Advance registration is required. Please register using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form.

Why Attend Training?

The New Basics will familiarize maintainers with the CMS. You'll learn how find, access, and edit your content and put it through Workflow, the process for getting your content published. Posting news and events on your department site - and getting them into IUP Daily and the Beak - is also covered. 

In Intermediate training, maintainers will learn how to make a new section on the website, including menus and other site navigation (including collections). Uploading your own images and other file types, such as PDFs, is covered as well.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your Web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing department/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. If you arrive late, you may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

If there are news posts on your department or office’s news feed that are older than 12 months, but that you still want to be available to website visitors, please send an e-mail to web-team@iup.edu. Be sure to include a link to the news post(s) you are concerned about.

We had a great response to the survey about the Web Team’s support and the How-To section of our website. Almost 90 percent of web maintainers use our online help services!

Now we’re asking you for help with reorganizing the How To section so it makes more sense. We know it’s important to make this thing that you use all the time – better.

The Card Sort Survey is a fun and different way to find out what makes sense to you by dragging and dropping various types of tasks into categories. Showing us how you want the website to look and function will guide us toward giving you the best service possible.

The card sort shouldn’t take more than ten minutes. So if you have a little down time in your day, please take a few minutes to help us help you.

Take the Card Sort

Advance registration is required. Please register using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your Web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing department/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. If you arrive late, you may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

There is still time for IUP website maintainers, both authors and approvers, to take a customer satisfaction survey. We’re planning an overhaul of the “How To” section of our website, and need your input. Most people have completed the survey in less than 10 minutes.

This is your golden opportunity for feedback. We really want to know what you think, and what you—the web maintainers—want from us. The survey will close on Monday, April 15.

How are we doing? What has your experience been like working on the IUP website? Your responses will help us improve our “How To” section, and help you to build and maintain a website that puts the best face on your department or office.

Web Maintainers Survey 

Thank you!

The Web Team invites all site maintainers to take a customer satisfaction survey. We want to help you find what you need in the “How To” section of our website.

This is your golden opportunity for feedback. We really want to know what you think, and what you—the web maintainers—want from us.

How are we doing? What has your experience been like working on the IUP website? Your responses will help us improve our “How To” section, and help you to build and maintain a website that puts the best face on your department or office.

The survey is anonymous and will take about 10 minutes to complete. 
Web Maintainers Survey 

Thank you!

Advance registration is required. Please register using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your Web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing department/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. If you arrive late, you may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

Our goal is to improve the IUP web experience. We are evaluating our website’s features, navigation, and overall effectiveness in serving our primary audience of prospective students.

Faculty will receive a link to the survey, which covers only the academic department pages of the IUP website, via e-mail on March 25, 2013.

The survey is part of the Strategic Website Assistance Project, which has been made possible with the assistance of the president’s Strategic Initiative Fund The School of Graduate Studies and Research has provided additional funding. More information about the Strategic Website Assistance Project is available at on the IUP website.

Why get rid of the viewmaster?

• It’s large and pushes all other content, no matter how important, down the page and possibly off the viewer’s monitor.
• Preparing photos to fit in the viewmaster template is complicated and requires creating thumbnails in addition to regular-size images.
• The viewmaster uses Flash technology, which is not supported by many mobile devices, rendering the slideshow nonviewable. Fully 26 percent of visitors to our website do not have Flash enabled—meaning one in four can’t see your viewmaster.

The carousel beats the viewmaster on all counts.

• The height of the photos is up to you (although the dimensions of all photos in a carousel must be identical).
• No thumbnails! Just size and crop the images.
• Carousels are viewable on any mobile device.

Carousels can also be placed on any webpage, not just the home page. They can span the full width of the page, or just a half-page, or even a quarter-page. Here are some examples:

• Full-width carousel (instead of ViewMaster)
• Half-width carousel

So how do you replace the viewmaster with a carousel? We have a new How to Use Carousels section—check it out!

Don’t forget, you can also create photo galleries on your website. Here’s what you need to know about creating photo galleries.

Sample photo gallery 

Advance registration is required. Please register using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your Web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing department/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. If you arrive late, you may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

To register your site, fill out this brief form.

When you register, we'll email you artwork for profile icons you can use on your site.

Please note we can offer this service only to departments, offices, and recognized student organizations.

Check out these other tools to help you make the most of your department or office social media site:

• Social Media Guidelines: These recommendations from the Office of Communications may be helpful until PASSHE has issued its set of guidelines.
• Social Media Response Flow Chart: Here's how to assess different types of comments and determine your best response.
• Social Media Beginner’s Guide: New to social? Should you start with Facebook or Twitter or...? Here are tips to help you decide what's best for your department or office.

The Web Team will offer training sessions for web maintainers on the following dates in February 2013.

Advance registration is required. Please register using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your Web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing department/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. If you arrive late, you may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

Updated January 31, 2013.

Advance registration is required. Please register using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your Web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing department/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. If you arrive late, you may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

• December 21, 2012, through January 1, 2013

Content that needs to be live on the website by January 2 should be submitted for publishing by 2:00 p.m. on Thursday, December 20.

IUP Daily

The schedule for IUP Daily, the newsletter distributed to all employees via e-mail, will also be affected by the holiday break and the lack of news expected during that time.

IUP Daily will not be available on the following dates:

• December 24, 2012, through January 4, 2013

If you have news that needs to be distributed in IUP Daily before January 3, 2013, please make sure it is submitted for publishing by 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday, December 19.

IUP Web Team

Advance registration is required. Please register using theWeb Training Workshop Registration Form.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your Web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing department/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. If you arrive late, you may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

Planning is underway on a new web portal called “MyIUP” for students, faculty, and staff. MyIUP will replace URSA and provide single sign-on to:

• course registration and grades;
• student and faculty collaboration tools;
• targeted news;
• integration with favorite web sites;
• social networking features, and more.

With all these features, we want to make sure that they are organized so students and faculty can find them all easily.

That’s where you come in. We are looking for student and faculty input how the portal should be organized, and we need 60 students and 60 faculty to complete an online exercise designed to help us better understand how they organize information.

The input we receive will help us create a more logical and easy-to-use MyIUP portal.

After the online exercise is done, we will choose one participant at random to win a $50 gift certificate to The Co-Op Store. To be eligible for the gift certificate, you must:

• Be a current IUP student or faculty member
• Not work within the Division of Enrollment Management and Communications or IT Services
• Be one of the first 60 students or 60 faculty members to complete the survey
• Complete the entire survey
• Provide your e-mail, name, and contact phone number

The draw will be held once 60 eligible students and 60 eligible faculty members complete the survey. Winners will be notified soon thereafter.

Ready to go? Follow the link to start the exercise.

Student Survey

Faculty Survey

Please note that we are not conducting a survey of staff or administration at this time.

MyIUP is a project of the Division of Enrollment Management and Communications.

Advance registration is required. Please register using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your Web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing department/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. If you arrive late, you may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

Advance registration is required. Please register using theWeb Training Workshop Registration Form.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your Web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing department/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. If you arrive late, you may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

Our Libraries are the first to update to the new Social Media Callout Box. Take a look at the Libraries home page to see a working example.

The smart form has a bunch of advantages over creating these kinds of callouts by hand:

• It’s fast to set up and update.
• It includes icons for Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, and YouTube. You can choose one or up to all four networks in your callout box, which will also include you department’s name in the phrase “Connect with [your department’s name] on Social Media.”
• It keeps IUP in compliance with branding requirements from the social media networks.
• It performs better for visitors as there is only one set of social media icons to download for the whole site.
• It allows us to track how much outbound social media traffic the whole site is generating.
• It has the icons set up so that including them will not raise your home page’s bounce rate.

Plus, every callout includes a link to IUP’s main social media page, so we encourage visitors to connect to IUP in more than one way.

Get the Social Media Callout Box on Your Site

We will be updating all of our existing social media icons to use the new form. If you’d like to update as soon as possible, e-mail web-team@iup.edu to request the new callout be added. Be sure to include the folder(s) in the CMS you want it added to, and that this is for the new Social Media Callout Box smart form.

Once you are notified that the smart form has been added, follow the Social Media Callout Box: Create and Add to a Page how-to for step-by-step instructions for creating and adding this to your department site.

Advance registration is required. Please register using theWeb Training Workshop Registration Form.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your Web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing department/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. If you arrive late, you may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

The table below reflects the current open sessions. The New Basics session to he held on September 5 is closed for registration.

Advance registration is required. Please register using theWeb Training Workshop Registration Form.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your Web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing department/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. If you arrive late, you may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

Advance registration is required. Please register using theWeb Training Workshop Registration Form.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your Web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing department/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. If you arrive late, you may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

Advance registration is required. Please register using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your Web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing department/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. If you arrive late, you may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

There is still space available in the June 28 Basics session as well.

Advance registration is required. Please register using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your Web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing department/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. If you arrive late, you may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

The reports should resume in early August, with the July analytics.

Advance registration is required. Please register using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your Web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing department/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. If you arrive late, you may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

Advance registration is required. Please register using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your Web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing department/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. If you arrive late, you may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

You are getting your information out there, yes. And that is of course the primary purpose of news; to spread it, share it. But your single news post does so much more than just announce your event or tout your department’s accomplishments.

What News Gets You

Your Site Gets an Update

When you post a news item in your department news feed, it updates your news section. But, it also updates your home page. When you post your news, it will automatically be added to the Recent News block (on the bottom right of your home page). Just like that, you have put fresh content on your homepage. This is good for repeat visitors, since they need a reason to come back (meaning, they need new content to read). This is also good for search engines, like Google, because you’re giving them new content to search and show as a result. And sites that are kept up-to-date have better chances of getting ranked higher in search results. (Meaning, you are more likely to get found!)

Your News Goes “Viral”

Well, perhaps not viral, but it does get out there. When you post news in your department news feed, it will also be added to the main Campus Bulletins page (a collection of news from across the university). Visitors to the site can subscribe to this page, via RSS (a web feed), and then they can get your news on their phone, in their search browser, in Facebook, and more.

The Web Team pulls out a few items to highlight on the News and Events page as well, so you could get a little more attention there, too. And, last but not least, only news items get picked up for IUP Daily and/or the Beak. So if you want it to appear in there, it has to be news.

It Reaches Many Audiences

Any event, big or small, should be promoted. Just because posters get you enough people to fill the room for your visiting lecturer doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a missed opportunity to reach people. If you didn’t post that event on the web, a potential student across the state looking at your department, considering coming to IUP, wouldn’t have known about it. Those potential students will never know about what you have to offer them if you don’t make it available where they are looking.

Write Better News

There are some simple things you can do to make your news more effective. Review our how-to, Writing an Effective News Post, to grab some easy tips. Basic things like including background information and adding department links will go a long way.

Keep the Message Pillars in Mind

When you are writing your news, keep these key messages about IUP in mind. They most likely will reflect things that are happening in your department anyway, so tell people about them!

IUP is:

• Committed to a high standard of excellence
• Dedicated to creating opportunities for students
• Steadfast in support of substantive faculty and student research
• Proud of our highly successful alumni as demonstrated through outcomes
• Enthusiastic about community partnerships and civic engagement

Additional Information

Working with News and Events - In the main news how to section, learn how and where to post news, add Event Details Boxes, and more.

Calendar Events - A good partner to news for promoting your events.

Best Practices for Department Websites: A Guide to Making Your Department Website More Effective - The information here is good to know, and can be applied to your news as well.

Advance registration is required.Please register using theWeb Training Workshop Registration Form.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your Web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing department/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. If you arrive late, you may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

Advance registration is required.Please register using theWeb Training Workshop Registration Form.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your Web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing department/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. If you arrive late, you may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

Advance registration is required. Please register using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your Web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing department/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. If you arrive late, you may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

The first and most helpful thing to do is register for a training session. The Web Team offers basic and intermediate sessions each month, and between these two sessions, you’ll learn enough to make the majority of the content updates asked of you.

What You’ll Learn in Training

In the New Basics, we cover just that: the basics of Web content creation. We begin by explaining what the IUP content management system (CMS) is, how it works, and where and how to log in. You’ll learn where to find your content, how to make changes to it, and how to get it published. We also cover how and where to post news and events, two vital parts of the site.

In Intermediate training, we build on what you learned in the previous session, which is why we require you take the Basics session. We cover creating new content and sections, uploading PDFs, resizing and uploading images, menus and navigation, and more.

We also offer News and Event Promotion, where we go in-depth on how to effectively use the site to promote your events. You’ll learn how to make and use a central hub page and how to drive traffic to it using news posts, calendar posts, social media, and more.

If You’d Like More Help

Check out the large section of How To documents available on the Web Team’s site. Another benefit of training, in addition to learning how to do something, is learning the jargon to know what to call it. (Example: “I need to announce this” would really be “I need to make a news post.”)

When in doubt, contact us—that’s what we’re here for. E-mail us at web-team@iup.edu, or call extension 3062.

What Else You Need to Know

To work on your site, you will need added as a Web maintainer. This is separate from registering for training. An approver for the website you will be working on should e-mail web-team@iup.edu with:

• The name of the site
• Your name and username
• If you are to be an author or approver

See the list of Web maintainers to find the approvers for your site.

Some other posts you may find helpful:

• The IUP Website: Ektron, Content Management, and Web Maintainers
• What Web Approvers Need to Know

See all the Web Team’s blog posts specifically for Web maintainers, or visit the How-to section for more information and help.

Advance registration is required.Please register using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing department/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. If you arrive late, you may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

The three-part webinar, “Web Writing Boot Camp: Strategies, Techniques, and Tools to Write Web Content That Will Be Read,” will be presented by Dr. Michael Powers, IUP’s interim director of Communications, as part of Higher Ed Experts’ series of webinars and master classes.

The webinar will be provided free of charge to anyone in the IUP campus community. Topics to be covered include:

• Contexts: what’s different about Web writing?
• Web writing as conversation
• Six tips for better Web writing right now
• Getting to know your users
• Keyword research and placement
• Genres of Web writing
• Writing for social media
• Content strategy
• Assessment

Participants may also complete two optional homework assignments.

More details on the boot camp content are available on the Higher Ed Experts’ website.

To reserve your place, send an e-mail to web-team@iup.edu.

Register by using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form. Advance registration is required, as the Web Team must set special permissions on the training website for each participant.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing department/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. Those arriving late may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

What an Approver Can Do

As an approver, you can create new content, edit existing content, and approve submitted content. As an approver, you do not have to “approve” the content changes that you make. When you submit your content, it goes directly to the Web Team, even if there are multiple approvers for your site.

However, as an approver you do have to approve content changes submitted by authors for your site. A little background on workflow will help explain why approvers are so important in this process.

Workflow

Workflow is the checks and balances in place on the IUP site to ensure content is as accurate as possible. There are necessary steps in place to keep content moving along the chain. Learn more about workflow and how content is approved. This is the basic process:

• When an author submits content, it is submitted to an approver for their site.
• An approver will then review that content and either edit, approve, or decline the changes. When the approver submits content, it is submitted it to the Web Team for review and publication.
  • At this point, only approvers for the site can access the content that was submitted. The Web Team cannot approve content until the approver either approves or declines it.
  • TIP: To quickly see what was changed on a submission, click once on the content and then select the “View Diff” icon at the top of the CMS workarea to see the differences. The best practice for approvers is to look at the submission on the actual website in Preview mode, especially if extensive changes were made, to be sure the page still looks as it should.
• The Web Team then reviews the content, either editing, approving, or declining the changes. When the Web Team approves content, it is considered published, and will appear on the live site the following day.

As you can see, content submitted by authors has to go through an approver before it will ever be published. This is important to keep in mind when you are working with time-sensitive items, like news posts or timely pages.

Adding Web Maintainers

Only an approver can request that another person be added as an author or approver to their website. To do so, send an e-mail request to web-team@iup.edu with the person’s name, username, website, and status requested (author or approver). Note that students can only be authors. Remember that content submitted by approvers is sent directly to the Web Team for publishing without further review by anyone in your area, so keep this in mind when assigning site approvers.

How Do I Know if there is Content to Approve?

It is good to get in the habit of checking your approver queue, which you can access on the Smart Desktop of the CMS workarea. There is a How-To document that provides detailed information on this. Basically, the CMS will give you a list of content submitted by authors for your site, which you have to review and approve or decline.

TIP: You can also have e-mail notifications sent to you when content is submitted. Depending on how frequent submissions for your site are, you may find this helpful.

What Else?

For more information about approving content, workflow, and getting content published, visit the Web Team’s How To section. Or, if you have specific questions, contact us at web-team@iup.edu.

See all the Web Team’s blog posts specifically for Web maintainers, or visit the How-to section for more information and help.

Register by using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form. Advance registration is required, as the Web Team must set special permissions on the training website for each participant.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing department/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. Those arriving late may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

Facebook is a great way to reach current and prospective students and alumni. It lets you reach a specific audience of people interested in you, and its many users offer good networking possibilities.

Make a Page

If you are planning on entering Facebook, then you need to do it using a Page. Pages offer many things that Profiles do not, and they are the correct way to go if you want to represent your department or organization effectively, letting you maintain a professional presence on the site. Pages may only be created to represent real organizations of which you are an authorized representative, for example, IUP’s Facebook page. Note: Remember that once you have gathered one hundred or more fans, you cannot change the title of your page. Therefore, it is best to make sure the title you choose can be effective long-term and easily found.

• Good: IUP Journalism Department
• Not so good: JRNL Dept. (IUP)

Even though you need a profile to create a page, a page is the best practice for engaging your audience with Facebook.

Posting Tips

For the best success with Facebook, it’s recommended that you publish no more than one post every day or two. Users typically don’t like to see their news feed flooded with redundant or excessive posts. And don’t write in headlines—instead, keep your posts conversational while maintaining a professional demeanor.

• Good: The IUP Alumni Association, with cooperation from alumni who’ve created IUP-related LinkedIn groups, is consolidating all current alumni groups on LinkedIn to create one extensive career network. Join today.
• Not so good: IUP Alumni Association to consolidate all current alumni LinkedIn groups.

While it may not seem to leave you much time to plan, write, and publish the post, the time will be required when you measure the success of your product. Facebook helps you do this with its “Insights” feature, which gives you information about who is viewing your material and how often it is being viewed.

Social Media Guide

The Web Team has put together a Social Media Guide that goes into more detail about how to run a successful Facebook campaign. There’s also information about using Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. The guide can help you decide if social media is right for your area, decide what type(s) to use, and focus your goals for using social media. You want the results to be worth the time invested, and the Social Media Guide is a great place to start.

See all the Web Team’s blog posts specifically for Web maintainers, or visit the How-to section for more information and help.

Easy. If you can get your news on the IUP site, you can get it submitted for inclusion in IUP Daily or the Beak. This is because the news in each newsletter is drawn from the news feeds on the iup.edu site, posted by the departments across campus.

IUP Daily

News items for the News, For Employees, and Faculty and Staff Stars sections come from the news feeds of individual websites on www.iup.edu. You have a few options to get these news items into IUP Daily. If you are a web maintainer, you can post your news yourself in the CMS. You can ask your unit’s web maintainer to post it for you (see a list of unit web maintainers to find your department’s maintainers). Or you can post it yourself using the Suggest a News Item for This Page option on your unit’s News page. You’ll need your IUP username and password.

