your site can serve as the source for a wiki template, or you can create a new wiki specifically for that purpose. The name of the template will let your users know what kind of template it is, and can help you keep track if your site has multiple wiki templates. When someone creates a new wiki, they will be able to pick a Wiki Template from the drop-down list. Be sure to give your templates clear, concise, descriptive names so that your users know what they are looking at. Once the user has chosen a template, their new wiki will be a snapshot of the source wiki at that moment, all ready for fresh modifications and a new batch of members. If you make any changes to the source wiki, any new wikis built on the template associated with it will reflect the changes. But the changes won’t have any effect at all on existing wikis. If you have any tips for your fellow site admins on how wiki templates have been useful for you, add a comment below or email us at help@wikispaces.com.

As of June 18, we will no longer support Internet Explorer 6 (IE 6) on Wikispaces. Starting May 24, visitors to any Wikispaces site using IE 6 will see a warning banner linking to this blog post. We will continue to support Internet Explorer versions 7 and 8, as well as other modern web browsers. If you are using IE 6 we encourage you to upgrade to a newer version of Internet Explorer by running Windows Update or by contacting your IT department. If you can’t upgrade Internet Explorer we heartily recommend Firefox, a free download. While we understand this change may inconvenience some of you, it’s a necessary change. Given how few people still use IE 6 as their web browser, the benefits are too small to continue to justify the amount of work that is required to keep Wikispaces working on IE 6. Importantly, your choice of safe, fast, and free alternatives has never been better. Here are some very good reasons to start using a newer, better web browser: IE 6 will be nine years old this summer. By Internet standards, that’s old! Microsoft has released two entirely new versions of Internet Explorer since then, in October 2006 and March 2009. IE 6 is unsafe. In addition to dozens of security fixes over the years, IE 6 is currently vulnerable to 24 known insecurities that are unlikely to ever be fixed[1]. These vulnerabilities put you, your computer, and your data at risk if you browse the Internet with IE 6. IE 6 is slow. Modern browsers have made tremendous performance strides in recent years. A new version of IE, Firefox, or Chrome will feel like a rocket ship in comparison. IE 6 does not support modern web standards. We’ve spent a considerable amount of effort over the years developing fixes and workarounds for Wikispaces to function on IE 6 — workarounds not required for any other browser. We have some awesome changes planned and we simply cannot make them work in IE 6. You’ll also find that many other websites work much better when you upgrade to a newer web browser. Fewer than one in twenty visitors to Wikispaces uses IE 6. Of those who do, the vast majority are visitors who never login to the site. When we end support in June, we’ll be joining Google Apps[2], YouTube[3], and dozens of other web companies[4] who have already ended support for IE 6. So again, if you’re running IE 6, first, check with your IT department if you have one. They may already have an upgrade for you. The next best option is to run Windows Update and upgrade to Internet Explorer 8. If you’re unable to run Windows Update, Firefox is a great option. Here’s our full list of supported browsers: Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0+ Mozilla Firefox 3.0+ Safari 3.0+ We’re always here to answer any questions you have: drop us a note at help@wikispaces.com. http://secunia.com/advisories/product/11/ http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/01/modern-browsers-for-modern-applications.html http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/02/youtube-to-kill-ie6-support-on-march-13.ars http://www.ie6nomore.com/

We’re always working to make Wikispaces better. In fact, we just recently made a few improvements. Maybe you’ve already noticed. In case you haven’t, here’s what’s new: List of pending invitations Now it doesn’t matter whether you’ve invited people to join your wiki by username or email address. Either way, you’ll be able to find a list of all those people who haven’t made up their minds yet on the membership page of your wiki under Pending Membership Requests. Tag filtering for files and pages Go to Manage Wiki > Files. Do you see it? Over there, on the right. Now go to Manage Wiki > Pages. There it is again! It’s a list of your tags. Because now you can filter your pages and files by tag. It’s just another easy way to track, organize, and manage all the assets on your wiki. Guest message posting Sometimes you just can’t assume that everyone involved in your wiki has an active user account. Whether it’s because you want to preserve your permissions settings or because your collaborators aren’t interested in membership, there may be times that people want to ask questions, get answers, and contribute to the discussion without the full access that comes with an account. Now you can let that happen. Just go to Manage Wiki > Permissions and change your settings to allow message posts from non-members. (This feature is only available on Super-plan wikis and Wikispaces Private Label.)

Hello, I’m Ryan Koopmans, the most recent addition to the Wikispaces team. I’ll endeavor to make the website an even better experience for you as part of the software engineering group. I’m interested in realizing the full potential of online collaboration, so clearly I’ve come to the right place. Previously I’ve worked in consulting, government, startups, and a little what-have-you.

ISTE 2010 From June 26 to June 30, we’re going to be at the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference in Denver. For those of you who have never been, ISTE is an annual event for education in technology: thousands of people from all over the world — teachers, technology coordinators, administrators, library media specialists, teacher educators… — will be meeting to learn from each other. Because it’s such a great way to meet so many educators and because it’s such a blast being around everyone, we go every year. This year Adam Frey and James Byers, the founders of Wikispaces, will be in Denver from June 26 to June 30. They have some great events planned so if you’re going to be in town please let us know — and make sure to sign up for our party. Conference Events All week: Office Hours! See below. Saturday, June 26, all day: EduBloggerCon Wednesday, June 30, 8:30am - 9:30am: Wonderful World of Wikis: Practical Classroom Wikis for All Ages with Vicki Davis and Adam Frey Wikispaces Party! If you missed our party at NECC 2009, you missed a great night. Don’t make the same mistake twice. From 6:30 - 9pm that Tuesday night, we’ll be hosting a party to share some food and beverages in celebration of another great year and conference. Don’t miss out: sign up now. Jazz at Jacks Denver Pavilions, 500 16th St #320, Denver, CO 80202 (Just a block and a half from the convention center.) 6:30 - 9pm, Tuesday, June 29 Office Hours We come to ISTE to give some presentations (and throw a party) but mostly we come to meet as many of you as possible. We love to hear your success stories, get your product feedback, hear what challenges you have and how we can help at your school or district, and learn as much as we possibly can. Our Office Hours are time we set aside for one-on-one meetings with anyone who would like to talk with us. First come first served, so please sign up and let us know when you’d like to chat. We look forward to speaking with you. Sunday, June 27, 3 - 5:30pm Monday, June 28, noon - 2pm and 3 - 5pm Tuesday, June 29, 9 - 11am Wednesday, June 30, 10am - noon Check out our schedule and let us know you’re coming.