Belmont Webmaster's Journal

Five freshman students have been blogging their experiences here at Belmont over the last month or so. The Bruin Blog has been transformed from a standard MovableType template into a customized look that mirrors Belmont's new content management system. Blogging regularly is new to this group of studenst and they have taken to it well. Many thanks to the assistance of Byron Marsh for knocking out the kinks in the production version of the site.

Posted by admin at 10:31 AM | Permalink

There are approximately 500 faculty/staff profile pages on our current web site and the majority of those pages include an image of the faculty (or staff) member. As part of the change in design and the transition to the new site, the construction team decided to move away from the 'rolodex' looking graphic that links to the profile page. Why would we want to do that? First of all, the rolodex cards are all graphic construction. Each one is crafted using Photoshop. Each one has a fixed background color that matched the last version of Belmont's palette of web colors. Secondly, if any changes had to be made on the card (i.e. new title, additional degree), then a new graphic had to be created and substituted for the original...and you would be surprised at how often changes are requested on these rolodex cards. Finally, and perhaps the best reason for wanting to make a change, all of the graphic work funneled into one person and resulted in an increasingly higher percentage of the web maintenance with each semester.

So, what will replace the rolodex system?...well, that is the challenge before us now. Built into the new Hannon Hill system is a data definition page for creating faculty/staff profiles. Essentially, it is a form that queries the user for name, title, degree, testimonial, etc... and allows the user to browse the system for a particular headshot image. The form also includes a series of user selected checkboxes that tell the system where (which department faculty/staff page) the faculty profile belongs...and several faculty members belong to more than one academic and/or administrative group. What this gets us is an easily maintainable system for faculty/staff profiles that does not include high maintenance graphics. Maintenance of profiles shifts from one person on campus back to the designated web support person for each department.

Continue reading "Faculty Profile Pages and our August launch" ...

Posted by Paul Chenoweth at 03:00 PM | Permalink

Day One of user training is over. All but one of the registants were able to come...with staff on the perimeter, the ten computer stations were full. Here are my top five reactions/sentiments, gleaned from our user group:

1. The feeling of being overwhelmed by the overall system and all the bells and whistles... it is easy to say, "let's get to the editing!"... however, without some overview of where things are and how they function, the race to edit is a trap.
2. The difficulty in conveying the idea that images that have migrated from the existing site and currently show up on pages , are actually external images (i.e. on a server other than the Hannon Hill editing system), and that they must be re-connected internally...particularly since that external server happens to be one that will become the primary destination server anyway. Yep, that IS confusing.
3. The magnitude of the job before us and the deadline to get things delivered --- perhaps the training announcement should have included a warning that the next couple of weeks come with less sleep and and a lot more time seated in front of a computer screen.
4. A feeling of optimism that this is the right direction to go and that even though it is new, involves learning a very different way of managing content...yet it is do-able with experience using the tools available. Having a WYSIWYG editor available is a much needed asset.
5. From the administrator side, there is even more work to be done to make sure that the user experience is as painless as possible

All in all, the feeling at the end of the day was positive but a little mindboggling. Keeping the momentum up and the interest level high will be a challenge for several people whose pre-fall sememster schedules are already full. Managing the resouces to get users the support that they need and still deliver the remaining elements of the site will be the greatest challenge for the four of us who are leading the construction implementation process.

Posted by Paul Chenoweth at 04:45 AM | Permalink