If you’ve done this, and your news did not appear in IUP Daily, there are some common reasons. Learn more about why your news may not have appeared when you thought it would.

The Beak

Students can submit their news to the Beak using the Beak submission form. Those submissions are processed by the Center for Student Success. Faculty and staff can submit their news for the Beak by posting them in their site’s News section, following the same steps as for IUP Daily posts. If the post is pertinent to students, it will get picked up. Please note that items submitted to the Beak student submission form by an employee will not be posted. Employees should post news in your department’s News section for inclusion in the Beak.

Learn more about the Beak and how to subscribe.

Tips

Identify Your Audience

Be clear who your intended audience is. If it is an event, be specific about who can and cannot attend. Decisions about which posts go in which newsletter are determined by what is stated in the post. Even more importantly, it will be clearer to your readers. Learn more about writing an effective news post.

Create Your News Item When You Want It Published

A news post is dated on the day you create it, not when it is published. This impacts how much coverage your news will get. For example, if you create your news post at the beginning of the month, then submit it at the end of the month, it will be the same as if you had published it at the beginning of the month.

If you need to write your news post early, do so in a text document. Then, when you are ready for it to be published, create your news in the CMS and submit it.

Don’t Edit Old News Items

Since the CMS goes by the creation date, not the published date, your updated news post will still be seen as an old news post. Always create a new post. Read more about ”Keeping the New in News.“

See all the Web Team’s blog posts specifically for Web maintainers, or visit the How-to section for more information and help.

Register by using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form. Advance registration is required, as the Web Team must set special permissions on the training website for each participant.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing department/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. Those arriving late may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

Here are a few basic points to help the process run smoother.

Approvers and Authors

Every college, department, or office website has one or more Web maintainers. Both approvers and authors can add, change, or delete website content, but approvers are the ones who send it on to the Web Team for final handling. You can see a full list of the current Web maintainers, in case you’re not sure who is assigned to your area.

Adding Web Maintainers

To add or remove someone as an author or approver for a website, a current site approver needs to send a request to web-team@iup.edu with the person’s name, username, desired position (author or approver) and the website they’ll be working on. (Students can only be authors.)

Approving Content

When an author submits content, the website approver needs to handle it before it can be published. Just log into the Staging server, then open the Work Area. The first screen that appears is called the Smart Desktop, and the very first link in the big window is “Content Awaiting Approval.” The number in parentheses is the number of content items for that particular website that need to be dealt with. Clicking the link shows each of the items, and clicking on each item shows the content itself.

At the top of this window, you’ll see some icons. The third from the right (to the left of the black arrow) will let you view the differences between the original page and the new version.

Keep in mind that many websites are large and may encompass areas that a Web maintainer does not normally deal with. If there are several content items awaiting approval, you may need to scroll to the right and look at the Path, which will show what folder that piece of content is in. This can help you determine if you are the proper approver for that page, or if another approver for your website would be better suited.

Assuming you want to handle the content, you can approve it as is, or you can open it for editing and then submit it, or you can decline it and ask the author for edits and to resubmit the page.

Getting Notified

Be aware that if an author submits something for approval, but no approver acts upon it, the page will be stuck in limbo and the website will not be updated. Either the author needs to let the approver know whenever any content is submitted, or the approver can be automatically notified by e-mail.

If you would like to be notified by e-mail when content has been submitted for your approval, or if content you submitted has been approved or declined by the Web Team, it’s easy to enable System Notification E-mail.

Going “Live”

Once Web approvers approve or submit content, it goes to the Web Team for publication. The Web Team reviews (and edits, if needed) each piece of content to make sure it follows the University Style Guide, and will either publish the content, or decline it with an explanation—something may not make sense, or links may not work right, or for other reasons.

In general, however, content that is submitted by 2:00 p.m. will be published and live on the website by the following morning. Content submitted after that time is usually published as well, depending on other Web Team duties.

See all the Web Team’s blog posts specifically for Web maintainers, or visit the How-to section for more information and help.

The Social Media Guide, available in the How-to section of the Web Team’s site, covers why, how, and where to join the social media movement.

What You Need to Know

Before you create any accounts, it is important to determine if you even should. Do you have the audience for it? Do you have the time to maintain it? And, does a page already exist? Worse than not having a presence on social media is having a poor one, so make sure it is something your group can commit to.

Next, you need to figure out what you want to achieve. It is good to set goals so you can see if your efforts are paying off. Your goal can be broad, like reaching a certain number of followers/fans/connections by the end of the semester. Or it can be more specific, like increasing attendance at an event promoted through a combination of traditional and online outlets.

When you know what you want to achieve, you can then determine which network or networks will work for you. Each has a different offering of benefits and downsides. LinkedIn is great for connecting with alumni, faculty, and staff members, but not where you would announce club meetings for students.

On the flip side, Twitter is perfect for sending reminders about meetings, deadlines, and other time-sensitive topics.

Ready, Set, Write

Once you know which network or networks you will be using, get familiar with them. Learn what tools are available and how to use them. And definitely review the writing tips; besides technicalities—like the 148 character limit for Twitter—you can learn what style to use for each network, when to post, and much more.

We’ll be looking at each of these networks more closely in future posts, but in the meantime, use the guide to get familiar with them. Then go friend folks on Facebook, retweet great tweets on Twitter, get your subgroup connected on LinkedIn, or show the world your videos on YouTube.

See all the Web Team’s blog posts specifically for Web maintainers, or visit the How-to section for more information and help.

The intention of these news posts is to offer new information, helpful tips, and updates to allow maintainers to make the most of their website.

Some upcoming topics include:

• Social Media: The Guide 
• How the Website Works: Ektron, Content Management, and Web Maintainers 
• How to Get Your News into IUP Daily or the Beak
• What Approvers Need to Know
• Using QR Codes
• Promoting Your Events Using Social Media
• How to Request and Use Forms
• All about Google Analytics

Web maintainers will also receive an invitation to participate in a survey to determine the best times for upcoming summits and training. Look for that survey in the coming weeks.

You can always get helpful how-to information or register for upcoming training by visiting the Web Team online.

See all the Web Team’s blog posts specifically for Web maintainers, or visit the How-to section for more information and help.

Register by using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form. Advance registration is required, as the Web Team must set special permissions on the training website for each participant.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing department/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. Those arriving late may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

Register by using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form. Advance registration is required, as the Web Team must set special permissions on the training website for each participant.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing department/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. Those arriving late may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

Training	Date	Time	Location
The New Basics	Tuesday, July 19	9:00–11:00 a.m.	IT Support Center Training Lab (Delaney Hall, Room G41
Intermediate-Level Training	Wednesday, July 27	9:00–11:00 a.m.	IT Support Center Training Lab (Delaney Hall, Room G41)

Register by using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form. Advance registration is required, as the Web Team must set special permissions on the training website for each participant.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing department/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. Those arriving late may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

See the full schedule of training sessions and locations below:

Register by using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form. Advance registration is required, as the Web Team must set special permissions on the training website for each participant.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing department/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. Those arriving late may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

YouTube Videos

All websites on the CMS are now set up to use embedded YouTube videos. As we discussed at the April Web Maintainers’ Summit, we are now streaming all our videos from our YouTube site, rather than from the CMS or our streaming server.

This means you can easily add YouTube videos—your own or others’—to your pages and news items. For a sample, take a look at one of the Criminology Department’s recent video-enabled news posts.

Directions for adding YouTube videos to your pages, and for having your videos added to IUP’s YouTube account are available in the How To… section of the Web Team’s site, where we’ve created a whole new section about using video.

Projects

The Web Team is currently working to close out as many 2010–2011 projects as possible. We won’t be taking on any new projects until July. This means that if we are not currently working with you on a project (site reorganizations and form requests, for instance), we won’t be able to get started until the new fiscal year.

No More Mass Uploads

An unanticipated side effect of our move from eWebEditPro to Content Designer has been that mass uploads of images no longer work. Unfortunately, when we updated our How To… section , we failed to take down the documentation for this no longer supported feature.

The documentation has now been removed. We thank Prof. Nick Karatjas for alerting us to this issue. If you notice that any of our documentation is incorrect, please let us know by e-mailing web-team@iup.edu.

Training

Finally, we’d like to remind you that there are several web training opportunities coming up. Summer is a great time to get started with the CMS, or just refresh your skills. You can register using our Web Training Workshop Registration Form.

Please note the locations for this month’s sessions, as a different lab is being used.

Register by using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form. Advance registration is required, as the Web Team must set special permissions on the training website for each participant.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing department/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. Those arriving late may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

Please scan the questions below, in case you have wondered something similar and can find your answer here.

For the most part, I have been updating existing content on my site. How do I add new content?

See our how-to documentation on adding content. Your situation may be a little more complicated, so please read on.

How do I add a new section?

In the content management system, a folder in the Workarea is needed to have a section on the website. For example, in your Programs of Study section, you may have three pages, one for each program of study. But, let’s say you need to add more pages to one particular program of study, such as the B.A. in Webology.

In that case, rather than having just one page, you would need to create a section for the B.A. in Webology. That would require creating a new folder (for the B.A. in Webology) under Programs of Study, moving the existing B.A. in Webology page into the new folder (that, you would need to request through Web Team), creating pages in the new folder as necessary, adding those pages to a menu, and asking the Web Team to update the breadcrumb.

Creating a new section, as described above, is discussed in detail (and you get practice doing it) in intermediate-level training, offered each month. Web maintainers are encouraged to consult with the Web Team when creating new sections for their websites.

Concerning menus, see how-to documentation on working with menus. But, menus and navigation are also discussed in detail in intermediate-level training.

Our alumni are doing lots of interesting things. We want to share that on our website with current and potential students and other department alumni. How can we do that?

For most departments, information concerning alumni is added as a subsection of the “About” section. To create an alumni section on your website, see the information above about adding a new section.

It may also be a good idea to see how the Alumni Relations office organizes its “Meet Our Alumni” section, or how other departments handle that material:

• Economics alumni section
• Eberly College of Business and Informational Technology alumni section

How do I move content?

Web maintainers are not able to move content. Please ask a member of the Web Team to do it for you. If sending an e-mail request to web-team@iup.edu, please be specific about the content that needs to be moved (title and content ID number) and the name of the folder to which it needs to be moved.

How do I change a picture on a page?

In most cases, you will want to remove the existing photo and add a new one. See how-to documentation about inserting an image into your page. If you are working with an IUP stock image in the photographer’s photo gallery, the image probably does not need to be resized. But, if you are uploading an image, make sure that you size the image for the IUP templates first.

If you want to replace an image on every page in which that image appears, see information about overwriting an image in the library. If you overwrite an image, you do not need to make any changes to the pages on which the image appears.

The Web Team won’t delete news items until they’re eighteen months old. How do I keep old news posts from appearing on my home page?

Older news items in the Recent News box on your home page will drop out of the box as new news items are posted. The default setting for the Recent News box is five news items. If your department does not post a lot of news, you may want to ask the Web Team to reduce the default setting to three items or fewer, so that old news does not stay on the home page so long. Of course, an easy answer to keeping old news off the home page is to post new news frequently.

Adding sticky news will not cause older news items to drop off. Sticky news items will appear in addition to the default number of news items.

Should I add new content as a PDF or as HTML content?

HTML content is preferred almost always. It is understood by everyone on the Web, loads faster, is better searched by Google and other search engines, and doesn’t require having software installed on your computer to view it. However, if you have a document, such as a form people need to print, that has very specific formatting, you would want to upload it as a PDF.

How do I control what office hours appear on a webpage?

Department and office websites have a configuration file in their main folder that controls which address and office hours appear on pages within that particular website. If a different address or office hours block is needed on a particular page, it should be added to the appropriate spot on that page’s Metadata tab. Adding an address or office hours block to the Metadata tab will override what is specified in the configuration file.

If your site has a whole section that needs a different address or office hours block, that section may need its own configuration file.

Note: Making some changes to a configuration file can disable your site. Please contact the Web Team if you need a new configuration file or if you need to make changes to an existing configuration file.

I have used Learn More blocks in the past, but when I try to create one now, some of the fields are not visible. What’s wrong?

The default website editing tool at IUP changed from eWebEditPro to Content Designer in February of this year. When using Content Designer with Internet Explorer, the field used to add the URL in the Learn More smart form is not visible. As far as we have seen, this problem does not exist in other browsers, such as Firefox and Safari. Please use another browser if you can.

See a list of known issues (unexplained, undesirable, or unwanted behavior) with the content management system.

On my website, I place content items on all menus in which they are appropriate. Is that not right?

Every HTML content item should be on a menu, but it should be on only one menu—unless it is a section home page. If it’s a section home page, it should be on two menus: the menu for that section (folder) and the menu for the section (folder) above it. When content items are added to menus that do not follow the folder structure, it causes navigation problems that can be confusing for site users.

Sometimes, web maintainers add content items to the main menu because they worry the content will not be seen otherwise. The perfect spot for those content items (the ones that don’t belong on the main menu but that people need to see) is the highlights collection—the links in red on the right column of the home page. In the Workarea, the highlights collection is located in your department website’s main folder. See our how-to documentation on collections for more information.

I posted a news item the other day, and it never appeared in IUP Daily. Why?

There are several reasons this could have happened. The most likely would be that IUP employees, the main audience for IUP Daily, are not the audience for your news item. For example, news for students does not go in IUP Daily, unless there’s a reason faculty or staff members should know about it. Not all news items can be included in the newsletter because, the more content there is, the more likely people will miss things or not read at all. Limiting the news items that go in is crucial for managing people’s attention.

Student news and other items will, however, appear on the Campus Bulletins page, so there is easy access for all audiences who want more news.

Other typical reasons news is not included are as follows:

• It was not a new news item: The news item was created in the content management system several days before it was submitted to the Web Team for publication. News items must have been created and published within the past five days to appear in the Web Team’s news-aggregating tool.
• It was a duplicate post or part of a broader post: Another department may have already posted the news, or an overall news post may be coming. For example, a department may have posted news about its professors who won an award, but the Communications office may be putting together a comprehensive post that lists all professors across the university who won the award. Departments are welcome to post news about their faculty achievements, even if they are part of a comprehensive post. But, duplicate news posts should be avoided because they reduce the posts’ page rank in search engine results. Instead, use sticky news to display another department’s news item on your site.
• Human error: Sometimes the Web Team misses things. If you think we’ve missed your news item, please let us know.

Find more reasons an item may not have been included in IUP Daily.

I have seen carousels—rotating images, often with navigation—on various pages on the IUP website. Can I get one on my website?

If you are interested in having a carousel on your website, please contact the Web Team for assistance with the setup. For those of you who have not seen them, here are some examples:

• Research at IUP
• IUP Magazine
• Crimson Snapshot

The Undergraduate Admissions website and many undergraduate program pages have icons for certain “calls to action”—such as visiting campus, applying, etc.—that link to a page with more information. Can I have something like that on my site? Can I have an icon that links to our Facebook page?

Rather than creating this customized navigation as requests come in, the Web Team will be working on a button system that can be adapted to the needs of each department or office website. In addition to saving time on development, having a standard system will make these types of call-outs consistent across the site.

My department would like to have an e-mail newsletter, similar to IUP Daily. How can I set that up?

Please contact the Web Team for advice on starting an e-mail newsletter. There are many e-mail services available, but because of federal spam laws, it is important for IUP to coordinate mailings, so that requests—such as the request to unsubscribe—are honored by IUP as a whole.

The summit takes place at 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday, May 18, 2011.

Due to the limited space, please let us know you are coming by sending an e-mail to web-team@iup.edu.

Register by using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form. Advance registration is required, as the Web Team must set special permissions on the training website for each participant.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing deparment/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. Those arriving late may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

This month’s Web Maintainer of the Month award was presented to Jennifer Kostryk for her work on the Human Resources website. Thanks to Jen’s efforts, the website is a reliable and up-to-date resource for employees. The Human Resources site shows the result of dedication to keeping organized, paying attention to content, and keeping the needs of site visitors as a priority.

Also on the agenda was an overview of how academic departments can promote their Commencement ceremonies on their website.

The Web Maintainers’ Summit took place on April 20, 2011. One more summit is planned for this year.

Read the New Video How-Tos

All the information from Wednesday’s summit has been included in a new set of web how-to documents. This is also where web maintainers can download a copy of the Video Content Template.

Get the Presentations

The presentation slides from the summit are available for download in PDF format:

• Mike Powers’s Getting Video Found presentation
• Jessie Groll’s Embedding YouTube Videos presentation

YouTube Smart Form Availability

The YouTube smart form demonstrated during the summit is available on the staging server, but is not yet available in every folder. The Web Team is working on making this smart form available everywhere.

In the meantime, if you need to embed a YouTube video but don’t have the smart form available yet, just e-mail the Web Team at web-team@iup.edu and we can activate it for you.

Before posting information about those ceremonies on their websites, departments should be aware of the following.

The Commencement website has a comprehensive list of departmental ceremonies that includes dates, times, and locations. Any departments whose information differs from what is on that list should contact Cindy Varner in the Scheduling Center at 724-357-2217 ext. 4823 or cvarner@iup.edu.

The comprehensive list of departmental ceremonies will be featured on the home page of the IUP website starting the Thursday before Commencement, so that it can be easily found by students, parents, and other audiences.

Departments are welcome to place information about their individual ceremonies on their websites as well, including in their news and events (calendar) sections.

However, when placing ceremonies on the calendar, departments should avoid adding them to the Central Calendar or to the Student Events Calendar. There are two reasons:

1. Those calendars would be overwhelmed on May 7 with departmental ceremony listings, making other events difficult to find.
2. Not every department would post its ceremony, so the listing would not have a fair representation of events.

That said, mentions of departmental graduation ceremonies are very appropriate in news posts and calendar entries on department websites.

For information on how to get information about your department graduation ceremony on your website, please contact your web maintainer. The following resources may also help:

• How to Post a News Item
• How to Add Events to a Calendar

Web Team

The summit is set for Wednesday, April 20, 2011, from 9:00 to 10:00 a.m. in Delaney Hall, Room G5.

With the advent of $100 HD video cameras and video editing software on almost any laptop you can buy, it has never been easier to create video and get it out to the world.

But how do you make effective videos? How do you get viewers? And how do you get your videos onto the website. That’s what we’ll cover this Wednesday, along with some website updates. Here’s the agenda:

This Month on the Website: Commencement

Senior Web Editor Elaine Smith will give you a preview of what’s happening on the website this month, and explain how you can use your website to promote your department’s Commencement activities.

Making Web Video

The rest of Wednesday’s session will be devoted to making and using video for the web.

Step One: Make a Video

Low-cost cameras make it possible to create video on your own, but getting your videos to look and sound their best can be tricky. Videographer Emily Smith will show you how to create a video that looks good, sounds good–and works online.

Step Two: Put It on YouTube

IUP currently offers over 220 videos via our YouTube channel, and they are all available for embedding on www.iup.edu. Director of Web Services Mike Powers will demonstrate IUP’s YouTube channel, and show you what you need to do to make sure your video comes up in search results.

Step Three: Put It on Your Website

Want that video on your website? No problem! Web Developer Jessie Groll will show you how you can embed YouTube videos right into your pages and news items.

Step Four: There Is No Step Four!

But we’ll be happy to answer any of your questions about web video!

