In the past, we’ve done all of this in-house, single page at a time posting using our CMS. Last year we finally took the leap to a real blogging platform and started to use WordPress. Part of the process of moving was figuring out how to best present the blog posts. Do we have individual blogs for each student blogger? Do we present them all on one page together? We opted for doing one blog with multiple authors publishing to the same space. We thought that this would allow us to present the most content to each student as they visit the site.

One big thing stood in our way. We needed to be able to manage when the blog posts were published. With the number of student bloggers we have and the format in which the blog is set up, we needed to ensure a consistent flow of posts. If the students published themselves, we’d get 10 posts on a Monday and nothing for the rest of the week. Consequently, the posts that were published first, would then also be lost down the page as new posts were published. (Wow, that’s a lot of “posts” and “publish”, sorry). But we still needed students to be able to upload pictures and to save drafts to come back to later.

The way we decided to do this was to not allow students to publish the posts themselves. Unfortunately, the built-in WordPress roles are not conducive to this, so we had to find another solution for defining roles.

We went with one plug-in for the first year. I found that it offered a lot of options that we would never use. We simply needed to edit the built-in WP roles, nothing too fancy. This plug-in worked for a while, until recently when inexplicably the plug-in started creating problems. So I was on the hunt for a new solution.

I found Capabilities Manager. It allows me to just go in and edit the pre-defined capabilities on the WP roles. Nothing too involved, just simple checkboxes where I can turn off certain capabilities in the individual roles. It does allow for me to create new roles that would allow even further fine-grain control. In the future, I might create a role for our staff bloggers that post from time-to-time that would allow a little more access.

Do you have any other tools or plug-ins that make your wordpress installs work better?

The “New Twitter” has been tweeted, blogged, mashed, etc. into oblivion the past month. I’ve been able to use it for about a month and I really do enjoy some the features of the new interface. However, they still have not fixed one glaring problem I’ve had with their web interface – when you’re on someone’s profile page and then log-in using the drop down interface, it takes you to your page, not back to the page you were on.

Now, I understand that they created the “new twitter” interface to bring to the web a lot of the features currently available in most third party clients. But they must realize that for most prolific tweeters, the web interface doesn’t meet a lot of their needs.

I tried to not use a third-party client at the recent High Ed Web conference in Cincinnati. This did not go well. Even though I had access to and used the “new twitter” web interface, I had problems keeping up. Why? Because it doesn’t allow for changes in the way I like to see things. Using a column based client like Tweetdeck, I could keep track of the conference hashtag (#heweb) as well as read tweets from others that weren’t at the conference. Had I not been using Tweetdeck, I would never have known there was a 4.7 earthquake back home in Oklahoma while I was away. I wouldn’t have seen those tweets till much later.

But back to point at hand. One of the primary ways I use twitter at work (8+ hours a day) is to follow tweets on Tweetdeck and if I see someone mention a person that I might be interested in following, I click the username and it opens their profile page in Chrome. Since I’m not usually logged in to the Twitter web interface, in order to follow said person, I must log in via the drop down and then either retype that persons twitter name into the search or address field or hit back to actually get to where I can follow them.

“But you can view their profile in Tweetdeck.” Yes, that is true. But as Tweetdeck is quick to point out, that requires using more of my precious API calls. And to be honest, the Tweetdeck interface for a user’s profile isn’t stellar.

My main issue with this problem is the fact that Twitter is going against normal UI protocol. When you offer an on-page drop down login interface, the user expects to stay on that page once they’ve logged in. If you want to force me to my profile page after logging in, then take me to a new page to log in rather than offering an in-page element.

Sorry this was rather long, but it’s an issue that I’ve had and have noticed that several others have had as well.

So please Twitter, Ev, someone fix this!

Choose your Colors Wisely

I just received an email from my local cable provider and while I appreciate them trying to “jazz up” their designs for their emails, I would much appreciate someone looking over the email before they send it. A quick glance at the email by a designer would not have allowed a bright pink on grey for their links. Check out the picture below:

By choosing to make their link colors pink, they’ve immediately turned me off in this email. It’s very jarring to look at and inherently unreadable. A better color for these links would have been a nice pale blue or really almost any other color.

