The Campanil’s newly redesigned Web site launched this past weekend, and overall we think it’s a great success. It is still a work in progress — as all Web sites should be — but we hope our readers agree it’s a large improvement from our old site. So: what’s new?
Earlier this summer, Student Life, the independent newspaper of Washington University in St. Louis, relaunched its Web site using WordPress µ. The new site is the culmination of several months of conversations within Student Life’s Web team and a summer of intense design and programming. More importantly, the July launch was the first time that Student Life’s Web site was completely student-run since joining College Publisher in 2001 (long before it became the College Media Network).
Our decision to leave CMN and College Publisher 5.0 stemmed from a desire to gain finer control over users’ experience in interacting with our Web site and to open to door for future Web development projects. We had been having discussions for several years about the possibility of building our own site, but the final decision to leave CMN was made last spring after a rocky experience with CP5 and the growth of our Web staff to a size that we thought could sustain the design and development of a new site into the future.
As we started to look for a content management system to power our new site, we evaluated three basic options: using WordPress (WordPress µ), Drupal or building our own content management system in Django. At the end of the day, we chose to go with the WP option because several members of our interactive staff had worked with it in the past and because the system offered an easy way of running our main site and all of our blogs within one installation. Although Drupal is also extremely powerful, we found that WordPress’s interface was better suited to a workflow that would begin to allow non-technical reporters and editors to work within our CMS. We haven’t dropped the long-term plan of moving to a Django-powered system, but the development cycle for creating a system that would completely suit our needs would have taken far longer than the time we allotted for our Web transition.
After three months of hard work, the Minnesota Daily has a brand new design to improve its layout and usability. Son Huynh gives us his take on theming Drupal, changing a paper’s workflow and reorganizing news content.
In addition, just last March, the Minnesota Daily teamed up with developers from NewsCloud to create a Facebook application as part of a not-for-profit research study sponsored by the Knight Foundation to find new ways of engaging young people in news readership and community engagement. As an incentive, the Minnesota Daily hosts challenges and implemented a point system to reward active readers with prizes for their participation (such as posting on the Facebook page, tweeting, following the paper on Twitter).
Son also talks about the challenges of building an online community around the paper and his plans to revamp the app by adding Facebook Connect, so users can access the paper while being logged on to Facebook, and a selection on the paper’s site to better connect student groups and campus events. The newest version of the Minnesota Daily is set to launch on Sept 8th. Be sure to check out the new multimedia section, which was in part inspired by the Onion.
Have feedback for the Minnesota Daily? Leave a comment or email Son at shuynh [at] mndaily [dot] com.
With a new school year kicking off across the United States, things are busy in the university scene as well as here at CoPress. Along with our own new site, many new clients are rolling out their new and improved Web presences. Of the several that went live recently, we asked a few of the people involved with development to write a short piece about their experience. What follows are accounts from a mix of publications in Michigan, California and Arkansas.
Brian Manzullo, Editor in Chief
After a summer-long process of transitioning from College Publisher and building a new design, Central Michigan Life launched its new WordPress-powered site on Aug. 20. One aim for this site was to create a more simple, clutter-free look that was visually appealing but also straightforward enough that readers don’t have headaches trying to find what they’re looking for. Our photos and social networking elements are more prominent and the different story subtopics that people might want to follow exclusively are visible (e.g. football, money). Most of all, though, we wanted freedom with our Web site. We have control of all advertising and all of the different elements on our site, meaning we can try new things quite easily if we wish. My hope, however, is that we don’t stop with the makeover. The real goal is to keep readers engaged with our online presentation, whether it is through live chats, Twitter, Facebook or story comments. We feel that we can better connect them to issues that matter, and we will work hard to utilize our site in doing so.
Chris Ullyott, Webmaster
We launched our new Web site, www.dailytitan.com, on Aug. 10. It was a task to learn WordPress from the very beginning but, in short order, we began to see how the theming system worked and were able to successfully make fundamental changes to the software. With the help of the nice people at CoPress, brilliant plugins, and some elbow grease, we were able to customize our WordPress theme to suit the specific needs of both our editorial and advertising staffs. Now we have a much more attractive, intuitive, and useful online presence.
The biggest advantage over our previous system is the amount control we now have over both the visual and technical aspects of our site. We now have complete control over:
We can see major opportunities for university media using open-source content management systems. The amount of control one can have takes a little getting used to! However, WordPress is fairly simple to learn, and any committed media student can quickly learn the HTML, CSS and PHP coding techniques needed to make improvements to a WordPress theme without re-inventing the wheel.
Currently on our site, we’re particularly proud of the “stay connected” widget bar we added, which lets users immediately connect with our social media presence and use other distribution channels like podcasts and email subscriptions. We also can’t get over how cool our new media kit is, courtesy of our talented design staff. The Issuu viewer makes the presentation sing.