Can’t wait? Take a look at some of the videos your peers have been producing on their own:

• The Theater and Dance Department created a video promoting the Theater program. 

• Past lectures from the Breakfast and a Book series are available online.

• Adult and Community Education created video for for use in their courses. 

• And music students created Lorraine’s Lament.

Register by using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form. Advance registration is required, as the Web Team must set special permissions on the training website for each participant.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing deparment/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. Those arriving late may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

That means that the 2GB Apple iPod Shuffle is still up for grabs. The survey closes after sixty people take it, so if you finish the survey you'll have a 1 in 60 chance of winning.

Your answers to the survey will help us make the IUP website easier to use. It takes about twelve minutes to complete, and it is open to all IUP students.

All results are confidential.

To be eligible for the iPod Shuffle, you must:

• Be a current IUP student

• Not be employed by IT Services, Communications and Community Relations, or Career Development

• Be one of the first sixty students to complete the survey

• Complete the entire survey

• Complete the contact information on the last screen

The survey is open now. The draw for iPod Shuffle will take place once sixty eligible students have successfully completed the survey.

Take the survey.

Questions? Contact the Web Team at web-team@iup.edu.

Register by using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form. Advance registration is required, as the Web Team must set special permissions on the training website for each participant.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing deparment/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. Those arriving late may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

We’ve been working on a session focused on using video online, but putting this session together has taken longer than anticipated. We know that a lot of departments are interested in using video on their websites. We plan to offer some production tips, technical tips for getting your website online, and advice on getting your video noticed.

See you next month!

P.S. In the meantime, let your students know that they can win an iPod Shuffle by taking a survey to help improve the website.

All results are confidential.

Once the survey closes we will choose one participant at random to win a 2GB Apple iPod Shuffle.

To be eligible for the iPod Shuffle, you must:

• Be a current IUP student

• Not be employed by IT Services, Communications and Community Relations, or Career Development

• Be one of the first 60 students to complete the survey

• Complete the entire survey

• Complete the contact information on the last screen

The survey opens at 10 a.m. on Monday, March 14, 2011. The draw for iPod Shuffle will take place once 60 eligible students have successfully completed the survey.

Take the survey (this link has been updated).

Questions? Contact the Web Team at web-team@iup.edu.

A Switcher’s Guide to Content Designer is available to help maintainers through the major differences.

The switch from eWebEditPro to Content Designer is necessary for editing website content on computers with Windows 7, to which some computers on campus have already been upgraded. The change in editors will also allow for future upgrades in Ektron.

With Content Designer, web maintainers will be able to edit content from any computer and in any browser (Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, etc.) without having to install any software.

Changes web maintainers may notice with the new editor involve toolbar options, the application of styles, and overall appearance of the editor. The Web Team provided an overview of these changes during the January 2011 Web Maintainers’ Summit.

View the “Put It in the Beak” slide show from the summit.

Information for these newsletters comes from department and office websites, so getting something into a newsletter means putting it in your website’s news feed or calendar.

In addition to e-mail newsletters, news and events on the website are distributed through RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and both social media and traditional media outlets. So, by starting with a post on the website, your news has a far greater reach than an e-mail distribution list.

That said, not every IUP news item is included in every e-mail newsletter. Because readers have limited time and attention, only items geared toward a particular audience are placed in that audience’s newsletter. For example, news for students is not included in employee e-mail newsletter IUP Daily.

Because of the added attention the e-mail newsletters have placed on news, the Web Team has started additional reviews of news posts to reduce errors. A revamp of the News and Events section of the website and the deletion or archiving of old news posts are also planned.

Getting Things into IUP Daily and the Beak

Both web maintainers and non-maintainers are able to place news onto the website and, therefore, into the IUP e-mail newsletters.

While web maintainers post news in their department or office feeds, non-maintainers can use the “Suggest a News Item” tool on the appropriate department or office News page.

Both maintainers and non-maintainers should be mindful of the workflow, or approval, process. News must be submitted or approved by a department or office website approver before it moves on to the Web Team for publishing. Those submitting news should coordinate with their website approvers to make sure the news moves through workflow before the deadline of the intended e-mail newsletter.

News that is not approved at the department or office level within seven days of its creation will have missed its cycle in the e-mail newsletters and will need to be recreated to be picked up for future issues.

Recognized student organizations can place news on the website (and into the Beak) by using the news submission form. This form is limited to use by student organizations; departments and offices must use their own news feeds.

Now that the Beak has replaced the daily campus-event e-mail, submissions to campus-event@iup.edu are no longer being accepted. Student organizations must use the news submission form, and departments and offices must use their own news feeds for news previously submitted to campus-event@iup.edu.

Writing an Effective News Post

Writing effective news posts is all about communicating the details readers need, regardless of how much or how little they actually read.

Because most people skim rather than read on the Web, important details need to be made obvious in news posts. Using the inverted pyramid style (arranging the story from the most important to the least important details) allows readers to learn the who, what, when, where, why, even if they read only the first few paragraphs.

For readers who don’t click through to the full stories, use of meaningful headlines and summaries can help to get the important points across. To make sure people who skim don’t miss important details, make text more scannable through use of headings, lists, tables, images, event details boxes, and video.

Still, some readers will want more details, and news posts should accommodate them as well.

When possible, link calendar events to news posts or other webpages to provide further details. News posts should always have a link back to the department or office website, so that people who read the news out of context (such as through RSS) have an easy way to find the website for more information.

Supporting details should also be included in the news post itself. For the convenience of web maintainers, background information on faculty and staff members and departments and offices can be kept in a separate file and pasted into news posts when applicable.

More information about writing effective news posts is available in the training session Promoting Your Department Using News and Events.

Golden Mouse Award

Winners of the Golden Mouse Award as February 2011 Web Maintainers of the Month are Cynthia Spielman and Rich DiStanislao of the Center for Student Success.

The Golden Mouse was awarded based on their work on new student e-mail newsletter the Beak. While Spielman posts to the website all the news and events submitted by student organizations, DiStanislao takes primary responsibility for selecting and categorizing news for the Beak.

Congratulations on this well-deserved award.

Editorial Calendar

See the editorial calendar for February 2011.

To access G5, enter Delaney Hall at the corner of Grant Street and Pratt Drive.

The summit isn’t limited to web maintainers. Many non-maintainers have news to promote and will find this information useful.

Topics that will be discussed are as follows:

Using the IUP News System

When you post news, where else does it go? Find out about the high-traffic pages, RSS feeds, and social media sites that are also carrying your news.

Putting News in the Beak and IUP Daily

Find out how to get your news in these publications if you’re a web maintainer, a faculty or staff member who isn’t a web maintainer, or a representative of a recognized student organization. Hint: It’s different for each.

Writing an Effective News Post

We’re a nation of skimmers. Make sure people are getting the information they need from your news post.

The Web Team will also discuss the editorial calendar for February and hand out the Golden Mouse Award to the next Web Maintainer of the Month.

Registration for the summit is not required.

Register by using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form. Advance registration is required, as the Web Team must set special permissions on the training website for each participant.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing deparment/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. Those arriving late may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

Find out how to get your news in the Beak at the next Web Maintainers’ Summit on Wednesday, February 16, 2011, from 9:00 to 10:00 a.m. in Delaney Hall, Room G5. Non-web maintainers may also find this information useful and are welcome to attend.

To access Room G5, enter Delaney Hall at the corner of Grant Street and Pratt Drive.

Putting your news in the Beak or IUP Daily will be part of a larger discussion about how the IUP news system works. Included in the discussion will be what happens to your news once it’s posted to your website and how to write an effective news post for the Web.

Also at the summit, the Web Team will discuss the editorial calendar for February and hand out the Golden Mouse Award to the next Web Maintainer of the Month.

More details about the February 16 summit will be forthcoming.

The next summit will take place Wednesday, February 16, from 9:00 to 10:00 a.m. in Delaney Hall, Room G5.

Ektron Editor Change: The Switch to Content Designer

Within the next few weeks, the default editor in Ektron will switch from eWebEditPro to Content Designer. The switch is necessary for editing content on computers with Windows 7 and to allow for future upgrades of Ektron.

Mike Powers, director of Web Services, gave an overview of differences web maintainers will notice once the switch is made—including changes in the application of styles and in some toolbar options. With the new editor, maintainers will be able to work from any computer and in any browser (Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, etc.) without having to install any software.

Before Content Designer becomes the default editor, the Web Team will make available a switcher’s guide that explains the major differences.

Golden Mouse Award Winners: Hilliary Creely, Jean Serio, Paula Stossel

Following a redesign of the Research website completed earlier in the winter, the Research team of Hilliary Creely, Jean Serio, and Paula Stossel shared the Golden Mouse Award for January 2011 as Web Maintainers of the Month.

Major goals of the redesign were to make research a larger part of IUP’s identity, better connect the public to IUP’s research expertise, and help faculty members find the information they need to conduct funded research.

The team’s work on the redesign started in the summer with identification of the site’s goals, audiences, and tasks; completion of a competitive analysis of other research sites; review of the existing site’s content inventory; and creation of user personas for the Research website.

The new site highlights IUP’s centers and institutes and faculty research expertise as important resources for external audiences. Specific research projects are highlighted in Research Profiles, a section that will grow over time.

For faculty and student researchers, the key section is Resources for Researchers, which brings together all of IUP’s online research resources into a single place. The new arrangement of these resources is based on research done with faculty and staff members.

In late November, Research was promoted to one of the seven top-level sections of the IUP website. So far, analytics suggest that the redesign is paying off, with an increase in traffic ranging from 763 percent to 1,079 percent, depending on the comparison period.

Congratulations to the Research team!

CMS Tip: Redisplaying Content from Another Unit Site

There may be times when web maintainers want information from another IUP office or department to show on their unit website as well. This could be a description of a class, an office’s policies, or maybe a job description for their area. Bruce Dries, web editor, discussed options for redisplaying content from another site on the CMS.

While a web maintainer’s first thought may be to copy and paste the text into a new page on his or her website, duplicating another IUP webpage should be avoided. If the original page is updated, the web maintainer may not be aware of it, and then his or her website will have conflicting and possibly incorrect information.

The preferred option is to have a link to the actual page where the content is, such as a job description on the Human Resources website. But, if web maintainers need to show content from another unit website on their site as well, they should contact the Web Team at web-team@iup.edu to have this set up.

Dries also reviewed using “sticky news” to redisplay a news item from another site on the CMS. See How to Work with Sticky News.

Editorial Calendar for January

See the Editorial Calendar for January 2011 on the Web Team website. The Editorial Calendar, which shows events coming up within the next month, is intended to get web maintainers thinking about how their events can be better promoted on the website and whether they need Web Team assistance to do so.

This month’s calendar was discussed by Elaine Smith, web editor, who mentioned that among the highlights were a number of events recognizing Martin Luther King, Jr., in January, and Black History Month in February. A roundup of these events was posted in a news item included on many high-traffic pages, including the IUP home page. This type of coordination results in better promotion of individual events, and web maintainers were encouraged to place appropriate events on the Central Calendar to aid this process. See How to Add an Event to the Calendar.

Register by using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form. Advance registration is required, as the Web Team must set special permissions on the training website for each participant.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing deparment/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. Those arriving late may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

This month will focus on Content Designer, which will soon be replacing our current web editing tool, eWebEditPro. We’ll discuss:

• What eWebEditPro is (you’re soaking in it!)

• Why we’re switching to Content Designer

• The benefits of Content Designer (hint: edit the website from any computer without having to install anything)

• The downsides of Content Designer (which will affect the Web Team more than it will affect web maintainers)

• How to make a successful switch

We’ll also be providing our monthly CMS tip and a look forward at our editorial calendar.

And, of course, we will be once again awarding the Golden Mouse to our web maintainer of the month. Could it be you? You’ll have to be there to find out!

The monthly Web Summit is a little bit user group, a little bit planning, and a little bit awards show. The typical summit includes:

1. A CMS Tip: How to use Ektron better and more efficiently
2. Social Media: What the Web Team is doing with social media and how you can take part.
3. Editorial Calendar: We’ll give you a preview of what we’re planning to put on the website in the next month, ask you what your web plans are, and see how we can work together to make the most of our web resources.
4. Golden Mouse Award: Each month the Web Team will present the Web Maintainer of the Month with the Golden Mouse Award. We’ll explain why he or she won, and how you can become the next winner.

All web maintainers, both authors and approvers, are encouraged to attend the Web Summits. You can catch up on previous summits by visiting the Web Summit website.

Web Summit Schedule, Spring 2011

Delaney Hall, Rm. G5, 9:00–11:00 a.m.

• January 19
• February 16
• March 16
• April 20

Web Advisory Board Schedule, Spring 2011

Delaney Hall, Rm. G-5, 1:30–3:00 p.m.

• March 2
• May 4

The Web Advisory Board, the group that advises the Web Team, will continue to meet quarterly in the Spring. The agenda for Web Advisory Board meetings will remain much the same. The Web Team will present an overview of web activity from the last three months and preview upcoming projects. The advisory board will provide input on the ranking of web development projects. As has been our practice, any member of the advisory board may place items for discussion on the agenda.

The Web Summit, originally scheduled for December 15, will be held at the usual time in January (January 19, 2011, at 9:00 a.m.).

The Web Advisory Board meeting scheduled for December 8 will be held on December 15 at 1:30 p.m.

The locations for both meetings will be announced soon.

Register by using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form. Advance registration is required, as the Web Team must set special permissions on the training website for each participant.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing deparment/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. Those arriving late may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

Here’s a quick roundup of what was presented. The next summit takes place on December 17. The topic will be changes to the Ektron editor.

CMS Tip: Resize Images before You Upload

Bruce Dries, web editor, discussed the importance of sizing images properly before uploading them to Ektron, rather than resizing them from within the CMS Workarea. Oversized photos that are artificially reduced still force visitors to download the entire image file, increasing the bandwidth used by the page.

Photos can be easily resized following the Resizing Images Online link at the bottom of this page: How to Size Images for the IUP Templates.

Editorial Calendar

Elaine Smith, web editor, reviewed upcoming events and activities the Web Team is aware of that are in need of promotion. See Editorial Calendar, November 2010. Maintainers were reminded to use their department/office events calendars and the Central Calendar, when appropriate, to promote events. Those who need help coordinating publicity for events or content should contact the Web Team at web-team@iup.edu.

Social Media Presentation

Mike Powers, director of web services, presented “Social Media and IUP,” which discussed why departments might (or might not) want to get involved in social media, and showed examples of what IUP is already doing with social media.

The slides from the presentation (PDF, 1.5 MB) are available for download.

To see what IUP is currently doing with social media, and to register your social media site, check out IUP’s main social media page.

Golden Mouse Award Winner: Nate McElroy

Nate McElroy, Department of Chemistry, was the the Golden Mouse Award recipient/Web Maintainer of the Month for November 2010.

McElroy received the award for his use of News and Events in promoting Chemistry seminars, activities and achievements of student organizations, faculty research and awards, and more.

While much of the subject matter of his news posts is technical, McElroy consistently provides explanations and background information.

McElroy is the third recipient of the Golden Mouse Award. Previous winners were Rick Kutz, Center for Student Life, in September, and Hank Knerr, College of Fine Arts, in October. Knerr is pictured with the Web Team at right.

This month will focus on social media. We’ll discuss:

• What IUP is currently doing with social media
• The results of last week’s survey of web maintainers
• Answers to your questions about social media
• How IUP can move forward together to make the best use of this new medium

We’ll also be providing our monthly CMS tip and a look forward at our editorial calendar.

And, of course, we will be once again awarding the Golden Mouse to our web maintainer of the month. Could it be you? You’ll have to be there to find out!

Content that needs to be live on the website by Monday, November 29, should be submitted to the Web Team for publishing by 2:00 p.m. Wednesday, November 24.

Likewise, news and Bulletin Board items that need to appear in IUP Daily, the daily e-mail newsletter for employees, by Monday, November 29, should be submitted to the Web Team for publishing by 2:00 p.m. Wednesday, November 24.

IUP Daily will not be distributed November 25 or 26 but will resume Monday, November 29.

So in preparation for next Wednesday, the Web Team has put together a quick survey for those who plan to attend. We hope to find out what you’re already doing with social media, what you hope to do, and what questions you have.

It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes, so please follow this link to take the IUP Web Maintainer Social Media Survey.

The survey closes at 3:00 p.m. on Friday, November 12, 2010.

(This month’s Web Maintainers’ Summit is scheduled for Wednesday, November 17, 2010 at 9:00 a.m. in Delaney Hall, Rm. G-5.)

Register by using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form. Advance registration is required, as the Web Team must set special permissions on the training website for each participant.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing deparment/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. Those arriving late may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

Register by using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form. Advance registration is required, as the Web Team must set special permissions on the training website for each participant.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing deparment/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. Those arriving late may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

That is because it really isn’t new. News posts created in Ektron retain their date of creation, and that date is what determines where it appears and in what order within a news list. Updating a news post gives it a new publication date but does not change the date of creation. News feeds that search for new posts to distribute tend to look for the post’s creation date.

During the assembly of each edition of IUP Daily, for example, the tool used by the Web Team pulls up every news post created during the previous five business days (one week). Anything created earlier than that will not be noticed by the news tool and will not appear in IUP Daily.

A similar problem can arise if, in the effort to be efficient about promoting an upcoming event, a web maintainer creates a news post a few weeks in advance within the CMS editor, then checks it in with the intention of publishing it a few days before the event. But because the news tool looks at the date of creation, not publication, that news post will fall outside the five business days and will never be included in IUP Daily. In addition, if other news posts are published between the date that post is first written and its date of publication, that “new” post will be buried underneath the others on the department or office’s news page.

If a news post contains inaccurate information, such as a wrong date or time, or a misspelled name, it should definitely be updated. But if you have new news, be sure to make a new news post.

Having a plan for your news posts is great, and writing the posts ahead of time is encouraged if it helps you stay organized. Just don’t write them in the CMS Workarea. Use Word or Notepad or any other text editor, and save them to your own computer or network drive. When you’re finally ready to publish the item, just copy and paste the text into a new news post (remember to use Paste Text, never a straight Paste).

And be sure never to update an old news post to promote a new event.

On a slightly different subject, sometimes web maintainers may post news by using the Suggest a News Item link on their department’s news page. There’s nothing wrong with doing that, but if you’re a site approver, you need to be aware that one more step is required. When a news item is suggested via the “Suggest a News Item” link, Ektron does not recognize who is submitting the post, and it sends the submission all the way to the start of the approval chain. This means that, even if you are an approver, if you enter a news post using the “Suggest a News Item” link, you must then open the CMS Workarea to the Smart Desktop and approve your own post. Otherwise it will never be published.

One more thing to note: Often, web maintainers will see a news post on another department or office website and decide they would like a similar post in their own News section. Maybe someone in their department is mentioned in the post or it discusses one of their area’s programs.

However, posting a duplicate news post really needs to be avoided. A far better way to display any news post on your site is to use the Sticky News option, which allows you to display any news item from anywhere on the IUP site without needing to make a news post. Read more about How to Work with Sticky News.

Here's a quick round up of what was presented. The next summit takes place on November 17. The topic will be social media.