When choosing your design scheme for a particular email campaign, remember to have someone fresh  (read: not involved with the email team/campaign) read over the email and let you know if there is anything that doesn’t work or is difficult to read. A 10 minutes process that will save your readers headaches in the long run.

There were a ton of sessions dedicated to specific tools and techniques for getting the most out of them. But the most rewarding sessions were the more higher level sessions that focused both on how to get the most satisfaction from your job and also future-casting for what is to come in higher ed and the web in general.

I’ll be writing more soon about some of the things I learned and how I think I see them affecting the way I do my job and work and play in the web.

Our panel was gathered to talk about how universities can utilize social networks like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to attract students, keep them and stay in touch with alumni. This topic has been presented on and presented on at many conferences. This time was nice because we also touched on how best to control/influence your message once they’re out there.

I presented alongside Brad J Ward of BlueFuego, Scott Kilmer from Abilene Christian University and Andrew Meyers from Hope College. The session was at the AACRAO Strategic Enrollment Management conference at the Hyatt Regency in Dallas. Kai Drekmeier from InsideTrack.com hosted the session. So after we all spoke, we opened it up to questions.

Overall, I think it went pretty well. Especially for my first presentation.

After the session, Brad and Scott had to head out, but Andrew and I went to grab a bite and found an awesome place in Deep Ellum called Twisted Root Burgers. They had amazing burgers and house-brewed root beer. The flavor of the day was Champagne Root Beer. I was a bit skeptical at first, but it was pretty good.

Overall, great trip. Although 6 hours on the road for 3 hours in Dallas was pretty harsh.

What is the purpose of your homepage?

the primary purpose is to help users find the information they are seeking.

Does it look good when it’s doing that?

Re-Designs don’t need to be a tear down situation. In the vast majority of cases you can fix the specific problems.

Incremental ReDesign – Research, Tweak and Repeat.

It’s easier to ask forgive….

But you won’t need forgiveness…

Research

• Articles, books & conferences (like this one)
• Web statistic data
• Surveys
• User Testing

Introduce your institution and its strengths

Example: University of Mary Hardin-Baylor

- doesn’t show you a lot about the school

Ex: Biola University – link

- biblicaly centered education – we know something now

Ex. Tennesee Knoxville – link

- statement about the university – we know something

The Banner

Great place to build your identity, piece of the website that’s right front and center.

Popular to use Flash or Ajax/Javascript

Notre Dame useful flash banner – link

UT Med School Office of Communications – link

Photography is key, we are built to know what are stock photos and what are real photos. Hire a photographer on staff, freelance it out or just buy a good quality digital camera.

Natural lighting is key.

Navigation

Lenoir Community College – link – bad example

Too many people need their information on the home page. It’s not an ideal experience for your users to have an experience like this. Too many groups of links and why is this here is your user’s experience.

If you have logical groupings, this becomes easier to deal with.

Oxford University – link – great grouping

Boston University – link – great grouping

Search Placement

The bulk of colleges put their search box in the top right. Put it here, your users expect it there.

a:link

Be cautious when you break the “blue-underlined link” rule. Main navigation, main news stories are okay. But if you have a paragraph with links inside, you want them easy to spot. Absolutely critical is using the hover state so users know when they are on a link.

Color

Some colors look great when they are on a jersey, and on a fan’s chest, but on the web they look bad.

Indian Hills Community College – link is to current (they’ve fixed) – very challenging colors to work with

USC Rossier School of Education - link – it’s not the colors, but the relationships between them

Monochromatic gradients work great!

Use the bright colors to highlight, not as your background

Colors evoke feelings. They make you feel a certain way. Pick colors that go with the message that you are putting out there. If you have difficult colors, see if you can step out of that to complement the colors you have.

Use colors to separate content

- Champlain College – link

Spacing and Fonts

They make a big difference when it comes to navigation with text. Line height is one thing. Increase the line height just a little and it makes it much easier to read.

Headings, lists, bold, italics, etc. – change colors, sizes, bullets, bolding all these things can help separate your text and makes it much easier to scan the page.

Having small spaces adds a sense of business and chaos. Changing your line heights, sizes, padding makes a huge difference. Most users won’t notice that you’ve changed anything, except that it would be better. It doesn’t take a lot to fix this stuff.

