I have updated the schedule for the Web Editor meetings. Please note that the first meeting is in HMSU 321, rather than 421.

Jennie McCurry is no longer with the Web Services staff. She was, unfortunately, listed as a displaced worker. Her talents will be greatly missed. We wish only the best for her and know that she will do well.

The staff is moving forward in our social media plans for the fall. We are going to be doing some advertising, blogging, facebook-ing, twitter-ing, and generally taking full advantage of the social stratosphere. One thing everyone should remember, is not to concentrate on the software but on the philosophy of Social Networking. It is the conversation.

I fully admit to have stolen this article from Jakob Nielsen’s website (http://www.useit.com).  We have received some questions about writing for the web.

How Users Read on the Web

They don’t. People rarely read Web pages word by word; instead, they scan the page, picking out individual words and sentences. In research on how people read websites we found that 79 percent of our test users always scanned any new page they came across; only 16 percent read word-by-word. (Update: a newer study found that users read email newsletters even more abruptly than they read websites.)

As a result, Web pages have to employ scannable text, using:

We found that credibility is important for Web users, since it is unclear who is behind information on the Web and whether a page can be trusted. Credibility can be increased by high-quality graphics, good writing, and use of outbound hypertext links. Links to other sites show that the authors have done their homework and are not afraid to let readers visit other sites.

Users detested “marketese”; the promotional writing style with boastful subjective claims (“hottest ever”) that currently is prevalent on the Web. Web users are busy: they want to get the straight facts. Also, credibility suffers when users clearly see that the site exaggerates.

Our student worker, Kunal has created a tip sheet for everyone who wants to add a Twitter feed or Facebook badge to their site. Go to our Webguide to learn how to embed the code into your site.  If you are feeling a bit nervous about adding it, please feel free to contact us.

Blogs. There are blogs everywhere on just about any subject you can think of. We, the web staff here at ISU, are often asked to create blogs for staff and departments and have earned a few gray hairs in the process. Let us now share our bountiful wisdom to you, our friends.

With so many wonderful and free Blog sites out there in Internet land, we find ourselves asking a question, “Why try to compete with free?” Blogspot and WordPress do fantastic jobs and allow users to host media rich blog environments with very little effort. After careful consideration by the web staff and much gnashing of teeth in trying to maintain blogs on our servers, we yield to the fact that it would benefit everyone involved if they simply started a blog on one of these fine, external sites and then we can post a link to it. Chalk this choice up to one part common sense and the other part resource management.

You’ve all been wanting it. Well now it’s here.

What in the world am I talking about? Why, video on your site, of course.

Thanks to the superhuman efforts of me (*shameless plug*), you can now take any video you want from our illustrious video archive and slap it on your site, either by a link or the whole darn thing itself wrapped up in a nice tidy video player.

How, you might ask with a shrug of the shoulders and a curt smug? Easy, cheesy. On the video archive (located in our newsroom), you’ll see the ginormous list that keeps on growin’. Simply click on one, and you’ll see the player itself, and, ho! ho! what’s that, you say? A yellow box with some weird formy-looking stuff in it? Yes. Yes it is.

Really, though, that formy-looking stuff is just there for show. All you have to do is click once on one of the areas and either hit CTRL-C on your Windows machine, Command-C on your Mac, or if nothing else works, go to EDIT > COPY in whatever browser you’re using. This will save the link or the video player code on your clipboard.

NOTE: If you copy anything else before placing this in your website, you will lose your copied data! So don’t get Copy/Paste happy!

Now, once in Sharepoint Designer, you’ll have to go into ‘Code’ mode, and to do that, you have to look at the bottom-left of your editing screen for a little box containing three buttons: Design, Split, and Code. Click on Code, but please don’t gasp when you see all that messy code we dorks love.

This is where it can get a little tricky, but once you see how things work, it really begins to make sense, and next thing you know, you’ll be digging in that code just like me!

Look for some code like this: <div id=”contentarea”>

Under that, paste your copied data by hitting CTRL-V on your PC, COMMAND-V on your Mac, or use your browser’s paste function by going to the menu bar at the top, clicking EDIT and then clicking PASTE. Voila! You should now see either a link to the video you requested, or the player itself.

If you don’t, don’t fret. As I said, this is tricky because it involves going into the meat and potatoes of your website: the code. It will take practice, but once you see how the code you pasted works, things will make sense. Above all, I am always just a phone call away in case something happens. Happy coding!

I have recieved a lot of questions and opinions about how to write content for the web. Yes, people read a computer screen about 25% slower than a piece of paper. that may be changing as the younger generation matures, but the rule of thumb is still 25%.

A good site that is all about Usability is http://www.useit.com/.

We have another .pdf document that gives a quick and dirty set of rules for writing for the web in the Communications and Marketing site.

I would like remind everyone that there is no need to use the address “www1.indstate.edu”.  Everything should be www.indstate.edu.

Thanks

There is excitement in the Web Services office today.

Statistics are showing that the ISU 1:1 social media experiment is working.  In our weekly update of the statistics of the Blogger site, we are finding that people are going to the blogger site from our Facebook and Twitter sites.  Yeah team!  …and we thought the football win was exciting…

Our four Bloggers will be on the morning shows (WTWO – 11/16 and WTHI – 11/12) the second week of November.  Thanks to Dave Taylor for arranging this.

This is a reminder that we have a web editor meeting next Tuesday (10/6) in HMSU 227 at 11:30.  Please note the room change.