CMS Tip: Don’t Reuse Old News Posts

Bruce Dries discussed the importance of creating new news posts rather than updating old ones for new events. Ektron only looks at the posts’ original date of creation, not the date of any revisions or republishings. Note that the ALS Information Night news post promoted the October 13 event; however, the post was originally created on May 11 for the Spring event. Because the old post was updated instead of creating a new post, the news was not picked up for IUP Daily nor any of the news feeds.

Sticky News was also covered: a way to display news from another department or office’s feed without having to create a duplicate news post. Read more about how to work with Sticky News.

Editorial Calendar

Elaine Smith presented the events and activities on the Web Team’s radar for October and November: Editorial Calendar, October 2010. If you have an event that needs promoting, please contact the Web Team at web-team@iup.edu, so that we can help you to plan and coordinate that publicity.

Web Analytics Presentation

Mike Powers, Director of Web Services, presented “Web Analytics Basics,” a guide to understanding the various measures that appear in the monthly analytics reports now available to web maintainers.

The slides from the presentation (PDF, 11.3 MB) are available for download.

If you don’t currently receive analytics for your site but would like to, just sign up for analytics reports.

For more help on using analytics, see our how-to section, Using Analytics.

And for ways to fix problems you find via analytics, consult our Best Practices for Department Websites.

Golden Mouse Award Winner: Hank Knerr

Hank Knerr of the College of Fine Arts was the recipient of the Golden Mouse Award as Web Maintainer of the Month for October 2010.

Knerr received the award based on his use of the College of Fine Arts’ news feed and events calendar to promote events of the college.

The Web Team recognized Knerr not only for posting news and events several times each week, but also for the great detail, use of photos, and strong writing in those posts.

This month will focus on using the web analytics reports we’ve made available to web maintainers over the last few months. We’ll discuss:

• What the measures mean (what the heck’s a “bounce rate,” anyway?)
• How to use each of the four reports you receive
• How you can apply analytics to make your website better

If you don’t receive analytics reports but would like to, just sign up for them.

We’ll also be providing some tips on scheduling news posts, a look forward at our editorial calendar, and providing a very brief social media tip. (By the way, social media will be the topic of our Web Maintainers’ Summit in November.)

And we will be once again awarding the Golden Mouse to our web maintainer of the month. Could it be you? You’ll have to be there to find out!

Register by using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form. Advance registration is required, as we must set special permissions on the training website for each participant.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing deparment/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. Those arriving late may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

Rick Kutz, of the Center for Student Life, won the Golden Mouse Award and recognition as Web Maintainer of the Month for September 2010. This was the Web Team’s first awarding of the Golden Mouse.

Kutz was recognized for excellence in maintenance of the Six O’Clock Series website. His work has included organization on the website of current and past seasons of the Six O’Clock Series, providing detailed webpages for each program in the series, and weekly promotion of the programs through the News and Events sections of the website.

The award was presented during the Web Team’s monthly summit September 15, 2010, in Stabley Library. Kutz will pass on the Golden Mouse to October’s honored web maintainer during the web summit next month.

In addition to the awarding of the Golden Mouse, other topics covered included IUP’s involvement in social media, a maintenance tip about updating PDFs on the website, use of an editorial calendar to optimize promotion and coordination of events on the web, and placement of Homecoming events on the appropriate website calendars.

The next web summit, focusing on understanding web analytics, will be October 20, 2010, from 9:00 to 10:00 a.m. in Delaney Hall, Room G5.

Register by using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form. Advance registration is required, as we must set special permissions on the training website for each participant.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing deparment/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. Those arriving late may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

The Web Advisory Board, instead of meeting monthly, will meet quarterly. And Web Maintainer Summits, which had been an occasional event, will now take place monthly.

Why the Change?

With the completion of the transition to the new website, the Web Advisory Board has had less to discuss on a monthly basis. The low attendance was indicative of this.

At the same time, the Web Team rarely gets the opportunity for face-to-face contact with web maintainers. We know we have lots of things we want to communicate to web maintainers, and we want web maintainers to have the opportunity to give us feedback.

Changing the frequency of these meetings will be, we hope, a better use of everyone’s time.

What Will Happen at the Monthly Web Summit?

The Monthly Web Summit will be a little bit user group, a little bit planning, and little bit awards show. It will last about an hour. The typical summit will include:

1. A CMS Tip: How to use Ektron better and more efficiently
2. Social Media: What the Web Team is doing with social media and how you can take part.
3. Editorial Calendar: We’ll give you a preview of what we’re planning to put on the website in the next month, ask you what your web plans are, and see how we can work together to make the most of our web resources.
4. Golden Mouse Award: Each month the Web Team will present the Web Maintainer of the Month with the Golden Mouse Award. We’ll explain why he or she won, and how you can become the next winner.

What Will Happen at the Quarterly Web Advisory Board Meeting?

The agenda for Web Advisory Board meetings will remain much the same. The Web Team will present an overview of the last three months and preview upcoming projects. The Advisory Board will provide input on the ranking of web development projects. As has been our practice, any member of the Advisory Board may place items for discussion on the agenda.

In addition, Michael Powers, the Director of Web Services, will serve on ACPAC.

Dates and locations for Monthly Web Summits and Advisory Board meetings are available on the Web Team calendar. The first Web Advisory Board meeting of the year takes place on September 8, 2010. The first Monthly Web Summit, with a focus on Homecoming content, takes place on September 15.

Register by using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form. Advance registration is required, as we must set special permissions on the training website for each participant.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing deparment/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. Those arriving late may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

The Web Team invites IUP faculty and staff to help us make things easier to find on our website by participating in a brief card-sort activity this week.

It’s not hard: We’ll give you a list of web content, and you tell us where you would put it. There are no wrong answers, and the activity only takes ten to fifteen minutes. Click right now to help organize the IUP website.

1. The publication deadline will be moved from 2 p.m. to noon.

   This change means that, to guarantee next-day publication, you should submit your content by noon. As usual, the Web Team will make every attempt to publish all submitted content before close of business.

2. Development of any new HTML forms will delayed until August.

   If you require the development of a new HTML form, please e-mail web-team@iup.edu so that we can resume form development when staffing allows.

3. Updates to existing forms will be limited.

   Minor updates to forms are likely to be turned around the same day, as usual. Major updates and revisions will need to wait until August.

4. No training will be offered in July.

   Regular training will resume in August.

It is important for web maintainers to understand that the shutdown of the Central Webserver will not affect your unit’s web presence, as all websites have been migrated to Ektron, our new content management system (CMS).

This shutdown also does not affect webpages on www.people.iup.edu.

For these reasons, for most web maintainers, the shutdown of the Central Server will be a nonevent.

However, if you have additional, non-website documents on the Central Server that you wish to preserve, you must back them up to another drive, or to a CD- or DVD-ROM, before July 1.

Why would you have documents or pages on the Central Server that were not transferred to the CMS? During migration, only pages and documents that were accessible to the public were transferred to the new website. That is, if there was no link to it, it was not an active part of your website and was not transferred.

For instance, if you had a folder of Word documents on the Central Server but no links to those documents on your website, they have not been migrated. If you wish to retain copies of these documents, you must back them up to another drive, or to a CD- or DVD-ROM, before July 1.

Questions? Don’t hesitate to contact the Web Team at web-team@iup.edu.

Logging in to the website no longer opens up a separate window. Instead, you'll find a login form right on the page.

Please note that you will still use the same username and password (your network account and password) to log into the website. Only the form has been changed.

It is important for web maintainers to understand that the shutdown of the Central Server will not affect your unit’s web presence, as all websites have been migrated to Ektron, our new content management system (CMS).

This shutdown also does not affect webpages on www.people.iup.edu.

For these reasons, for most web maintainers, the shutdown of the Central Server will be a nonevent.

However, if you have additional, non-website documents on the Central Server that you wish to preserve, you must back them up to another drive, or to a CD- or DVD-ROM, before July 1.

Why would you have documents or pages on the Central Server that were not transferred to the CMS? During migration, only pages and documents that were accessible to the public were transferred to the new website. That is, if there was no link to it, it was not an active part of your website and was not transferred.

For instance, if you had a folder of Word documents on the Central Server but no links to those documents on your website, they have not been migrated. If you wish to retain copies of these documents, you must back them up to another drive, or to a CD- or DVD-ROM, before July 1.

Questions? Don’t hesitate to contact the Web Team at web-team@iup.edu.

Register by using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form. Advance registration is required, as we must set special permissions on the training website for each participant.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing deparment/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. Those arriving late may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

It is important for web maintainers to understand that the shutdown of the Central Server will not affect your unit’s web presence, as all websites have been migrated to Ektron, our new content management system (CMS).

This shutdown also does not affect webpages on www.people.iup.edu.

For these reasons, for most web maintainers, the shutdown of the Central Server will be a nonevent.

However, if you have additional, non-website documents on the Central Server that you wish to preserve, you must back them up to another drive, or to a CD- or DVD-ROM, before July 1.

Why would you have documents or pages on the Central Server that were not transferred to the CMS? During migration, only pages and documents that were accessible to the public were transferred to the new website. That is, if there was no link to it, it was not an active part of your website and was not transferred.

For instance, if you had a folder of Word documents on the Central Server but no links to those documents on your website, they have not been migrated. If you wish to retain copies of these documents, you must back them up to another drive, or to a CD- or DVD-ROM, before July 1.

Questions? Don’t hesitate to contact the Web Team at web-team@iup.edu.

Register by using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form. Advance registration is required, as we must set special permissions on the training website for each participant.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing deparment/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. Those arriving late may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

It is important for web maintainers to understand that the shutdown of the Central Server will not affect your unit’s web presence, as all website have been migrated to Ektron, our the new content management system (CMS).

For this reason, for most web maintainers, the shutdown of the Central Server will be a non-event.

However, if you have additional, non-website documents on the Central Server that you wish to preserve, you must back them up to another drive, or to a CD- or DVD-ROM, before July 1.

Why would you have documents or pages on the Central Server that were not transferred to the CMS? During migration, only pages and documents that were accessible to the public were transferred to the new website. That is, if there was no link to it, it was not an active part of your website and was not transferred.

For instance, if you had a folder of Word documents on the Central Server but no links to those documents on your website, they have not been migrated. If you wish to retain copies of these documents, you must back them up to another drive, or to a CD- or DVD-ROM, before July 1.

Questions? Don’t hesitate to contact the Web Team at web-team@iup.edu.

Data will include:

• Number of visits to your website
• Number of pages per visit
• Percentage of new and returning visitors
• Average time on site
• Bounce rate (percentage of visits that are only one page)
• Ranking of top pages and the traffic to each

The Web Team will be providing information on using this data to improve your website in coming months.

Interested? Then Sign Up to Receive Monthly Analytics Reports.

The Web Team spends all its time working on websites. We are fully aware that creating and maintaining a website takes time.

Doing a good job of maintaining your website takes even more time. Professional-level website design involves an understanding of:

• Writing for the Web
• Graphic Design
• Content Strategy
• Information Architecture
• User Experience

And more. More than likely, most faculty members will find these disciplines to be completely outside their fields of study.

Of course, that’s all aside from the technical skills required. That is, aside from knowing how to use Ektron (which, frankly, isn’t the easiest thing to use).

And—by the way—maintaining the department website probably isn’t in your job description, and probably doesn’t count toward promotion and tenure.

Nonetheless, your website does need to be maintained, and it’s up to you to do it.

What’s a Web Maintainer to Do?

Consult the checklist.

Our Best Practices for Department Websites includes a checklist, subtitled What to Do If You Don’t Have Time to Do Much. It’s a list of tactics for your website, from the most basic to the most advanced. It’s also a great way to get started with our best practices document.

We’ve arranged the list in the order you should take each action, putting the items with the greatest effectiveness first. If you’ve read our past posts you won’t be surprised to see that getting your news and events in order comes up pretty early on this list.

(You might also notice that the third item on the list requires a couple of page elements—the various calls to action—that we haven’t yet released. They are on the way. You can see a preview of the undergraduate admissions calls to action over on the IUP 360º website.)

More than anything else, your department website needs good content, and the checklist is oriented toward walking you through the process of developing good content.

So if you’re wondering what the next step for your website is: check out the checklist.

Feedback

If our news feeds were more like blogs, there would be a comment section right here, and we could take comments and answer your questions right here. In lieu of a comments section, send your comments and questions to web-team@iup.edu and we’ll address them in a future post.

Next time, we’ll be taking a look at Facebook, and whether or not you should consider creating a Facebook page for your department.

Register by using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form. Advance registration is required, as we must set special permissions on the training website for each participant.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. For a web maintainer to be added, one of the existing deparment/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training. Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. Those arriving late may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

You can see an example to the right.

Why Use an Event Details Box?

The event details box provides a way to highlight event details and links to important information without having to know HTML.

As we watch event announcements come through the publication queue, the Web Team sees a lot of attempts to make sure that the details of an event stand out from the rest of the text. Making your event details stand out is a good idea, and it agrees with best practices for the web.

But that’s difficult to do in our Ektron environment, and the available ways of doing it (like using a heading style on content that isn’t a heading) can interfere with our accessibility and search engine efforts or require advanced knowledge of standards-based HTML.

How to Use the Event Details Box

Because each event details box is its own content block, placing an event details box on a page is a two-step process. First you create the event details box, then you attach it to a page. (This is the same process we use to create “learn more” boxes.)

In brief, here’s what you do:

1. Choose New > Smart Form > Event Details Box, fill out the smart form with your event details, and submit it for publication.

2. Edit the page on which you want to place the event details box, go to the Metadata tab, and then put the event details in the “LearnMoreBlock.”

For full directions, see our new how-to: Using the Event Details Box.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Disadvantages

1. Setting up the event details box is a bit more complicated than just typing it into your page.

2. You can’t see how the final page will look until both the box and the page are approved for publication. (The same as when you use collections or “learn more” boxes.)

3. It is a bit more work. You’ll now have three things to do when announcing an event: a news post, a calendar item, and an event details box.

Advantages

1. Once you’ve created an event details box, you can put it on lots of pages. If you update the box, it gets updated everywhere. This is very useful when an event gets rescheduled or moved and can make the extra work worth it.

2. Formatting is taken care of for you. Because we are using this style of callout only for events, regular website visitors (74% of our visitors) should come to recognize this box right away.

3. The box resizes automatically when you put it into a news item, regular page, or a home page. So it fits everywhere.

4. The event information is presented in a format that is easily readable by Google and other search engines.

Other Page Elements

The event details box is the second of a series of smart forms we’re calling “page elements.” The whole set is:

• Learn More Box: Provides links to related information

• Event Details Box: Provides details about an event

• Spotlight Box: Highlights text or pictures (still in development)

• Call to Action Box: Encourages users to click a link or button (still in development)

We have a few ideas for others, too. Put together, these page elements are going to allow for a lot more variety in the way you can lay out your webpages.

Feedback

If our news feeds were more like blogs, there would be a comment section right here, and we could take comments and answer your questions right here. In lieu of a comments section, send your comments and questions to web-team@iup.edu and we’ll address them in a future post.

Next time, we’ll be taking a look at our best practices checklist, the best place to get started improving your website. See you then!

The Web Team has been emphasizing making effective use of your news feed and events calendar for at least a year and a half. And we’ve made keeping up with your news and events the first and second items on our best practices Checklist (a.k.a. “What to Do If You Don’t Have Time to Do Much”).

So probably it’s worth reviewing why we care so much about them.

News and events—while important in themselves—are also a means to an end. Taken as a whole, we want the IUP website:

• To be found
• To communicate who who we are
• To encourage potential students to apply, and others to become supporters of IUP (financially or otherwise)

Keeping the news and events on your website up to date helps on all three counts:

1. Getting Found

   • News and events keep your site updated on a regular basis. That helps us get found, because search engines like Google and Bing favor sites that are frequently updated. We also send out news and events items via RSS, social media, e-mail newsletters, and other means. News gets you noticed.

2. Communicating Who We Are

   • News and events show that you don’t just talk the talk, you walk the walk. Saying you provide opportunities for students is great. But what university doesn’t say that they provide opportunities for students? Showing those opportunities—by posting information about internships, research projects, special topics classes, and so forth—is always going to be much more effective. (Or, as we’ve put it before, “show, don’t tell.”)

   • News and events help us broadcast important keywords. People find websites by typing keywords into search engines. If you want to be found, you’ll need to have those keywords on your website. But which keywords? Using news and events very naturally seeds our website with keywords—archeology, paleoclimate, republican china—that match the interests of our faculty, and the interests of the students we most want to attract.

   • News and events help us illustrate our message pillars. The message pillars constitute our core description of IUP. But just listing them isn’t enough: we need to show how we live those message pillars on a daily basis at IUP. News and events do that, without much planning at all.

3. Encouraging Applicants and Supporters

   • News and events helps applicants envision their future at IUP, and give supporters reasons to support us. Interested in Chinese? Imagine yourself in China. Did someone just call your alma mater a “party school”? Tell them about IUP’s Alternative Spring Break and Service Learning programs.

And that’s why, if you ask the Web Team what you can do to improve your department website, our first questions are going to be

1. Are you using your news feed and events calendar?
2. Have you shown your faculty how to use the ‘Suggest a News Item’ Form?

That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t develop quality content about each major or program, or that you don’t need quality photography or video and audio. You do, and those things are on the checklist, too.

But news and events are a central part of our web strategy, and are one of the quickest ways to turn your website around.

Comments? Questions?

If our news feeds were more like blogs, there would be a comment section right here, and we could take comments and answer your questions right here. In lieu of a comments section, send your comments and questions to web-team@iup.edu and we’ll address them in a future post.

See you next time!

Register by using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form. Advance registration is required, as we must set special permissions on the training website for each participant.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. To add a web maintainer, one of the existing deparment/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu. Also, please know your IUP user name and password at the time you arrive for training.

Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. Those arriving late may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

Created at the suggestion of the Web Advisory Board, the guide is intended to provide web maintainers from academic departments with guidance for developing their websites.

For web maintainers with limited time, the best practices guide includes a checklist to guide maintainers through the most important tasks for making their department web presence more effective.

The deadline has been extended a week to Wednesday, February 3, 2010.

See Faculty and Staff Web Survey.

By completing this survey, you will help the Web Team to gain an accurate picture of technology usage at IUP. We can also use these results to determine how to meet your needs more effectively with the IUP website.

Questions explore how often you use various websites and technologies, tools that are most important to your work at IUP, and information you have difficulty finding on the website or elsewhere.

This survey is in follow-up to a similar one sent in September 2007. A separate survey is available for students.

Your help with this project is appreciated.

Register by using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form. Advance registration is required, as we must set special permissions on the training website for each participant.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. To add a web maintainer, one of the existing deparment/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. Those arriving late may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

See Faculty and Staff Web Survey.

By completing this survey, you will help the Web Team to gain an accurate picture of technology usage at IUP. We can also use these results to determine how to meet your needs more effectively with the IUP website.

Questions explore how often you use various websites and technologies, tools that are most important to your work at IUP, and information you have difficulty finding on the website or elsewhere.

This survey is in follow-up to a similar one sent in September 2007. A separate survey is available for students.

Please complete the survey by Wednesday, January 27, 2010. Your help with this project is appreciated.

Content that needs to be live on the website by January 4 should be submitted to the Web Team by 2:00 p.m. Wednesday, December 23.

IUP Daily, the newsletter distributed to all employees via e-mail, will not be available December 22, 2009, through January 4, 2010. For more information, see IUP Daily Break for the Holidays.