Consider every element. Don’t do anything because everyone else is doing it.

Consider your ability to maintain anything you add.

Don’t be afraid to be inspired by others. But don’t copy.

More information on Designing with Style

- eduStyle.net – Inspiration for Campus Web Designers

-BlogHighEd.org

-Dezinspiration

-Most Inspired

-Smashing Magazine

“I don’t know what the next big thing is…sorry” – Dmitri

You can help but get inspired by the things that are done on the web. The Iranian election, how we all came together for a common cause. When Michael Jackson died, the web basically slowed down because we are operating as fast as we can, at a high demand.

Why is the web broken? The technology is the triggering force. But people also are the force. it’s a chicken and egg situation.

Technology means different things to different people. It’s really a supply chain. One person builds something that then enables further development.

There is consumer facing technology - flickr, facebook twitter

Developer facing – javascript, css, ajax, etc.

The browser is the invisible technology.

If you ask someone what browser they are using, they don’t really know what you’re talking about. We know what a car is, but for the most part the browser is viewed as a window into the web.

Technology is hard. The beauty of tech is that it was born as a simple thing. We kept bolting the jet engine on the bicycle. We keep using work arounds, they are full of flaws. Technology isn’t complete. People who invented the web didn’t think of everything.

We are left figuring these things out on the fly

demand = many different people solving same problems in different ways how do we know which is the right one?

Everyone has the answer. The reason we have different solutions is because everyone is trying to complete the web in different ways. Very hard for both browser developers and site developers. One to solve this is to just give up. Build your own, but that just creates a bigger problem. The best option is to solve the problem. Don’t build a new web, solve the problems of the one we have. One option is to simply get faster. Make it work faster using improvments to jscript engines, layout speed, browser start up time. Lots of server side stuff and browser side. Play better: Be more compatible: standards, quirks, bugs, evangelism…there are 50 million browsers out there. HTML 5.0 is a grand idea. A specification that will make all browsers compatible. Make all things compatible. No more CSS hacks, javascript hacks, IE workarounds, etc. Play better: be more open. community feedback, open development, open source, participation Changing the game. What can we do to change the web? – cut the cord

• HTML 5.0
• Geo
• offline web apps

You don’t have to be connected at all times for your sites to work. Cut the cord so that you are accessible everywhere. feels a bit like a Google pitch at this point Miniaturesaztion of the web devices will continue and will require good interfaces and not too heavy websites. Change the game: break the box. o3d, css 3d transforms, video, canvas, svg. We will start seeing 3-dimensional environments right in the browsers. That is the huge game changers that is coming down the line. Video is also coming. What you see today is actually a flash movie. Web doesn’t actually have a web video ability, you have to load into flash. HTML 5 adds the <video> tag. You can then style is and do whatever you want with it and it just works in the browser. No more supporting multi-user formats. Canvas – already available, but now more browsers are supporting it. Canvas demo – chromeexperiments.com – great possibilities in the future. o3d creates a possible 3d world just in the browser with no plug-ins

CSS 3d – allows 3d visualizations within the browser – www.satine.org/research/webskit/snowleopard/snowstack.html

This is the lowest hanging fruit. coming sooner than later.

Once we’ve broken out of the box, we have to build a better box.

sanboxing, native client, caja

isolation of sites within the browser (chrome)

Security is important. Most of the bad things on the web happen in javascript. The unscrupulous use of javascript allows someone to take over your data.

someone is inventing the next big thing right now in granny’s basement.

What is the future of the web, where are the next big things coming from?

Q&A time

Q: could you point to some places where to learn more about html 5?

A: google Mark Pilgrim HTML 5 – blog.whatwg.org/this-week-in-html5-episode-1

Q:at what point do you see the browser manufacturers catching up to standards?

A: I don’t know, I do know that the pressure is on. It’s up to us to keep that pressure on. We have to get that one right (CSS 2.0).

Q: Where does W3C sit on HTML 5?

A: They have fully embraced it. It is in charge of the process.

Q: What about type-kit?