The custom navigation bars proved a fruitful project for us as well. By rewriting the header navigation code with plain old HTML and CSS, we strictly separated editorial from advertising content and gave special pages more appropriate homes. Users clearly now have it easier in finding what they need. Since we launched, our bounce rate has dropped a whopping 30%.
We have already received very positive response both in online traffic and personal comments. We look forward to seeing what our experience will be like once the school semester starts this year. New additions we’re working on include section forums, dining and housing guides, creative online use of editorial columns, and integration of a gutsy “furlough edition”…
Thanks to CoPress for all of your help. Let’s show our campuses what news is really all about!
Jon Schleuss, Web Developer
It’s better to teach someone a skill rather than do a task for them. Our move to WordPress allows for more control by the individual students rather than lumping the responsibilities onto one Web guru. Choosing the Gazette theme, we followed similar steps taken by the Mustang Daily and implemented a custom header logo different from our print edition to make a distinction between our products. This year’s staff includes students focused on the print edition and others focused on the Web. That’s not to say the content doesn’t intermingle, however. We’re now prioritizing content based on the delivery method. Moving forward, we’re strategizing an innovation of Web advertising and diversifying our Web delivery methods. Expect a mobile version of our new site and one that’s delivered in an e-mail sent each week.
Hosts: Greg Linch and Emily Kostic
Guests: Lauren Rabaino, Web Editor and Marlize van Romburgh, Editor in Chief of The Mustang Daily
Summary: Lauren Rabaino and Marlize Van Romburgh swap stories with Greg and Emily as the four discuss each of their college newspapers transitions to Wordpress.
If you missed the tweets earlier today, interspersed between BarCamp NewsInnovation Philly updates, Max Cutler announced that Courant News now has a live project website. From the first blog post, it sounds as though the project began in a very similar environment as CoPress:
It all began last summer, when we came up with an idea for a startup company: an online publishing platform for college news organizations. We wanted to be a better alternative to College Publisher – a content management system for college news organizations designed by college news organizations.
They’ve built a CMS, we’ve gone the community organizing route. Because we consider CoPress platform agnostic, it will be interesting to see how our paths intersect.
Hosts: Greg Linch and Emily Kostic
Guests: Steve Contorno, former editor in chief of the University of Illinois’s The Daily Illini and Zach Valentire, the Webmaster of the Minnesota Daily. Dreier Carr, the photo editor of The Technician at North Carolina State.
Summary: Greg and Emily discuss the power of Drupal and the creation of The Daily Illini’s own CMS on Drupal with Contorno. The former Editor in Chief continues the conversation by passing on tips to college publications considering Drupal. Valentire and Carr discuss the popularity of Drupal and how it’s no longer something you can ignore. The three editors analyze how the switch can be made, how Drupal can be incorporated into your college newspaper’s workflow, and each of their staffs’ responses to the switch.
Related blog post: A Brand New Drupally Daily Illini
Today — four months after first learning about CoPress through Twitter — the Mustang Daily launched its new WordPress site, hosted and supported by CoPress. The Mustang Daily, a 2008 Online Pacemaker Winner and 2009 Pacemaker Finalist, had been with College Publisher since 2006.
We went with the Gazette Edition from WooThemes because it gave us all the basic capabilities we were looking for:
During a time when revenue is falling, having full control over priority ad space is a must. We have a top banner (468 x 60 pixels), a sidebar ad (300 x 250 pixels) and up to four square ads on the lower sidebar (125 x 125 pixels).
We installed a WordPress plugin that allows for a “page peel” style advertisement in the top corner of the site. Although probably annoying to some, people like playing with it.
CICM deserves the hat tip for this one: earlier this week, The Daily Illini, a student newspaper at the University of Illinois, launched a brand new website built from Drupal:
You’ll notice immediately on the home page some of the new features we have introduced. The goal was to provide more entry points to our content, something we felt our old site failed to accomplish. The “What’s new” box highlights the latest information and will update as soon as new content is posted on the site. Additionally, the ticker at the top provides links to other recent stories, giving you easier access to the most up-to-the-minute news.
On the right-hand bar, you can find stories that your fellow readers are looking at, commenting on or recommending to help you decide what the most interesting news of the day might be. Scroll down, and you’ll notice our multimedia has been beefed up as well, something you should see throughout the site. Not to jump ahead, but the multimedia page itself is filled with interesting stories told in non-traditional ways. We hope you enjoy the videos, photo galleriesand audio slideshows presented in a much friendlier manner.
Our individual section pages are broken down much the same as before — News, Sports,Opinions, Diversions — however, the pages themselves are completely revamped. Not only are they better organized to look like individual home pages, but they are also divided by content in the tabs at the top. So if you’re hoping to find the most recent UI news, click the campus tab. Looking for the latest info on Illini basketball team? Go to the men’s basketball tab. All our content throughout the site is sorted how we think you’ll most easily find it.
All and all, these are what seem to be pretty cool updates (I can see that Albert has already asked about newsletter software). +1 for having a development blog too.
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