“What should I do with my department’s website?” The Web Team hears this question daily. In order to provide the best possible answer, we are currently are developing a new set of best practices for academic department home pages. (Please note that we are focusing on academic, not administrative websites during this session.)

We are particularly concerned with making sure that potential students who arrive at your department homepage manage to find what they want to find—and that they go on from there to ask for more information, register for a visit, or apply to IUP.

Our website isn’t just about admissions, however. So we want to know what you need your websites to do: graduate admissions? sharing research? conference promotion?

Answering these questions is the aim of our focus group. We’ll be asking two basic questions about your website:

1. What do visitors who come to your website need to find?

2. What do visitors who come to your website need to do?

We will collate the answers we collect and use them as we develop a new set of best practices for department websites that balance admissions and other needs.

There’s no limit on the number of participants, but please register so we know how many to plan for.

• November 26 and 27, 2009
• December 24, 2009, through January 3, 2010

Workflow is also not available on weekends.

Content that needs to be live on the website by November 30 should be submitted to the Web Team by 2:00 p.m. Wednesday, November 25.

Content needing to be live by January 4 should be submitted to Web Team by 2:00 p.m. Wednesday, December 23.

The schedule for IUP Daily, the newsletter distributed to all employees via e-mail, will also be affected by the holiday breaks. For more information, see IUP Daily Schedule during Breaks.

Schedule of December web training sessions:

Register by using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form. Advance registration is required, as we must set special permissions on the training website for each participant.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. To add a web maintainer, one of the existing deparment/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. Those arriving late may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

The new web training session, Promoting Your Department Using News and Events, can help.

This training, which debuts Wednesday, November 18, 2009, will be offered each month—no different from The New Basics or Intermediate-Level Training—and is not to be confused with Web summits or other workshops.

It builds on the training provided in The New Basics on posting news and events by addressing the following topics:

• Writing an effective news post (what details to include)
• Differences in communicating small-scale vs. large-scale events
• Coordinating news posts, events on the calendar, and permanent or semipermanent webpages or sections
• Making the most of IUP Daily, the e-mail newsletter for employees
• Creating a communications schedule for events (particularly beneficial for events in which multiple departments/offices are involved)
• Using the new “Event Details” box

Participants are asked to bring to the training session the details of an actual event their office or department plans. Web Team members will discuss how these events can be promoted via the website.

Web maintainers should take The New Basics training or have equivalent skills before registering for this new training.

Two sessions of Promoting Your Department Using News and Events have been scheduled so far:

• Wednesday, November 18, 2009, from 9:00 to 11:00 a.m.
• Wednesday, December 2, 2009, from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m.

Both sessions will be held in Delaney Hall, Room G41, located within the IT Support Center.

Registration for the sessions is on line: Web Training Workshop Registration Form.

Advance registration is required, as special permissions must be set on the training website for each participant.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. Also, make sure you know your user name and password at the time of the training session.

To add a web maintainer, one of the existing deparment/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

“Promoting Your Department Using News and Events” focuses on the use of news posts, the events calendar, IUP Daily, and more to get the word out about events and activities. More details about the session are to come.

Schedule of November Web training sessions:

Register by using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form. Advance registration is required, as we must set special permissions on the training website for each participant.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. To add a web maintainer, one of the existing deparment/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. Those arriving late may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

Register by using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form. Advance registration is required, as we must set special permissions on the training website for each participant.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. To add a web maintainer, one of the existing deparment/office website approvers should send a request to web-team@iup.edu.

Because there is much to cover during the training sessions, we aim to start on time. Those arriving late may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

Posting your events will assist the Office of Alumni Relations in publicizing Homecoming activities and creating a comprehensive list of the weekend’s festivities.

When posting your event, be sure to select the Homecoming and Central Calendar event types.

Here’s more information on how to post your information:

If You Have a Website on the Content Management System

• If you have a website and you are a web maintainer, add the event to your website’s calendar. See How to Work with Events/Calendar. Under Event Types, be sure to select Homecoming and Central Calendar.
• If you have a website but you are not a maintainer, please ask one of your maintainers to post the event, following the directions above. See a list of web maintainers, organized by site.

If You Do Not Have a Website on the CMS

Members of student organizations, clubs, and other groups do not have websites on the content management system. If you do not have a website but you have a Homecoming event you wish to post, please complete the Register Your Homecoming Event Form.

The Office of Alumni Relations will compile its list from the website and submissions of the registration form.

These training sessions are for maintainers of department and office websites within www.iup.edu. Make sure that your web privileges have been requested before you register for a training session. 

Register by using the Web Training Workshop Registration Form. Advance registration is required, as we must set special permissions on the training website for each participant.

Because there is much to cover during these sessions, we aim to start on time. Those arriving late may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

If you have questions, contact web-team@iup.edu.

For your reference, here are the most common reasons:

There Was Lag Time between Date of Creation and Date of Submission

When compiling the news posted each day, the Web Team uses a Web-based tool called a news aggregator. This tool collects news items posted by departments and offices based on the date the news items were created. News items stay in IUP Daily for five business days, so the news aggregator is set to search the past seven days. Because of the volume of news posted, any posts created more than seven days ago are very likely to be missed.

Some common scenarios in which this is a problem:

1. Someone creates a news post on August 5 but is called on to do something else. The person resumes working on the post August 13 and submits it for publishing. While this post will be published for your website, it may not appear in IUP Daily. The publishing of content for the website and the inclusion of content in IUP Daily are two separate functions.
2. Someone who is not a web maintainer suggests a news item on a department website. The approvers for that website do not realize they have content awaiting their approval until more than a week has passed. At that time, one of them approves the content. Again, because the date of creation was more than seven days earlier, this content will be published for the website but may not appear in IUP Daily. One of the best ways to avoid this situation is for website approvers to set up their profiles to request e-mail notification when they have content awaiting their approval.

Rather than Creating a News Post, You Are Editing an Existing One

This situation also relates to the date the news item was created. Let’s say your office holds an annual event, and you posted a news item about it last year. As the event approaches again this year, do you create a new news post? Yes. If you were to edit the post from the previous year with updated information, the date of creation will remain that of a year ago, so it will not be included in IUP Daily. Re-editing old news posts is something you want to avoid for other reasons as well, including that subscribers to your news feed will not receive notification of a new post.

Your News Post Was Submitted to Web Team after the 2:00 p.m. Deadline

The Web Team guarantees next-day publication only for content it receives before 2:00 p.m. We try, and often do, approve content well past that deadline, but depending on the workload, it is not always possible. Content that is not submitted to Web Team by 2:00 p.m. may not be approved that day and/or may not appear in the following day’s IUP Daily.

You Are Making a Duplicate News Post

If you are posting news that was already posted by another unit, or by the Media Relations office under IUP News, it will not be included in IUP Daily unless it is a Web Team oversight. For example, several departments recently posted news items about their professors’ promotions. While adding this news to your department’s website is encouraged, it would be repetitive to include the post from each department in IUP Daily. The complete list, which was posted by the Academic Affairs Division, is what was included in IUP Daily.

It Was a Web Team Oversight

There are many reasons—technical and otherwise—why a news item may not appear in IUP Daily. The reason may simply be human error. If you posted a news item that did not appear in IUP Daily and the scenarios above do not explain why it was missed, please contact the Web Team at web-team@iup.edu.

Choose from two sessions of The New Basics, for new web maintainers, and one session of Intermediate-Level Training, for those who have completed New Basics:

To register for a training session, use the Web Training Workshop Registration Form.

Advance registration is required, as we must set special permission on the training website for each workshop participant.

Because there is much to cover during these sessions, we aim to begin at the start time. Those arriving late may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

These training sessions will provide instruction using the recently upgraded version of Ektron. However, these sessions are intended for those who are new or inexperienced web maintainers (The New Basics) or web maintainers who have completed The New Basics and are ready for Intermediate Training.

Experienced web maintainers will have the opportunity to become familiar with the upgraded version of Ektron during an upcoming web summit. These maintainers will notice some changes with the upgrade but should be able to continue working, using the web-help documentation for reference.

Registration

To register for a training session, use the Web Training Workshop Registration Form.

Advance registration is required, as we must set special permission on the training website for each participant.

Because there is much to cover during these sessions, we aim to begin at the start time. Those arriving late may have difficulty catching up and completing the workshop objectives.

This software, called eWebEditPro, is the “web editor” software that allows web maintainers to make changes to pages on the website. (You might recalling having it installed when you first became a web maintainer.)

In order to edit content after the upgrade is complete, you will need the new version of eWebEditPro on your computer.

Note that the new version of eWebEditPro is fully compatible with our current version of the CMS, so there’s no reason not to upgrade early, especially if you expect that you’ll need to make changes to your website on or after August 3.

If You Maintain Your Website from Your Own (Home) Computer

The new version can be downloaded from this location: eWebEditPro Downloads.

If you use the Windows XP operating system or anything beyond, use the msi version. If that does not work, use the exe.

If You Maintain Your Website from Your Work Computer

• Contact your college technology manager (CTM) to have the upgrade installed. A list of College Technology Managers is available.
• If you have the standard desktop (all computers with an ADMC number), your web-editing software has already been updated by the IT Support Center.

Additions and changes to the website cannot be made on Thursday, July 30, or Friday, July 31, because of this upgrade. Please work with your department or office web maintainer to make sure that anything needing to appear live on the website by July 31 is submitted to the Web Team by 2:00 p.m. July 29.

IUP Daily will not be produced during the upgrade because its content is drawn directly from the IUP website. While changes to the website cannot be made, the live website, www.iup.edu, will remain accessible to site visitors during this time.

Further information about the upgrade that is particularly useful to department and office web maintainers can be found here:

• Web Content Management System Upgrade Planned for July 30 
• Reminder: Update to Web Editing Software Required for Web Maintainers
   

This software, called eWebEditPro, is the “web editor” software that allows web maintainers to make changes to pages on the website. (You might recalling having it installed when you first became a web maintainer.)

In order to edit content after the upgrade is complete, you will need the new version of eWebEditPro on your computer.

Note that the new version of eWebEditPro is fully compatible with our current version of the CMS, so there’s no reason not to upgrade early, especially if you expect that you’ll need to make changes to your website on or after August 3.

If You Maintain your Website from Your Own Computer

The new version can be downloaded from this location: eWebEditPro Downloads.

If you use the Windows XP operating system or anything beyond, use the msi version. If that does not work, use the exe.

If You Maintain your Website from Your Work Computer

Contact your College Technology Manager (CTM) to have the upgrade installed. A list of College Technology Managers is available.

Note: The IT Support Center will deploy the updated software before the Ekron upgrade for all users with the standard desktop.

The upgrade from version 7.0 to 7.6 is expected to resolve several longstanding bugs in Ektron and eliminate the need for web maintainers to install the Ektron editor separately.

Please note: Because of the upgrade, web maintainers will not be able to log in to the content management system and edit content on Thursday, July 30, or Friday, July 31. For that reason, anything that needs to appear live on the website by July 31 must be submitted by 2:00 p.m. on July 29.

The live website will remain accessible to visitors throughout the upgrade.

All help documentation for working with the website will be updated for the newer Ektron version and made available to maintainers at the time of the upgrade.

The Web Team would like to thank IT Services personnel for their work in planning and preparing for the transition.

Further details about the upgrade will be communicated as they become available.

“Contact information provided in messages should be for an IUP community member or an authorized real-estate agent, not for any other third party. The IUP community member posting the information should include his or her full name within the post.”

This change will help to ensure that IUP community members are the beneficiaries of the Bulletin Board service.

Employees can use the Bulletin Board web feed to post many notices that do not involve university-related business. Think of it as the classified-advertisements section of a newspaper, with some restrictions (See Bulletin Board Policies).

Notices on the Bulletin Board are included in IUP Daily, the electronic newsletter distributed to all university employees via e-mail.

Acting as a central location for these types of announcements, IUP Daily may make many individual e-mail messages to all employees unnecessary.

Bulletin Board notices run in IUP Daily for five business days, which is more days of exposure than sending a message once or twice via global e-mail can provide. In addition, the Bulletin Board and other IUP Daily features are available via RSS (really simple syndication), which can provide exposure beyond e-mail.

While photos cannot be used in the Bulletin Board at this time, employees may mention in their postings that photos will be made available upon request. Links to additional information or photos in another location, such as photo-sharing website Flickr, can also be included.

To post a notice to the Bulletin Board, you must be on campus or connected to the IUP network via the Virtual Private Network. You will be prompted to log in to the website. In most cases, you will use the same user name and password you use to log in to your computer on campus.

Post an item on the Bulletin Board.

IUP’s Facebook presence has achieved a new milestone: The official page, established earlier this year, recently surpassed three thousand fans.

IUP’s foray into Facebook, a social networking website, is part of an effort by the Communications office to make use of the opportunities social media present. Particularly important are opportunities to enhance communication and relationships with parents, students, prospective students, and alumni.

Social media can be loosely defined as people talking to people, using computers, to get things done. In addition to Facebook, other examples of social media include social networking sites LinkedIn and MySpace, media-sharing sites YouTube and Flickr, microblogging service Twitter, and even the ability to post reviews on some sites, such as book reviews on Amazon.com.

While you don’t have to join Facebook to view IUP’s Facebook page, membership is required to become a fan. All members of the university community are encouraged to become fans, so they can stay abreast of campus happenings and see what other fans are saying about IUP. 

IUP’s Facebook page is updated several times a week with news and events postings. It also features photos, videos, and links to several other IUP-affiliated groups and pages on Facebook.

Other questions about IUP's Facebook presence may be referred to web-team@iup.edu.

The newsletter, sent on a daily basis via e-mail, has also raised many questions. We’ll attempt to answer them here. If you have further questions, please e-mail the Web Team at web-team@iup.edu.

What is IUP Daily?

IUP Daily is an electronic newsletter written by employees for employees. It is intended to be your tool for sharing events, achievements, and other news from your area, as well as for learning about what’s happening on the rest of the campus.

Content for IUP Daily comes from faculty and staff contributions to the IUP website. Complete web entries are available by following the links within the newsletter.

How did IUP Daily come about?

A pilot project, IUP Daily is one component of the University Relations Division’s Strategic Communications Plan, to be launched September 1, 2009. The plan is aimed at increasing awareness within the university community of events, policies, issues, and developments.

Can I unsubscribe to IUP Daily?

No. IUP Daily is an official university communication vehicle, no different from IUP Reporter, official memos, etc.

Why are you cluttering my inbox?

Our intention is exactly the opposite. IUP Daily may, in fact, decrease the number of global e-mails distributed. Some employees send individual global e-mails concerning university news, events, items for sale, etc. By offering a central location for that information, we hope to make many individual global e-mails unnecessary.

Why should I contribute to IUP Daily when I can send my own global e-mail?

IUP Daily posts each content item—ranging from news to a Bulletin Board post (house for sale, lost cat, etc.)—for five business days. Most employees avoid promoting their cause or event more than once or twice via global e-mail. Therefore, inclusion in IUP Daily results in more days of exposure for an announcement than an individual global e-mail typically provides.

Additionally, everything in IUP Daily is posted on IUP’s website and made available via RSS (really simple syndication), which can provide exposure far beyond what an individual e-mail can achieve.

How can I get an announcement in IUP Daily?

All items in IUP Daily come from the IUP website. Items for the News, For Employees, and Faculty and Staff Stars sections come from unit (department, office, etc.) news posts. To have an item included, ask your unit’s web maintainer to post it, or go to your unit website’s News page and follow the link “Suggest a News Item for This Page” on the right side.

To have an item added to the Central Calendar section, ask your unit web maintainer to post it on your website’s Events calendar and indicate “Central Calendar” as the event type.

To post an item in the Bulletin Board section, go to the IUP website’s Bulletin Board and follow the link “Suggest a News Item for This Page” on the right side.

I tried to suggest a news item, but it wouldn’t work. Why?

Some of the likely reasons it didn’t work:

• You are attempting this from home. You must be connected to the IUP network in order to suggest a news item. If you are off campus, you will need to connect via the Virtual Private Network.
• You are not using the correct user name and password. In most cases, you should use the user name and password you use to log into your computer on campus.
• Your posting has not been approved at the unit level. After you suggest a news item, it goes to the approver(s) for your unit website. Only after that person approves it does it continue through the website’s workflow. You may wish to notify your unit approver when you submit an item for his/her approval. Find your unit’s web maintainers and approvers.

See How to Suggest a News Item for more information.

Why is this newsletter distributed daily and not weekly?

The IUP website includes contributions from roughly 170 unit websites. We find that there are sufficient news submissions to justify a daily publication.

No one is going to read this newsletter. Why are you sending it?

Analytics show that about half of the IUP Daily audience is following links, or “clicking through,” in each issue to see full stories or listings. We expect that number to grow as people become more familiar with the publication and as faculty members who are out this summer return for the Fall semester.

I would use the Bulletin Board to sell items, but I want to include photos. Why can’t you accommodate them?

Currently, photos cannot be used in Bulletin Board items because of the time it would take to process photos for the web. You can, however, mention within your text that photos will be made available upon request. You can also include a link to additional information or photos in another location, such as photo-sharing website Flickr.

June 1, 2009, marks the inaugural issue of IUP Daily, our new e-mail newsletter for all employees of IUP.

IUP Daily features news from throughout the university, compiled from the news feeds of the 170 websites hosted at www.iup.edu.

Also featured are upcoming events taken from IUP’s Central Calendar, Faculty and Staff Stars, employee notices, as well as a community Bulletin Board where employees can post tickets for sale, properties for rent, pets for adoption, and more.

There’s no need to subscribe; IUP Daily will be delivered automatically to all employees of IUP.

How to Get Your News into IUP Daily

Does your department have news to share? Just have your department’s web maintainer post it in your news feed—we take care of the rest. The advent of IUP Daily means that posting to your news feed now automatically:

• Updates your home page
• Puts your news in the top-level News and Events section of the website
• Puts your news into several RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds
• Gets your faculty or staff achievement into IUP Reporter
• Puts your news in front of our director of Media Relations
• Sends your news to more than 1,500 IUP faculty and staff by e-mail

Don’t know who your web maintainer is? Check our list of web maintainers, updated daily.

You can also post news yourself. Go to your department’s or office’s news feed on the web (it’s linked from the home page of each website) and click on the “Suggest a News Item for This Page” link.

Are you a web maintainer but unsure about how to post events? Watch this movie that shows you how to make a news post—or read these directions.

How to Get Your Event into IUP Daily

Want your event listed in the Central Calendar? Have your web maintainer post it to your website’s calendar and specify the event type “Central Calendar.” Not sure who your web maintainer is? Check the list.

Or, if you’re the web maintainer but aren’t sure how to post events, watch the movie or read the directions.

How to Put an Ad on the IUP Daily Bulletin Board

Lose your dog or cat? Trying to sell your house or tickets to a performance? Put a notice on the Bulletin Board and reach more than 1,500 IUP faculty and staff by e-mail.

It’s easy to submit your bulletin board item online.

Feedback

IUP Daily will be growing and changing in coming months as we learn more about what the IUP community wants and needs. If you have feedback about IUP Daily, please send it to web-team@iup.edu.

We will participate in the webinar in Stabley Library, Rm. 101 on May 5 and 6, 2009 at 1 p.m. If you wish to attend, please e-mail the Web Team at web-team@iup.edu; if interest is strong enough, we will move the webinar to a bigger facility.