A: there is a big push into trying to make web-fonts more ubiquitous. THe most widely implemented is the CSS web-fonts. The type foundry isn’t wanting to use this so that they can enforce their rights to the fonts on the web. Which is hard, unless you have some hard DRM involved.

Q: You didn’t mention anything about search (you’re from google)?

A: I don’t do search. I work on Chrome.

Q: what are some of the things coming up in mobile?

A: netbooks are the next big thing. it will evolve very rapidly into something else. The idea that you can own a computer that is always on, connected, it’s very appealing. netbooks are cheap. you can see students interested in this.

done.

The biggest benefits users will see will be when it comes to search engines and Facebook Pages. Your average user would think it nice to be able to tell people to go to facebook.com/theirname, but for companies/non-profits, this ability is imperative. This will not only help when sending users to your page, but it will provide a much needed boost in search engine results. Facebook.com points out this fact on their blog post regarding the release of vanity url’s.

People can enter a Facebook username as a search term on Facebook or a popular search engine like Google, for example, which will make it much easier for people to find friends with common names.

full post

Now many would see this as an opportunity ripe for facebook url squatting. Facebook has a remedy for this. Usernames, once claimed, will remain with the user permanently. You will not be able to transfer the name or change your name once you have chosen it. So choose wisely. Also, they have noted that generic names will not be allowed by the system. So the 1-800-Flowers folks will not be able to get facebook.com/flowers. That also means that no college/university will be able to get facebook.com/university or facebook.com/college.

So make sure you are online at 12:01am EDT on Saturday June 13 to Claim Your Name. I’ll be on at 11:01pm CDT Friday, June 12th claiming my name and hopefully one for my institution.

Hey folks—thanks for your feedback, here’s a plan for #fixreplies http://bit.ly/6cSnh

The blog post linked states that while totally replacing the feature they removed is not possible due to scaling, they are working on a new feature set that will give users more control over how they see messages containing @ replies. He also allayed some fears with this part of the post:

First, we’re making a change such that any updates beginning with @username (that are not explicitly created by clicking on the reply icon) will be seen by everyone following that account.

full post

This will still allow users to put another user’s name at the beginning of a post without fear that the message won’t get out. This is great for when people intentionally put someone’s name in a post to tell someone about them, however, this does little to replace the serendipitous nature of conversations on Twitter.

The way this will now work is that when someone simply types “@username” in a post, everyone will see it. But if they use the “reply” button on Twitter.com (or possibly in an API program like tweetdeck or tweetie), no one but those following both the sender and the user they are replying to will see the message.

The new feature set that @Biz has promised might fulfill that part of it, but if I’m reading his post right, we’ll have to change this on a user by user basis. It might get a little klugy for people following more than a few people to have to in to each one and set it up to receive those messages.

I’ll wait and reserve judgement on the new feature until it’s out and ready to go. But I’m hoping that they at least include some sort of batch setting process for this rather than only on a one-by-one basis.

The powers that be at Twitter.com have now decided that if you aren’t following somebody, you don’t want to see when someone you follow @ replies to them in a post. They will now remove that tweet from your stream.

We’ve updated the Notices section of Settings to better reflect how folks are using Twitter regarding replies…However, receiving one-sided fragments via replies sent to folks you don’t follow in your timeline is undesirable. Today’s update removes this undesirable and confusing option…

full post

Note that they call this a “small settings update”

On the face of this, it would seem to be a logical update. If I’m not involved in a conversation, there isn’t much need for me to see that tweet. But what this really has done is eliminate any chance of discovering new people through followers. The biggest example of this is in the #followfriday phenomenon. Every Friday, hundreds of twitterers will post the names of several people they think that their followers might want to follow. Whether that’s interesting people, people that post funny tweets or most useful in my case, people in the same industry that you might not be following. I have begun to follow several people on the basis of #followfriday. I’ve met many interesting people who work in higher education because I’ve either seen them in a #followfriday post or seen a person I follow reply back to them.

What Twitter has really done is once again, misunderstood the way we use the @ system. I’m sure they really meant to it be a true “reply” function, but it has turned into much more than that. Your users utilize the system in ways you couldn’t imagine and made the service truly useful. But now, you have broken what made it special. You have broken the system by which you find new people to follow.