| User | Post |
|---|
12:04 am
May 4, 2009 |
Andrew Spittle
| | Walla Walla, WA | | | Moderator | posts 49 |
| | For those who don't know, I'm the Web Manager for the Whitman Pioneer. After launching a redesigned site on WordPress in February I think that there's a lot of improvement that can be made in designing college news sites. This summer I'm hoping to lead some web development sessions between college web designers (and anyone else who is interested). These sessions would be a mix of critique and training/mutual teaching. Below is a rough outline of what I'm thinking: - Bi-weekly or monthly sessions with conference call audio and screen sharing
- Focus on a certain aspect of everyone's site for each session (e.g. navigation menus)
- Get different people to lead a training session every meeting that is focused on whatever we are critiquing
- Try to bring in someone from the SND or ONA to give a professional perspective too
To see a full list of ideas you can check out the ongoing Google Doc. So, what do you think? If you're thinking of redesigning your site this summer or in the fall what would you like to collaborate on? Is there something you're particularly good at that you think others could benefit from? | Andrew – andrew@copress.org – CoPress Hosting Director – http://www.andrewspittle.net |
|
1:23 am
May 4, 2009 |
miles
| | | | | Member | posts 6 |
| | I'm certainly interested. The Gazette will be doing some significant changes, and I'd be interested in walking some folks through the very basics of Django in addition to getting site critiques. We'll probably be building off of News Evolved, but we'll be doing quite a few edits (and color/functionality changes) to get it working with our Django instance. |
|
7:08 am
May 4, 2009 |
MaxCutler
| | | | | Member | posts 10 |
| | I'd also be interested. We are redesigning and improving some pages for the YDN, and I'd certainly appreciate getting some feedback and suggestions for them. Also, we will need to develop a "default" or sample theme for use with Courant News, so I'd be interested in getting help there, potentially using News Evolved as a starting point. |
|
9:02 pm
May 4, 2009 |
Mo Jangda
| | Toronto, ON | | | Member | posts 35 |
| | I likely won't be doing much designing this summer, but I can definitely provide guidance, feedback, moral support, etc.  | |
|
12:01 am
May 5, 2009 |
joey
| | Silicon Valley | | | Admin | posts 39 |
| | I'm not much help on coding, but I've got some radical ideas on web design that I'd like to work on. Count me in. | |
|
3:27 pm
May 5, 2009 |
kevin
| | | | | New Member | posts 2 |
| | Post edited 12:47 am – May 6, 2009 by kevin
This is a great. I had been thinking about writing a blog series along these lines, but this is a much better idea. Collaboration could be very fruitful, especially if a good number of people get involved. A thought – Instead of focusing each session on a particular WordPress trick or CSS technique, perhpas it'd be better to focus on a particular element of news site design. List of potential topics: - Article pages
- Typography: headlines, body text, etc
- Photos, captions
- Media – slideshows, video, maps
- Sidebars
- Links, and other attachments
- Comments
- Advertisements
- Navigation
- Front page
- Breaking news
- Blogs
(Do you have any suggestions for this list?) For each topic, we could look at what's been done elsewhere, what are good/bad practices, share ideas, which code techniques could be used, etc. But for the nitty gritty of the techniques themselvs, I think it's better just to link to written tutorials and demos than trying to do that in a conversation/seminar format. So that everyone could go at their own pace as needed, ask questions & learn in the forums. Like someone said on the gdoc, we should blog after each session, to provide reference, links, and continue discussion. I think there are enough potential topics that it should be more like weekly than monthly. What do you all think? Would that be too much? |
|
12:46 am
May 6, 2009 |
Andrew Spittle
| | Walla Walla, WA | | | Moderator | posts 49 |
| | @Kevin, great points. I think that tying the design sessions to particular aspects of the site would be really helpful. Also, it seems to me that it almost might need to be a requirement that you post the files, code, etc. from any session you lead so that everyone can benefit. Ideally this would be something where afterwards people would have some skills to take away and immediately apply to their own project(s). | Andrew – andrew@copress.org – CoPress Hosting Director – http://www.andrewspittle.net |
|
6:55 pm
May 13, 2009 |
kevin
| | | | | New Member | posts 2 |
| | TIME – I'm thinking about an hour sessions, once a week. What time would be the most conveinent for the most people? Weekday afternoons? Weekdays evenings? Perhaps Saturday and Sunday? Also, I'm contacting some pros & experts who might be able to teach a lesson or field Q&A. Any suggestions of names or topics? Let's get started soon! |
|
12:28 am
May 14, 2009 |
Andrew Spittle
| | Walla Walla, WA | | | Moderator | posts 49 |
| | @Kevin and others. Here's an update: We're thinking of once a week for an hour or so (preferably a weekday evening PST) starting in late May and running until early/mid July. Keep a look out for a post on the CoPress blog soon with more details and expectations. Should be a fun summer! | Andrew – andrew@copress.org – CoPress Hosting Director – http://www.andrewspittle.net |
|
12:29 am
May 14, 2009 |
emilybabay
| | | | | New Member | posts 2 |
| | Hey everyone. I'm the online editor for the Daily Pennsylvanian. As some of you probably know, we're redesigning our site (and moving off CP!) and I'm definitely interested in getting some feedback on it and seeing what other sites are doing. Weekly sounds great. |
|
7:32 pm
May 14, 2009 |
Daniel Bachhuber
| | | | | Admin | posts 102 |
| | @Emily, you're moving the Daily Pennsylvanian to Drupal, right? Have you guys started the redesign process at all? The conversation with the Daily Illini and the Minnesota Daily might be of interest to you. | |
|
9:10 pm
May 14, 2009 |
emilybabay
| | | | | New Member | posts 2 |
| | Yes, we're moving to Drupal. We have a design (though with some changes to be made) and are doing a test drive over the summer with our weekly summer edition, keeping the old site up but also uploading articles to the new site. We're planning to market the launch for the beginning of the fall semester. |
|
12:29 pm
May 16, 2009 |
sbressler
| | | | | Member | posts 15 |
| | Hey All, I'm Scott Bressler, the Online Editor for Student Life, the newspaper for Washington University in St. Louis. We're just beginning to move off of CP5 to WP – we have all of our archives in WordPress MU and are beginning to design the site. I'd love to get involved with this collaboration this summer. |
|
12:57 pm
May 16, 2009 |
Andrew Spittle
| | Walla Walla, WA | | | Moderator | posts 49 |
| | Hi Scott. Sounds great. Look for a blog post in the next few days and we should then be starting in the coming weeks! Also, I'm curious why you guys are going with WP MU? Anything specific? | Andrew – andrew@copress.org – CoPress Hosting Director – http://www.andrewspittle.net |
|
1:14 pm
May 16, 2009 |
sbressler
| | | | | Member | posts 15 |
| | WPMU as opposed to just plain-vanilla WP? It was actually the decision of the Director of New Media, Sam Guzik, but it was so that we could have our main news on one blog, and then separate blogs for the various sections that want to actually blog (and use WP the way it was meant to). |
|
Login 
Forum
Print this Post 
Topic RSS 