About the Webinar

Higher Ed Experts, the company holding the webinar, describes it as:

…a two-webinar series that will help you get better at the art of writing right for the Web and teach you how to turn any campus web contributor into a good web writer. Despite the success of online videos and the ubiquity of photos on the Web, proper web writing is (or should be) central to any good web content. Whether they search the Web for information about your institution, look for something specific on your website, or casually browse their news feed on social networking websites, good web copy will always give you a real advantage.

We think this will be of anyone interested in writing better for the website. If you’re planning on updating your website this summer, this webinar is for you!

The Sessions

The webinar will be held over two days. Attend either or both, depending on your interests.

Web Writing 360: How to Write Right for All the Online Media

May 5, 2009, 1:00 p.m.–2:00 p.m.
Tim Nekritz, Associate Director of Public Affairs at SUNY Oswego and Chief Content Editor of Oswego.edu, will explain why good web copy still matters in this age of YouTube, Flickr, and Twitter. He will also share best practices in authoring great copy for websites, blogs, Facebook, and Twitter to make sure your messages reach your targeted audiences.

Web Writer Coaching 101: How to Find, Train, and Nurture Web Contributors on Campus

May 6, 2009, 1:00 p.m.–2:00 p.m.
Mary Beth Kurilko, former Director of Web Communications at Temple University, will show you how distributive web content authorship can be the solution to all your institution’s web content issues. She will also share her ten-step plan to enroll, train, and turn into great web contributors any of your campus administrative or academic writers.

More information about the webinar is available at the Higher Ed Experts website.

These will be the final training sessions of the Spring semester. We expect training to resume in June, once our Ektron installation has been upgraded and the Web Team has had the opportunity to update its training and documentation.

You may register for any Web Team training by filling out the Web Training Workshop Registration form.

Please note that preregisitration is required. Because we need to set special permissions on the training server for each participant, it can be difficult or impossible to add walk-in partipants.

As there is much to cover in a short amount of time, we ask that you arrive on time. Because we cover procedures step by step, late arrivals are likely to have difficulty completing the workshop objectives. In most cases, instructors will not have time to help late arrivals catch up.

The downtime will occur between 7:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m. and should not last longer than ten minutes.

Please note that this downtime affects only our staging server. Our production server at www.iup.edu will be unaffected.

You may register for any Web Team training by filling out the Web Training Workshop Registration form.

Please note that preregisitration is required. Because we need to set special permissions on the training server for each participant, it can be difficult or impossible to add walk-in partipants.

As there is much to cover in a short amount of time, we ask that you arrive on time. Because we cover procedures step by step, late arrivals are likely to have difficulty completing the workshop objectives. In most cases, instructors will not have time to help late arrivals catch up.

In many cases, this is content submitted by department or office colleagues for inclusion in IUP Reporter or other news outlets. Not moving this content through the workflow will result in its being missed for publication.

Those who are not working in the content management system and checking their queue of content awaiting approval on a regular basis may want to activate e-mail notification within their user profile. By doing this, a web maintainer would be notified by e-mail each time content is submitted for his or her approval.

Maintainers should be aware that the notification system will result in other e-mails as well, such as messages about content being approved for publication. For more active web maintainers, particularly those who are approvers for several sites, this could result in extra clutter in your e-mail inbox.

However, because the procedure for submitting news to the Communications office for publication involves posting it on the department or office website first, e-mail notification may be crucial to making the process work.

The following directions are now available on the Web Team website:

• How to Enable or Disable System Notification E-mail 
• How to Approve Content 

If you have any questions, please e-mail web-team@iup.edu. 

Web maintainers should be aware of the following changes, effective Monday, February 16, through Monday, April 20, 2009:

1. Content must be submitted to the Web Team by 10:00 a.m. on a university business day to guarantee next-day publication on the live website. In many cases, content submitted after the deadline will still appear on the live site by the next morning, but guarantees cannot be made during this time.

   Previously, content received by the Web Team by 2:00 p.m. on university business days, when approved, was guaranteed for next-day publication.

2. Web maintainers may experience a general slowdown in service, ranging from responses to questions or requests by e-mail or phone, projects in which the Web Team is assisting—including migration projects, or other general help. Team members will work diligently to handle these requests, but please be prepared for delays.

Normal Web Team services, including basic and intermediate training sessions, will continue to be offered during the next two months.

We apologize for any inconvenience this causes. Your patience is appreciated.

You may register for any Web Team training by filling out the Web Training Workshop Registration form.

Please note that pre-regisitration is required. Because we need to set special permissions on the training server for each participant, it can be difficult or impossible to add walk-in partipants.

In addition to reaching anyone who views the department or office website or subscribes to the new feed, these suggested news items—if posted successfully—will be included in the list of campus bulletins on the IUP website and will be eligible for inclusion in IUP Reporter and the IUP News and Events webpage. These items will also be reviewed by the Office of Media Relations for consideration as an IUP news release.

Requirements

In order to suggest a news item, employees must be connected to the IUP network, meaning they must be on campus or connected via the virtual private network. Find instructions on using the VPN.

Employees who use the on-line form will also be prompted to log in with their user name and password. Only IUP employees will be permitted to suggest news items using this form.

Procedure

Employees who wish to post a news item should go to the News section of their unit website. To access the on-line form, they should follow the link on the right side of the screen that reads, "Suggest a News Item." They will then be prompted to log in to verify employment at IUP. After adding their information to the form, employees should click the Suggest a News Item button at the bottom of the page.

Suggested news items go through workflow, a chain of approval, before publication on the website. Submitted items must be approved first at the unit level and then by the Web Team.

News items that reach the Web Team by 2:00 p.m. during a university business day, if approved, will appear on the live website beginning at about 4:00 a.m. the following day. That is the time when the contents of the staging server, where changes to the website are made, are copied to the production server, which houses the live website.

For more information on suggesting a news item, see How to Suggest a News item. If you have any further questions, please contact the Web Team at web-team@iup.edu.

During the intermediate session, participants will learn

• How to create new pages in Ektron
• How the current navigation design is intended to operate
• How to link pages into the menu system
• How to create three kinds of navigation pages: tables of contents, collection pages, and free-form navigation pages

The first date for intermediate-level training is Friday, January 16, 2009, from 9:00 to 11:00 a.m. in Delaney Hall, Room G41 (inside the IT Support Center). Additional dates will be added shortly and will be included on the Web Team Events page.

To register for “Intermediate Training for Web Maintainers” or “The New Basics,” see the training registration form.

Each session is limited to fourteen people; seats will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis.

• Wednesday, January 7, 2009: 1:00–3:00 p.m.
• Monday, January 12, 2009: 1:00–3:00 p.m.
• Tuesday, January 20, 2009: 1:00–3:00 p.m.
• Wednesday, January 21, 2009: 9:00–11:00 a.m.

There is plenty of room in each of these sessions. If you would like to attend, please sign up using the on-line registration form.

This training is intended for those who are new the Ektron CMS and working on an already-migrated site. It may also be a useful refresher for those who have been away from Ektron for a while, or who need to learn more about using the news and events features of our site.

Workflow is in effect during all university business days. It is not in operation during weekends, holidays, or compensatory holidays, of which there are three during the upcoming break: December 24, 26, and 31.

On all business days during the break, workflow will operate as usual: All content submitted to the Web Team by 2:00 p.m. will appear on the live website by 4:00 a.m. the following day.

IUP News and Events, the page formerly known as “Inside IUP,” will cease publication on Tuesday, December 23. Publication will resume January 5.

The workflow schedule is as follows:

The Web Team e-mail (web-team@iup.edu) and phone line (724-357-3062) will be covered on all university business days during the break.

Happy holidays!

Tuesday, January 6, 2009: 9:00–11:00 a.m.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009: 1:00–3:00 p.m.
Monday, January 12, 2009: 1:00–3:00 p.m.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009: 1:00–3:00 p.m.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009: 9:00–11:00 a.m.

Additional sessions will be added if there is sufficient demand for them.

These sessions are open to all current and future web maintainers; however, due to space and technical constraints, anyone wishing to attend must register on line.

As usual, all of the dates are available on the Web Team Events page. The workshop materials are also available on the Web Team site.

This training is intended for those who are new our Ektron CMS and working on an already-migrated site. It may also be a useful refresher for those who have been away from Ektron for a while, or who need to learn more about using the news and events features of our site.

Intermediate-Level Training

The first intermediate-level training will take place on Friday, January 16, 2009, from 9:00–11:00 a.m. Additional details and a registration form will be available after the new year.

This workshop is oriented toward those who are new to Ektron and working on already-migrated websites. But it may be useful for those who have been away from Ektron for a while—or who have found themselves thoroughly confused by Ektron in the past.

Available dates are as follows:

• Thursday, December 11, 2008, 1:00–3:00 p.m.
• Tuesday, December 16, 9:00–11:00 a.m.
• Thursday, December 18, 1:00–3:00 p.m.
• Monday, December 22, 9:00–11:00 a.m.

All training sessions take place in Delaney Hall, Room G41 (the IT Support Center training lab).

To sign up for a training session, go to The New Basics Registration Form.

You may remember that, back in August, we reported Office 2007 files did not work properly with the version of Ektron IUP uses and that the issue likely would not be resolved until IUP upgraded to a newer version of Ektron (see Office 2007 Support Broken in Ektron).

The current fix resolves the Office 2007 problem; however, web maintainers need to be aware of the following:

1. The method of uploading Office files into Ektron is also changing. Starting Tuesday, these files should be uploaded as managed files, the same way PDF files are uploaded. See How to Add a PDF or Microsoft Office File. The drag-and-drop method also works for uploading these files.
2. While we will have the ability to upload Office 2007 files, remember that many of our website visitors do not have this software and, therefore, will not be able to view these files.
   
   Creating web content in HTML is always preferred, as it offers easier access for our site visitors and better findability by search engine. But, for content that requires a very precise layout, a PDF (Portable Document Format, or Acrobat) file is preferred over a Word document. The Adobe Reader software is free and available to most of our site visitors.

If you have any questions about using Office 2007 files in Ektron, contact the Web Team, web-team@iup.edu.

This training is intended for those who are new our Ektron CMS and working on an already-migrated site. It may also be a useful refresher for those who have been away from Ektron for a while, or who need to learn more about using the news and events features of our site.

As usual, all of the dates are available on the Web Team Events page.

With 104 websites migrated to date, this is a question the Web Team has been hearing from web maintainers more and more frequently. And as the number of requests to the Web Team for smaller website changes increases, we find ourselves with less and less time to work on finishing the website migration.

So in order to clear up any confusion, we have created a list of specific responsibilities for web maintainers, which you’ll find below. As of December 1, 2008, the Web Team will begin to turn down requests to do things that are the responsibilities of web maintainers. In other words, the posting of news and events, making minor updates to web pages, etc. will need to be carried out by web maintainers rather than the Web Team.

We’re still here to support our web maintainers, and our upcoming training sessions will be targeting the skills web maintainers need to carry out these duties. (Please consult Web Team Events for information about upcoming training sessions.) We'll also continue to provide phone and e-mail support—but our emphasis will be on training web maintainers to carry out their responsibilities rather then doing those things for them.

What Web Maintainers Need to Do

• Training and Communication
  • Complete basic training through the Web Team before working on the unit website.
  • Know who their approvers are and make sure content that needs to be published the next day is submitted to the Web Team by 2:00 p.m. Content must be submitted by an approver to get to the Web Team.
  • Keep up to date with Web Team communications: news posts, how-to documents, guides, summits, e-mails, etc.
  • Inform the Web Team when authors and approvers no longer need access to the unit website. This will help maintain web security.
• Website Maintenance
  • Make sure existing content on the website is up to date.
  • Post news on the unit website for achievements, upcoming events, and other announcements. Posted news items will filter up to News and Events, IUP Reporter, IUP Daily, and press releases when appropriate.
  • Post events (productions, seminars, deadlines, etc.) on the website calendar and link to news items or other content as appropriate. Events will filter up to the Central Calendar, News and Events, and IUP Daily when appropriate.
  • Add pages to existing sections of the unit website.
  • Make sure all images are properly resized for the web. Recommended image sizes are provided in the Web Team’s how-to documentation. For those without desktop access to image-resizing tools, an on-line tool is available.
• Follow best practices, using guides and how-to documentation on the Web Team site when available. Best practices include the following:
  • University style: This is the style followed on all IUP publications.
  • Formatting: proper use of heading styles, bold and italics, ordered lists, etc.
  • Menus: All HTML content should be on a menu once; twice if the content has its own menu and is part of a higher-level folder’s menu. PDF, Word documents, and other content should not be on a menu.
  • Use HTML for most web content. It results in better Google findability and a better user experience. (If using HTML is not possible, use PDF, Word/Excel/PowerPoint, in that order.)
  • Avoid using PDF and Word documents when possible; HTML content is preferred.
  • Enter useful titles and summaries for all content, including PDF, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint content.

Web Maintainers May

• Add tables for tabular data, as long as they make them accessible for people with disabilities

Web Maintainers Contact the Web Team When

• Creating new sub-sections/folders for a unit website. Sub-sections/folders may be necessary for adding two or more content items on a given subject.
• Creating forms (Requests should be made to the Web Team at least ten business days before the form is needed.)
• Adding new authors/approvers to the unit website

The new training session, “The New Basics: Training for New Web Maintainers” is, as the title implies, oriented toward those who are new to Ektron. It is also oriented toward those who are working on an already-migrated site.

Because we are not training users to migrate sites, we’ll have the luxury of teaching fewer Ektron skills in more depth. (We hope that this means our web maintainers will leave feeling more confident and less frazzled than previously!) The list of topics currently includes:

• What Ektron Is
• Logging In
• Working with Workflow
• Posting News
• Posting Events
• Following Best Practices
• Web Maintainer Responsibilities

We will cover some of the more advanced topics we covered in our training sessions last spring—adding new pages, collections, menus, adding new sections to a website—in a second, intermediate-level training.

You can register for “The New Basics” by filling out our training registration form. (Seating at each session is limited to 15 people; seats will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis.)

That’s now possible on our CMS using calendar subscriptions. The Web Team can subscribe your events calendar to any other calendar on the site. That way events entered only once can appear in many places throughout the site. For instance, rather than entering academic calendar events into your calendar, you can subscribe to the academic calendar and have them show up on your calendar automatically. If academic dates changes, they’ll change on your calendar, too—automatically.

For an example, see the Department of Psychology’s events page.

It’s also possible to subscribe only to particular event types. For instance, the College of Fine Arts lists theater, dance, music, and art events on its calendar. The Department of Music has subscribed only to events of type “music,” so only concerts (and not plays, dance events, or exhibits) show up on the Music Department calendar. If an event time changes, changing it on the Fine Arts calendar changes it on the Music Department calendar, too.

Interested? Send an e-mail to web-team@iup.edu and the Web Team can help you get set up.

Unlike in the previous version, events can be posted to the new Central Calendar by anyone who maintains a website on www.iup.edu.

To put your event on the central calendar, just make sure that you choose the "Central Calendar" event type when you create your event. (You can always go back and add the "Central Calendar" event type later if you forget.)

To get things started, the Web Team has sifted through events calendars from across the website, and added to the Central Calendar events of campuswide interest from now through December 31, 2008.

If you have additional Fall events that should appear on the Central Calendar, or if you would like to add events after December 31, just add the "Central Calendar" event type to those events.

Not sure how to add an event to your website calendar? Take a look at our demo: Adding an Event to Your Website Calendar.

This change is intended to help website visitors find the latest and most correct information, as opposed to finding outdated information on a site that is no longer maintained.

A list of sites that will be affected appears at the bottom of this news post.

Please keep the following points in mind:

• This change will affect only websites that have been checked out—that is, those that have had the red badge with the link to the old site removed.
  
  If you still need your old website, please contact web-team@iup.edu immediately. We will remove it from the list of sites to shut down and put the badge back in place to help visitors find your content.
• When the old site is shut down, a redirect will be used, meaning anyone who types in the address of your old site will automatically be sent to your new site.
• You will still be able to access your content via a mapped drive. Shutting down the old website only prevents web access to your content.
• For all sites that are not currently checked out/debadged, the old site will be taken out of service when your new site is checked out/debadged.

The list of sites that are checked out/debadged is as follows. Again, contact web-team@iup.edu to have your site removed from this list. For more information, see Shutdown of Unused Websites to Begin October 10.

If you maintain a website at IUP, here’s what you need to know:

What do you mean by “shutting down” my old website?

We will be putting in place a redirect. Anyone who types in the address of your old site will automatically be sent to your new site. For instance, if someone went to old.www.iup.edu/armstrong, he or she would be sent to www.iup.edu/northpointe.

In some cases, there is already a redirect in place on the old server. We will change that redirect to point to the new website. For instance, as of this writing, if you go to old.www.iup.edu/cm/, you are redirected to the old Communications Media site at www.coe.iup.edu/cm/. After October 10, visitors to old.www.iup.edu/cm/ will be redirected to the new Communications Media site at www.iup.edu/commmedia.

Why are you doing this?

Most of our content from the old site has been moved to the new server, and that is where visitors can now find the latest information. Unfortunately, visitors still find our old content via Google and other search engines, and sometimes they never do find the new information. That’s confusing and bad for our admissions efforts.

I still need that old content! What will happen to it?

You will still be able to access your content via your W: drive (or other mapped drive). The content is not being removed—this change only prevents web access to your content.

Which websites are affected?

This change will affect only websites that have been checked out—that is, those that have had the red badge with the link to the old site removed. Our assumption is that any site that has had the badge removed is now complete, and access to the old site is no longer needed.

What if I’m not ready to shut down my old website?

You need to let us know as soon as possible. If you still need your old website, we will remove it from the list of sites to shut down and put the badge back in place to help visitors find your content.

If my old website isn’t going to be shut down on October 10, when will it be shut down?

After October 10, we'll shut down old sites as part of our checkout/debadging procedure. Once the badge comes off, the old site will be taken out of service.

Some advice for making this page look its best:

1. The optimum width for the pictures is 100 pixels. You need to resize these pictures before you upload them. If you don't have the software to do that (Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, and Fireworks are commonly used for this), you can resize you pictures using an online service.
2. When you add the pictures, make sure the height and width are filled in. (Ektron will fill them in automatically if you click “Preview” or  “Reset” right after adding the image.)

We have been working hard on a number of improvements to our calendar and news systems, but the changes aren't quite ready for deployment yet. Because we want to use the summit to show everyone the new features and how to use them, we're going to hold off on the summit so we have time to roll out and test the new features.

If you've already registered for tomorrow's summit, there's no need to re-register. If you haven't registered and you'd like to come, just fill out the registration form.

Now that the new semester is under way, we’ve been getting many request from units (departments and offices) to delete old news items from their feeds.

We’ve been mostly turning down those requests, which has surprised many and really frustrated a few. After all—shouldn’t news be new?

They’re right. News should be new, and we want you to keep posting it. But there’s a lot of value in your old news posts, and that’s why we want you to keep them around.

What’s the value? For the answer, take a look at the Department of Geoscience’s news feed. (Go take a look—I’ll be here when you come back.)

Now that you’ve taken a look, imagine yourself as a potential Geoscience student. You might be thinking about applying to IUP, or an IUP student thinking of changing majors. On this one page—the News page—you can see that:

1. Geoscience has several award-winning professors
2. Geoscience regularly invites guest speakers from outside IUP
3. Geoscience has an active Geoscience club
4. Geoscience students do research and present at conferences

This page may do more than any other single page on the site to convince you to study Geoscience at IUP.

The best part is that creating this page didn’t take a whole lot of effort. Geoscience just posted what they were doing and what they had planned.

And that’s why we want you to post news and to keep those old posts around. They do so much to show potential students (and current students) what life is like at IUP—and without a whole lot of effort.

Also note that Geoscience hasn’t gone back to re-edit old news items to change them to the past tense—since every news item automatically includes the date it was created, there’s really no need.

Is No News Good News?

The next question people generally ask us is, “What if we don’t have any more news to post, and there’s something really old and out of date showing on our home page?”

Our first reply to that would be a question: Is there really nothing going on in your unit? Nothing coming up that people need to know about? Remember, these news posts aren’t press releases—a two-line news post is fine and can be very useful.

Of course, sometimes, there really isn’t any news. Perhaps your unit plays a support role at IUP, and no news really is good news. (“Lights, Heating Still On” would be a lousy news post.) You have a couple of options:

1. You can change the number of news items that appear in “Recent News” by making changes to your configuration file. (You’ll find it at the top folder of your site. And do be careful—we’re not kidding when we say you can really screw up your site with this file.)

2. You can remove “Recent News” from your home page entirely on the Metadata tab of your home page. (But don’t forget to put it back when and if you do have news to share.)

But these are the exceptions. Mostly, you’ll want to keep those old posts around.

Thanks for reading! And we hope to see you at our next Web Maintainers’ Summit.

The Web Team is inviting everyone who maintains an IUP website with Ektron to join us on Friday, September 26 at 9 a.m. in the HUB’s Susquehanna Room for our second summit.

Ektron can also be hard to use. We’ve all experienced that. Ektron is also very powerful—and now that most of our departments and offices are using the CMS as their main website, it’s time to unharness that power.

During this session, we’ll provide you with strategies and the technical know-how to use Ektron to get your messages out to students, faculty, and others. We will

• Show you how to get your news stories out to people who never visit your website

• Give you strategies for promoting an event, large or small, using the web

• Demonstrate our new, improved central calendar system

• Give you a preview of “IUP Daily,” a daily electronic newsletter we’ll be pilot testing next month.

We’ll also review our website’s progress to date, show you some other new features, and give you tips to make your life with Ektron a little easier.

If you would like to attend, please fill out our sign-up form.

Checkout is the process Web Team members go through before we remove the red badge from a website. Our goal is to make sure that the site is truly ready for business, and that visitors no longer need a link back to the old site.

Checkout is a labor-intensive process. It involves looking at every page, menu, and collection in the site. The result is a large backlog of sites awaiting checkout.

So: in order to get badges off of sites faster, we are introducing self-checkout. Follow the steps listed in How to Check Out Your Own Website, and the Web Team will remove the badge from your site.

We will consider any site that has gone through self-checkout to be provisionally checked out. This means that at some point in the future, the Web Team will perform a full checkout on the site. And once every site has been checked out, we'll be repeating the checkout process as part of a regular website maintenance routine. Why? Because no matter how good a site is, we find and resolve important issues—issues that in some cases render the website unusable—on every website we check out.

Because checkout can be tricky at times, we fully expect to get a lot of questions about this new process. Please send those questions to the Web Team at web-team@iup.edu. Because many site maintainers will have the same questions, we plan to answer as many as of these questions as we can in our news feed over the coming weeks. So read over the checklist and watch this space.

There are two ways to avoid the problem:

1. Remove the Google toolbar.
2. Add the staging site, http://staging.www.iup.edu, to your pop-up white list on the Google toolbar. Go to the Google Toolbar Help Center for instructions.

If you have any questions, please contact the Web Team at web-team@iup.edu.

Because of Ektron’s lack of support Office 2007 file formats, we have made some configuration changes that prevent website maintainers from uploading Office 2007 to our main website. This ensures that none of us accidentally uploads a file that our website visitors won’t be able to access.

Workarounds

The good news is that there are very few, if any, situations at the moment that absolutely require Office 2007 documents on the web. Alternatives include:

1. Regular HTML Pages: Most web content is best served by being on a regular web page. This makes access easier for our website visitors without requiring any additional downloads or plugins, allows us to better follow the history of a document over time, and aids in indexing of our pages by search engine. Pages on the new website have very usable printed versions, which makes them the best choice for most content.

2. PDF Files: PDF (Portable Document Format, or Acrobat) file are the best choice when you need a very precise layout in the printed version (a flier or poster, for instance). The Abobe Reader software is free and installed on a large majority of our visitors’ computers. PDFs are also fairly difficult to modify, which can be an advantage for critical documents.

3. Office 2003: If you do need to put a Word, Excel, or PowerPoint document online, simply save it as an Office 97-2003 document. These files are fully compatible with any version of Office from Office 97 to Office 2007.

How Do I Know If My Document Is in an Office 2007 Format?

All the new office formats have file extensions ending in x:.docx, .xlsx, etc. Previous versions of Office used the extensions with which you’re likely already familiar: .doc, .xls, .ppt, etc.

How Do I Save a Document in the Office 97-2003 Format?

Here is the procedure for Word 2007 (the procedure is more or less the same for all the Office applications):

1. Click the Office logo in the upper left-hand corner of the screen (it looks like a blue glass bead, and turns yellow when your mouse passes over it).

2. When the menu drops down, choose Save As and then Word 97-2003 Document. (Click the thumbnail at right for a screen shot.)

When Will This Issue Be Fixed?

The only fix currently available from Ektron for this issue is to upgrade our content management system to a newer version. We are in contact with Ektron to discuss additional options.

While upgrading our software would fix the Office 2007 issue, it would be a major system upgrade, and will require research and testing before we are satisfied that it can be installed without breaking more things than it fixes.

A week before classes start is clearly not the best time for a major system upgrade. Our next window of opportunity for upgrading will be in January, between Fall and Spring semesters. Whether or not the upgrade happens at that time will depend on the outcome of our test installations performed during the fall semester.

The reasons for this are twofold:

1. We have experienced some technical difficulties with Word 2007 documents on the website. We are currently seeking technical support on this issue.
2. Many of our site users do not have Microsoft Office 2007 and will not be able to open these documents.

Thank you for your help with this issue.

Galleries are much easier to set up than ViewMasters, and are ideal for showcasing event photos, student work, or creating virtual tours. (You can set the captions, too, just by changing the image’s title in your Ektron Library.) We are still working on the documentation, but if you're interested in setting up a gallery, just contact the Web Team at web-team@iup.edu.

One other photographic note: if you need photographs for your site, the preferred location to draw them from is \Units\P - Pq\Photographer\Gallery. We now have every photo online that we have permission to put online, helpfully organized by year and size. If you'd like a preview of what's available, the Photographer’s Gallery has thumbnails of every picture available. We’ve found it useful to find our pictures in the browser this way, rather than searching in the Ektron Library.

If for some reason you do not want that news item posted on line, but only to appear in the print version of IUP Reporter, be sure to note that when submitting the news.

We are making sure that each program of study at IUP has its own dedicated page on the website with a standard title of “B.S. in Accounting,” “B.S. Ed. in Secondary German Education,” etc. Tracks, minors, specializations, and certification programs will also given individual pages, based on their presence in the undergraduate or graduate catalog.

While some departments already have a dedicated page for each of their programs of study, others have information about their programs all on one page or have other variations in what information is provided and how.

Providing a specific page with a specific URL ensures that each page can be part of a collection on the new site and allows a consistent presentation of our programs of study across all sites. That consistency will improve site usability for current and prospective students, their parents, IUP employees, and other site visitors.

While site maintainers may expand on these pages—adding more information or additional pages as necessary—it is important that these pages not be deleted. We also ask that you not alter the page titles, unless the information is incorrect. If you prefer to display a different headline from the page title, such as “Bachelor of Arts in Economics” rather than “B.A. in Economics,” you are welcome to change the headline under the Metadata tab. (This allows you to set a headline that is different from the title, which is the default headline.)

The Web Team currently has a student worker using the undergraduate and graduate catalogs to make sure each program of study is accounted for on the website. That worker is also tasked with creating individual pages, if they do not exist already.

For an example of how this will look at the college level, see the Eberly College of Business and Information Technology’s Departments and Programs page.

If you have any questions or concerns about this change, please contact the Web Team at web-team@iup.edu.

With about two weeks to go before our next meeting, the Web Team has a few reminders for members of the Web Task Force:

1. There Is No May 17 Deadline

Please make sure that those within your college or division understand that the May 17 deadline for shutting off the central server (old.www.iup.edu) is no longer in place. We will not be shutting off the central server until we’ve transfered those units who use it over to the CMS.

It’s also worth repeating to those in your unit that personal pages (on www.people.iup.edu) and pages on college servers won’t be affected when we finally do shut down the central server. There are no plans to shut down the people server or college servers.

2. Keep the Materials Rolling In: Let Us Know Where Your Units' Materials Are

The Web Team’s increase in staff is only temporary. To make the best use of their time, we need a steady stream of material to map out and hand off to them.

That means that we need Task Force members to let us know when any of their units’ materials are ready for transfer. We can’t hand off things to our cutting and pasting team until we have a site map—and we can’t create a site map until we know we have ALL the material that is going on a site.

By the way, that material can be on the old site, on the new site, or on the X: drive. Just let us know where it is and we’ll get started.

3. Next Meeting is in Stabley 101

Just a reminder that our next meeting, scheduled for Thursday, May 29 at 1:30 p.m., takes place in Stabley Library 101, not Delaney Hall.

1. Collect Materials on the X: Drive (Task Force Rep)

Task Force Representatives begin collecting new website materials in their designated X: drive folders. This includes text, PDF files, graphics, and media files. Note that when text/materials currently on the old website can be used as is, there is no need to collect anything.

2. Meeting (Joint)

a. Determine Key Audiences and Their Questions

Draw up a simple document listing the presumed audiences for this site and the questions we expect them to be trying to answer.  E.g., if the audience is Prospective Students, we might list questions such as “What kind of job can I get with this degree?,” “Are internships available?,” or “Can I take my classes in Monroeville?”

b. Set Priorities within the College/Division

Create a prioritized list of units in the college or division. Presuming that materials are available, this is the order in which the Web Team will work on the websites.

c. Review the Content Inventory

Review the content inventory of the old site(s), noting items that do not have to be brought over, and the general destination for content that is coming over. Compare this with the Key Audiences document.

d. Identify Needed Graphics

Determine the images needed for key pages on the site, and not this on the content inventory. Compare this with the Key Audiences document.

3. Identify and Collect New Content (Task Force Rep)

Identify any new content that will need to be provided to the Web Team. Compare this with the Key Audiences document.

4. Create Site Maps (Web Team)

Create in simple, bulleted outline form, a site map for the new site(s). Decide how far down the site tree our resources allow us to go. Compare this with the key audiences document. Send to Task Force Representative

a. By Request: Joint Review of Site Map

On request, the Web Team can meet to review the site map with the Task Force Representative.

5. Cut, Paste, Rewrite, Repeat (Web Team)

Working from the site map, construct the site, including content, breadcrumbs/menus, and graphics.

6. Site Review (Joint)

Review the completed site with the Task Force rep, to see if the questions of key audiences are being answered.

7. Site Checkout (Web Team)

Final technical checkout to make sure the site is ready to go, with all menus, breadcrumbs, and content in place. Shut down the old site and remove the badge on the new one.

As always, we welcome inquiries. They should be sent to web-team@iup.edu.

1. Suspend the May 17 Deadline

The central server will remain running until those colleges and divisions still making use of it have been able to move to the new site.

2. Create a Web Transition Task Force

The Web Transition Task Force will consist of the Web Team plus representatives from each college and division, chosen by their respective deans and vice presidents. The Web Transition Task Force will meet once monthly to review progress on, and to help set priorities for, the web transition.

Additionally, each Web Transition Task Force representative will serve as his or her college or division’s liaison to the Web Team, advising the Web Team on the special needs of that college or division and coordinating the submission of materials for the web to the Web Team.

3. Stop Requiring Academic and Administrative Units to Submit Via Workflow

In cooperation with each college or division’s Web Transition Task Force representative, the Web Team will finish the websites for academic and administrative units, and units will no longer need to submit content via workflow.

The Web Team would continue to approve items currently in the approval queue, and units whose new sites are complete and active would continue to submit new content and changes via the workflow process. The transition of old sites to new, however, will be handled via a new transition process (see item 4, below).

In order to give the Web Team time to complete the new websites, most training and support activities will be suspended; for instance, CMS Basic Training and open sessions would no longer take place three days a week. (Note that because the Web Team will be finishing all websites, the demand for training and support should diminish.)

4. Bring One College/Division at a Time Over to the New Site

In consultation with each college and division on the goals and structure of its new websites, the Web Team would handle creating pages, menus, graphics, etc., including the cutting and pasting of material from the old site to the new one.

New or revised material could be submitted to the Web Team by e-mail, Word document, etc. The finished site will be reviewed by each college or division’s Task Force representative.

In order to complete as much of the new site as possible as quickly as possible, those colleges and divisions that are closest to completing their sites would have first priority for transition.

Until their transitions are complete, all units will be welcome to continue using their old websites in combination with their new websites (for instance, posting news and events to the new website so that they are available via Inside IUP).

5. Reassign Personnel Temporarily to the Web Team

The Web Team will seek to complete work for each college/division in one to three weeks. Achieving this turnaround time will require both prompt submission of materials from each academic and administrative unit and the temporary reassignment of additional personnel to the Web Team. These additional personnel would, under the supervision of the web developer and web editor, carry out the creation of needed pages, menus, etc.

Because of an error in Ektron, all content that was submitted for approval for the IUP website—whether submitted by a content author or a content approver—is now in the Web Team's Content Awaiting Approval queue.

In other words, anything that was awaiting approval at the unit level has skipped that step and is now awaiting approval by the Web Team. The Web Team is not able to track which items in its Content Awaiting Approval queue were approved or not approved at the unit level.

The units that are affected by this problem are those that have employees or students who are authors only and who submitted content that the approver had yet to approve.

Any units that do not have employees or students who are content authors only and any units where the approver(s) did not have items awaiting their approval will not be affected.

The effects of this Ektron error have been fixed, so any content items submitted after the error, which occurred around 10:45 a.m. today, will go through the normal workflow process.

Unit approvers who are concerned about the content that bypassed their approval should check their unit website folders in Ektron’s Workarea and review content that is marked as submitted. (You will see an “S” under “Status” for that content item.) If you need assistance, please contact the Web Team.

We apologize for the inconvenience this problem has created.

Please note that the Web Team receives many questions about the turnaround time on content approval. We do have a significant backlog. This morning, we had more than three hundred items awaiting our approval. As a result of the Ektron error late this morning, we now have close to five hundred. Please know that we are continuing to approve content as quickly as we can.

Web Team contact information:

E-mail: web-team@iup.edu

Mike Powers
724-357-3868

Elaine Smith
724-357-7580

Regan Houser
724-357-3062

Bruce Dries
724-357-3062

The issue was this: if a user of Internet Explorer (any version) visited our Production site (www.iup.edu) then attempted to log into our Staging (staging.www.iup.edu) or Training (training.www.iup.edu) sites, that user would be unable to log in. The only resolution was to close all browser windows and log in again.

Since installing the patch, this issue seems to be resolved. You should be able to reset your browser’s homepage to www.iup.edu once again—or, better yet, to www.iup.edu/inside/.

There are a few more Ektron bugs waiting to be fixed, including issues with PDFs and editing content on Macintosh computers. We have open cases with Ektron for all these issues and we will keep you informed as they are resolved.

—Mike

IUP’s old central web server, known as iupweb1, will be taken off line May 17. In other words, the server will continue to be available through network access until August, but the viewing audience will not be able to see that content after May 17.

Departments and offices that have stored their websites on the central server should aim to have their content moved to the content management system before May 17, but they will have access to old content until August.

Please send questions to web-team@iup.edu.

We have added instructions for resizing photos using Microsoft Image Composer, which is installed on all machines supported by the IT Support Center.

We thank Steve Ditch in the IT Support Center for creating these instructions.

To help you get the most out of these new, powerful tools, we’d like to share with you what we consider to be the best practices for using them. Follow these suggestions to make sure the whole campus knows about your event.

Best Practices for News and Events

First what, then why. Whenever you have an event you’d like to promote, do the following:

1. Post a news item. You can do this as soon as you know the details of the event. This post should be something like a press release, and include a description of what’s happening, when and where, a speaker bio, and photos if you have them. This is going to be, more or less, the official online description of your event, so feel free to put in any and all relevant information.

   Also note that our news feeds can be syndicated, and can end up appearing in lots of places on and off the IUP website—for instance, they could show up on someone’s Yahoo! home page. So make sure you provide any needed context in the news item itself. More on this in Part 3

2. Add the event to your site calendar, with a quicklink to the news post. Calendar events have a long description field, but we recommend not using it. Instead click on the book icon and make a quicklink from the event to the news item you created above.

3. As the event draws near, put out another news item. You might do this a week or so beforehand, or the Friday beforehand. This can be a short reminder, with a link back to the original post for all the details.

OK, So Why Am I Doing All That?

Good question. Here are the answers:

1. Posting an announcement in your news feed:

   1. Gives visitors a complete source with all the information they need.

   2. Syndicates your info via RSS (if you know what RSS is, you know that’s a Good Thing. If not, we’ll explain it more fully in part 3).

   3. Puts your announcement on the Campus Bulletins page

   4. Puts your announcement in contention to be one our our Featured Campus Bulletins on Inside IUP.

   5. Automatically posts your event on your news and home pages.

2. Adding your event to your calendar with a quicklink to the news post:

   1. Makes your event appear automatically on your home page as an “upcoming event.”

   2. Puts your event in contention to be one of our “daily highlights” on Inside IUP (look at the top left of the page).

   3. Will make additional Good Things happen in the future. (More on those things when they come to pass.)

3. Posting a reminder note:

   1. Puts your event back on your news and home pages.

   2. Send out your event via RSS once more.

   3. Puts your event back on the Campus Bulletins page.

   4. Once again puts your announcement in contention to be one our our Featured Campus Bulletins on Inside IUP.

Doing this does take some time and effort. But we think the payoff will be worth it. The Web Team is heavily promoting Inside IUP as the home page for those of us who study, work, and live at IUP. To do that we need to have everything that happens on our campus every day represented there. The more information you provide to us, the more eyeballs we can provide to you!

—Mike

Of course, we do intend to conduct surveys in the future, but we will use methods that will be unmistakably associated with IUP.

If you received the invitation, please think twice before providing any personal information the survey may ask for.

The slower load time should occur only when first selecting the “Content” tab on the lower left side of the Workarea and when adding new folders. After the folders have loaded, navigation through the Workarea should be as fast or faster. You may also notice that the folders and the type size of the associated titles are slightly larger.

These differences, though small, are the result of a temporary fix for web maintainers who were not able to expand certain folders in the Workarea. Any maintainers who experienced that problem should now check those folders to see if they are working.

As always, if you experience any problems working in the content management system—including logging in, editing existing content, etc.—please contact the Web Team by e-mail at web-team@iup.edu or by phone (Elaine Smith, 724-357-7580; Mike Powers, 724-357-3868; Regan Houser, 724-357-5587).

How it works: all deletions pass through workflow as would any other change. When you click the trash can, the status for that content will change to “M.” Then your regular workflow will take effect. If you are an author, your approver will need to make the first approval, then the Web Team. If you are an approver, your deletion request goes straight to the Web Team. The item will disappear from the Workarea as soon as the deletion is approved.

Two important notes about deletions:

1. When you delete something, the Web Team will assume you know what you are doing. Unless the content item is a piece of your original starter site, we will be approving deletions with little or no review.
2. When something is deleted from Ektron, there is no undo. If you think you might need something later, consider just removing it from your menu, or expiring that content. The Web Team can help you with either option.

When it is necessary, please remember to link to http://old.www.iup.edu/nameofsite/. If you send your audience to http://www.iup.edu/, the audience will come upon a broken link. Why the reference to old? Simply, our new web is now www.iup.edu.

But, please make sure it’s necessary before you do this. In several cases, we’ve found links to the Financial Aid Office site, for example, that have taken users to the old site. Yet, Financial Aid is up and running on the new system. Check in the library first and use a quicklink. That way, you know you’ll get your audiences to the right place.

Now, about that message from the IT Support Center. I’ve pasted below what it said. As you can see, there are many changes around here—not just how we build our web. Please note that we now have a one-stop shop for all kinds of tech support. As you create your content, please refer people to the IT Support Center (found via quicklink in the library under Units, I) for technical support of any kind.

Keep submitting, and don’t forget to preview before you submit!

Regan

As you are editing/approving content, please keep an eye out for
references to technology departments that no longer exist.
These are:

• Student Help Desk
• Student Technology Services
• Academic Help Desk
• Academic Technology Services
• Administrative Help Desk
• IDC (Instructional Design Center)
• student-helpdesk@iup.edu
• academic-helpdesk@iup.edu
• admin-helpdesk@iup.edu

In all cases, these references should be changed to:

IT Support Center
Suites on Grant Lower, Suite G-35
724-357-4000
it-support-center@iup.edu

A clumsy, but effective, workaround is as follows. These steps must be performed in order. (Update: it appears that step two is not necessary.)

1. Open Internet Explorer and change your home page to http://staging.www.iup.edu/.
   1. To do this, from the Internet Explorer menu, choose Tools > Internet Options. An “Internet Options” window will pop up.
   2. On the “General” tab, under “Home page,” Change the address to http://staging.www.iup.edu/.
   3. Click “OK” at the bottom to close the “Internet Options” window.
   4. Close Internet Explorer and open it again to make sure the new home page appears.
2. Delete all cookies in Internet Explorer.
   • To do this, from the Internet Explorer menu, choose Tools > Internet Options. An “Internet Options” window will pop up.
   • If you are using Internet Explorer 6.0: On the “General” tab, under “Temporary Internet Files,” click the “Delete cookies…” button. Then click “OK” to confirm your choice. Click “OK” to dismiss the Internet Options window.
   • If you are using Internet Explorer 7.0: On the General tab, under “Browsing History,” click the “Delete…” button. A window titled “Delete Browsing History” will pop up. Click the “Delete Cookies…” button. Click “Yes” to confirm your choice. Click “OK” to dismiss the Internet Options window.
3. Close Internet Explorer (all sessions).
4. Open Internet Explorer and browse to http://staging.www.iup.edu/iuplogin/.
5. Follow the normal login procedure.

Attention Web Maintainers,

Some of you have reported problems logging in to Ektron when using Internet Explorer. The problem has been described as follows:

1. You go to the CMS Login page and enter your username and password.
2. Ektron prompts you to refresh.
3. After you refresh, the login screen is unchanged.

Some users have experienced the problem off and on for the past week. If you are experiencing this problem, please report it to the web team (web-team@iup.edu). But please know that IT Services is currently working with Ektron to correct it.

The problems appears intermittently. You may want to try logging in to a different computer or logging in at another time.

The problem does not appear to affect Firefox. Academic authors and approvers who have Firefox available to them may wish to use it instead of Internet Explorer.

Administrative users who are receive technical support from the IT Support Center: Please note at this time the IT Support Center does not install and support Firefox.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Elaine

Update

We have had a report that clearing out your cache and cookies may enable you to log in. Here is how to do that:

1. From the Internet Explorer menu, choose Tools > Internet Options. An “Internet Options” window will pop up.
2. If you are using Internet Explorer 6.0:
   1. On the “General” tab, under “Temporary Internet Files,” click the “Delete Cookies…” button. Then click “OK” to confirm your choice.
   2. On the “General” tab, under “Temporary Internet Files,” click the “Delete Files…” button. Then click “OK” to confirm your choice.
   3. Click “OK” to dismiss the “Internet Options” window.
3. If you are using Internet Explorer 7.0:
   1. On the “General” tab, under “Browsing History,” click the “Delete…” button. A window title “Delete Browsing History” will pop up.
   2. Click the “Delete files…” and “Delete cookies…” buttons. (You’ll have to confirm each of those by clicking “Yes.”)
   3. Click “OK” to dismiss the “Internet Options” window.
4. Try logging in again.

***

As Elaine and I are working our way through the queue of submissions, we're finding that many of you aren't using the blogging feature to post your news. Don't miss out on this very powerful tool.

If you take advantage of it, your news can easily be repurposed. Most of you know that when you use the blog tool, your news is fed to your news page, and a link is subsequently posted in the news box of your homepage.

But, what you might not realize is that same post is relayed to the Web Team. For the time being, we'll manually take appropriate news and use it on the Inside IUP page. Later, as we continue to develop our system, we'll look for ways to make sure your news is posted automatically.

This is an easy and a great way to publicize department-specific dates, special lectures, student activities, visiting artists, and more.

In your News folder, you'll see an icon (it reminds me of two dice) accompanied by the words Department-name News. Access it, then use the New menu and choose Post.

As always, write or call with questions.

Regan

Launch Day

On Launch Day, what you currently see on the preview site will be available at www.iup.edu, where the old “blue and yellow” website currently resides. This includes all the “upper structure” pages (Admissions, Academics, Student Life, etc.) as well as the unit sites. The Web Team is currently working to make sure that all of the upper structure pages are ready for launch.

If Your Site Is Ready

Congratulations! On January 31, visitors looking for you on our website will be directed to your new site, and you can stop maintaining the old site, which we will take down. You’ll still be able to get to your  old content as you do now (for instance, via your W: drive or via FTP); it just won’t be available on the web.

If You Are Still Working on Your New Site

If you are still working, please be aware that your old site is not going away on January 31.

Presuming that you’ve requested a CMS site, your new home page will have a link from your new site to your old site. When your new site is ready, we’ll remove the link and you’ll be in business. During the transition your old site will still be available at old.www.iup.edu.

The deadline for getting your site moved to the CMS is May 17, one week after Commencement. Until that date, we will keep the old blue and yellow server running at old.www.iup.edu. After that date, you’ll still be able to access your old content as you do now (for instance, via your W: drive or via FTP), but your old content will no longer be available on the web.

Note that the new website, including the search engine, is going to consider your new home page to be your primary home page. So if a website visitor uses the search box to find your site, he or she will be directed to your CMS site, not your old site. It is likely that Google, Yahoo!, and other external search engines will do the same. This arrangement is necessary to make sure we don’t end up with lots of broken links to the old server when we take it down in May.

If You Haven’t Requested a Site

Any site that has not moved to the CMS by May 17 will disappear from our website on that day. If that’s okay by you, you don’t need to do anything. But if you want your website to continue, please request a new site as soon as possible.

(If you aren’t sure if you’ve requested a site, check our A to Z Index, which was up to date with all site requests at the time this message was posted.)

Those of you who have come to these sessions have noticed that attendance is growing, which has cut down on the individual attention provided. We hope that adding another session a week will help to solve this problem.

Open sessions will be held as follows through the end of January:

• Tuesday, January 15, 1:00 to 3:00 p.m.
• Friday, January 18, 10:00 a.m. to noon
• Tuesday, January 22, 10:00 a.m. to noon
• Friday, January 25, 10:00 a.m. to noon
• Tuesday, January 29, 1:00 to 3:00 p.m.

All sessions will be held in Suites on Grant Lower, Suite G41, inside the IT Support Center.

Depending on future demand for training sessions, the Tuesday open sessions may continue into February. The Friday open sessions will continue from 10:00 a.m. to noon through February 29.

For those who are not familiar with the open sessions, you can use them as follows:

• To get away from the office and work on your website without interruptions. And, if you run into a problem or question, members of the Web Team are there to help.
• To ask any questions you have come across while working on your site

As in the past, please call 724-357-7580 or e-mail us at web-team@iup.edu to let us know if you plan to attend.

And, as always, you are welcome to contact any of us, anytime, with questions:

• Mike Powers, mpowers@iup.edu, 724-357-3868
• Elaine Jacobs Smith, ejacobs@iup.edu, 724-357-7580
• Regan Houser, rphouser@iup.edu, 724-357-5587
• Bruce Dries, bvdries@iup.edu, 724-357-7937

Another change making its debut today: tables of contents no longer list themselves, which will be a lot less confusing for our users.

Note that if you want to leave out more pages or have control over the order in which links display, you should use a collection.  The final output looks pretty similar: here's a list of links created using a table of contents and here's a list created with a collection.

(What’s the difference between a table of contents and a collection?  Collections give you more control: you can list only the files you want (even files from other folders) and list them in any order you want—but you’ll need to add and delete your links by hand. The table of contents lists everything in a folder automatically, but you are limited to displaying those links in alphabetical order.)

Thank you for your patience as we worked all this out.

Additionally, everyone who has received a site has also been scheduled for training. We are attempting to have people working on related areas of the site (for instance, everyone working on the Student Life section, or everyone from College of Humanities and Social Sciences) go to the same training session.  So far, it looks like most people can make the session for which we signed them up.

However, if you can’t make your scheduled session, call Bruce Dries (724-357-7937) or e-mail him at bvdries@iup.edu.  We do recommend that, whenever possible, everyone from your unit attend at the same time.  Out in the real world, you’ll be working together on your site, so that is what we’ll ask you to do in training, too.

And finally, for the self-starters among us—you know who you are—here is the most important advice the Web Team can give you:

1. Edit
2. Check In
3. Preview
4. Submit

That’s our recommendation for everyone on the CMS.  Clicking on “Submit” sends your content to either your approver or to the Web Team for publication. E-mails are sent telling everyone that your content is ready for publication. Trumpets sound. Fireworks are fired into the air.

OK, the last two don't happen.  But clicking Submit is, in small way, a big deal.  It means you think your content is ready for the world to see.  And you don't want that to happen until you know your content is ready to go.  So check it in and preview it first.  See How to Get Content Published for more information about workflow— our content approval process.

And don’t forget that we have an extensive collection of “How To” documentation at your disposal. If your question isn’t answered there, let us know—we probably need to add your question to the documentation.

Happy web building!

For the 52 units and more than a hundred people who now await training: We are trying to work out a problem we've come across, concerning certain computers and speed. Too, having a quarter of the university's websites registered in just five business days has created a slight backlog. We appreciate your patience.

Training is available to anyone who has requested a site on the CMS (Content Management System) and received their content inventory.

Unless you are taking care of upper-structure pages—that is, content outside your unit’s website—training is not mandatory. However, because working in the CMS is quite different from working in Frontpage or Dreamweaver, we do highly recommend that everyone attend at least one training session.

Topics Covered

The training will cover two main topics:

1. How to organize your content to fit the new IUP templates and site organization.

2. How to build pages with the CMS.

The training is designed to help you get started and feel comfortable using the Ektron software and content management system. It also provides direct contact with members of the Web Team who are familiar with the product.

Registration

After you have registered your website, the Web Team will contact you to schedule training. You may not be scheduled right away—training will be organized according to where on the website a unit’s content appears and which units (departments, offices, programs, etc.) have registered their sites so far. But please know that we will schedule you for training as quickly as possible.

More Information

For more information about training and the CMS transition, please see:

Web Team Events 

Frequently Asked Questions about the Transition to the New CMS 

How to Get Started 

After 4:30 this afternoon, we invite unit leaders—department chairs, deans, office directors, program directors, etc.—to register their websites and designate who from their areas will serve as content authors and content approvers. The new content management system provides us with a system for accountability that we never before have had. It introduces a system for workflow, so that punctuation, grammar, and style will be checked and rechecked. We encourage each unit to make thoughtful choices on who will contribute content to the website and who will approve that content. Please take time to discuss your options with your colleagues before making a choice. To ensure this accountability, we are asking that units refrain from registering students for immediate access and training. Of course, we recognize students are a vital part of our workforce, but we feel that training long-term employees must be our priority.

Training for students will be offered during the spring semester.

Confident self-starters are welcome to begin work immediately upon notification that the requested website has been created. Extensive how-to documentation is available to assist you. For those who prefer to participate in training, sessions will begin October 30 and will take place every Tuesday and Wednesday through the semester. Training classes will be formed in groups of like interest or function. For example, we'll try to group together authors and approvers from academic departments, because they tend to have similar needs.

Please feel free to contact Regan Houser with any questions or concerns, either by e-mail or at extension 3062. Our Web Team is eager to get started on this exciting venture, and we know you are, too.

With the end of the big push to get the preview version out, we want to get back to helping our alpha testers get their sites up and running. Since the best way to do that is face to face, we’ve scheduled a:

Training/Meeting: October 24, , 10 a.m. 12 p.m., SOGLOW Lab

We’ll have a fairly short agenda for this session, with most of the session devoted to answering your questions and getting you up to speed.

Please let us know if you can make it or not. We’re also available by phone and e-mail of course, and we’ll have more time available to work with our alpha testers over the next week or so.

Throw Away That Old Training Manual

As we work on the site, we continue to find better ways to do the things we do. Because so many things are changing, we’re asking that you throw away the “Ektron CMS400.net Web Content Author’s Guide” that you may have received during the training session. Instead, please refer to the Web Team site’s How To… section, which has an updated set of guidelines. As we continue to learn, we’ll continue to update the “How To” section, but we’ll tell you what’s new through our Web Team News updates and our Change Log.

New Login Page

One thing in particular we’d like to point out: While the old training manual asked you to log in to the secure server, https://staging.www.iup.edu/iuplogin/ (which was correct at the time), you should now be logging in at http://staging.www.iup.edu/iuplogin/. That’s just one example of how things are changing—so please check out the How To… section.

More New Stuff

The changes keep coming—see the Change Log for a more complete list. But you may have noticed:

• Lots of little rendering improvements. Looks a lot better on Internet Explorer 6 (and no more negative margins on links).

• Many buttons have disappeared from the CMS editor. We’ve removed a whole bunch of buttons that, in the context of our templates, mostly caused trouble. The font face and font size dropdowns are good examples. We’re using a consistent font (Tahoma) and font sizes (12 pixels is the base size) throughout the site, and changing the font face or size on a page-by-page basis makes the whole site harder to manage.

• New styles available. At the same time, we’re adding a bunch of preformatted styles to the styles dropdown, including:

  • introduction: to mark the first paragraph of your text

  • right-aligned-image and left-aligned-image to place images right or left with the correct margins

  • sub_head for making run-in headings (headings that are part of the paragraph)

  Additionally, we have Heading 2 - 6 available for titles (Heading 1 is used only for the headline at the top of the page).

These styles all show up in the Workarea so you can better see what you are doing.

The changes will keep coming over the next few weeks before things settle down. In the meantime, call or send e-mail if you have questions.

We consider this our beta version. We’re still building it. That doesn't mean we don’t want you to visit. This is your chance to become familiar with our new navigation and new look. But, please realize we know not everything is up to snuff.

When you see dotted lines underlining text, that means we'll eventually create live links in those places. As new pages are built, they'll be added to this structure. We expect to make this IUP’s main site by the end of January.

We would appreciate your help, too. If you see something that doesn’t work, an inaccuracy, or some other problem, please report it by sending a message to webmaster@iup.edu.

Thank you!

Follow this link to continue…

The best place to look for updates on what’s going on with the CMS transition is the Web Team site. We’re working on getting all of our documentation on the site, so always look here first when you have questions. (And feel free to e-mail or call if you can’t get the answers you need on the web.)

Things We’ve Learned

With your help, we’ve learned a lot over the last week.

• Plan your site structure first. Moving content blocks around in the Workarea isn’t the easiest thing to do. So planning upfront helps a lot. Consult your content inventory as well as the descriptions of what goes in each folder—and talk to the Web Team if you have questions.

• Always preview your work in the browser. In Preview mode, you can see changes that haven’t been approved or published yet. It’s the best way to proof your work before sending it into the workflow. To use Preview mode, log in to Ektron, click the “Preview” button, then navigate to the page you’ve updated.

• Avoid using Dreamweaver or FrontPage. Because you can access the HTML source code in the Ektron Workarea, it is very tempting to try to save time by pulling out a tool you’re familiar with—then pasting the HTML code you make back into the Workarea. Don’t. The HTML generated by these tools—especially positioned “layers” and inline font tags—can interfere with our layout templates in all sorts of unforeseen ways. It leaves give a mess to clean up, and ends up taking more time in the long run.

• Use the “Paste Text” button. That’s the clipboard with the T on it. This is especially important when cutting and pasting from your old site to the new one. A regular paste will retain all the font sizes, layers, etc. from the old look and feel. Using “Paste Text” strips all that out, which will allow Ektron to automatically adapt it to the new look and feel.

  You may need to put back some bold text, italic text, and lists once after using the paste text button, but this takes much less time than stripping out all the unneeded cruft from the old site.

• Give titles to photos and images you add to the Library. When you add a photo or image to your library, take the time to give it a title. That will make searching for images easier in the future. It also helps us improve our sites usability for the vision impaired, because it your title will automatically be suggested as the alternative text when the image is used in a page.

Recent Changes

Everything changes. Here are some of the changes we’ve made over the last week:

• E-mail notifications for workflow. We have e-mail notifications turned on now. You will receive e-mail whenever one of your content blocks is changed, approved, or declined. You may get a lot of e-mail. (I’ve received 44 e-mails from Ektron today, and it’s only 11 a.m.) We’re looking into ways to cut this down a bit.

  (We’re also looking into how you can track the status of your items as they pass through workflow. The answer involves using the Reports available on the SmartDesktop. We’ll post detailed instructions when we have them.)

• Stock photography. We are making stock IUP photography available through our University Photographer’s Ektron library. We have about 150 images uploaded right now, with many more to come. We also have a work-study student hard at work to create proper titles and useful descriptions for all of these photographs, which will make them easier to find and use. And feel free to use them anywhere and everywhere on the site.

Upcoming Changes

These changes should be coming soon. I’d like to say “in the next week,” but I won’t, since other changes might end up taking a higher priority.

• The Workarea will become more WYSIWYG. What you see in the Workarea is definitely not what you get in the browser. We’re working to make sure you see the same fonts and styles in the Workarea as you see on the public site. Due the way Ektron works—where the same content can appear in multiple places—we’ll never have a completely WYSIWYG environment. But we’ll be getting a lot closer.

• Easier Tables of Contents with the toc template We’ll be updating the toc template to automatically show a list of every item in a folder—which should make it much easier to handle large amounts of content.

There are many other changes in the works. We’ll let you know as they roll out.