It’s another sad day in the Web Communications office. Chris Kassab, one of our student developers decided leave his position and focus on school. Don’t get me wrong, this is totally awesome and he is going to make a great doctor one day but we are loosing a really great developer in the mix. Chris will be missed and this short list of links is dedicated to him. Enjoy.

• Bulletproof backups for MySQL
• A Look into Registration Buttons in Web Design
• What’s expected vs. what’s amazing
• It’s not a promise, it’s a guess
• 20 Different and Beautiful Icon Sets | Freebies
• Rich-Text Editors for 2010 and Beyond
• fullscreen API coming to browsers near you?
• The Fine Art of Persuasion via Email

A complete redesign of the Study Abroad Web site just launched. Part of the larger Office of International Programs project, Study Abroad was proactive in getting their new site up.

Site Goals

The goal Study Abroad office is to help current students find programs in other countries to study and experience culture. The center of the new site is the program finder. We created a custom manager so each program could be managed by the study abroad staff. It is a web based tool without the assistance of a technical support person.

Students can search by location, semester or topic. Once they choose a program they can read all about it, get testimonials, photos, application and pricing information. The goal is to get them interested in each program and take the next step to apply. The old site had this information but was not displayed in a user friendly mannor.

Design Direction

The design of the site went in the direction of “worldly”, “fun” and “photographs”. After talking with students who were in study abroad programs we discovered that feeling part of a community and seeing real student photos of the locations helped push them over the edge to join. We wanted to make sure these feelings were the centerpiece of the new site.

There are still a few rough spots on the site that we are working on but their old web site was no longer functioning. Frequent updates will be happening in the near future.

View the site at http://studyabroad.wayne.edu/

I am very behind with these links but regardless here they are. There’s great stuff going on out there and it needs to be shared. Enjoy.

• Development Tools From An Event Apart
• WideImage – An open-source PHP library for image manipulation
• Multiple Backgrounds and CSS Gradients
• Better User Experience With Storytelling – Part One – Smashing Magazine
• From the bleeding edge: 10 must-read scientific research papers on conversion rate optimization « Wingify Conversion Optimization Blog
• Vector Social Media Icons
• Embedding video files without JavaScript | 456 Berea Street
• Random rules for ideas worth spreading
• Random tweet re: #fear
• Unobtrusive JavaScript is not necessarily accessible JavaScript
• Best practices for training content contributors

It has been a while since I posted about recent site launches. It’s not because we have been sitting on our hands but the project we have been launching have been forms, emails and other internal projects. Although we have launched some smaller sites I wanted to keep you all updated on the public facing ones. So here they are.

Spring/Summer Classes

Basically a landing page for all the marketing material to get student to take classes in the summer. It sums up  the semesters available and the deadlines to register. It also breaks down the type of student and how to take the next step. In addition, promoting our campus options, we are not just located in downtown Detroit. This year we also added a promotional item for the K-12 Summer Programs.

View the site: http://summer.wayne.edu/

Living Detroit

We did not actually program this site but consulted, designed and helped the project along. It is a MediaWiki based site that our Honors College maintains to collect the timeline and stories of Detroit. Contribution to the site is part of the honors curriculum and it is open to the public. The homepage will feature highlighted people, places or things. The site is broken down into past, present and future. With the partnership of organizations and throughout Detroit the content possibilities for this site are endless.

View the site: http://livingdetroit.wayne.edu/

Children’s Bridge

We took the existing Children’s Bridge Web site and merged it with the Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute Web site. This was interesting because now the site has two navigations. The focus of the site is the research database, it allows anyone to search on any number of topics and get all necessary information about the faculty member who is running it. The tone and images on the site are all of children and the colors are soft.

View the site: http://childrensbridge.wayne.edu/

We are hiring! The Web Communications office is looking for an in house Web Content Administrator.

This position oversees the content on the university homepage and 200+ other centrally managed sites. In addition, the driving force for the university’s main social media presence and work with our internal team to redesign and launch sites within a central identity and CMS. It sounds like a big job and it is. We are not looking for someone who plans to just float through the day. We are looking for someone dedicated to making a difference, and in this position they will. This position will effect how the university is seen and reacted to by thousands of people per day.

We work in an open pit environment with a friendly and energetic staff dedicated to making a difference at the university. You will be supported with opinions and initiatives. Below is the official HR information, otherwise feel free to skip it and apply now.

Official Duties

• Serve as primary resource for units university-wide regarding the content and appearance of unit Web pages. Administer and provide training in content management tools, control access, review sites for adherence and conformity to editorial and design standards and resolve related problems.
• Develop and edit central university web site and pages. Identify, select and condense news and events for inclusion on Web page, prepare communications designed to effectively position the University, and ensure the delivery of key University messages.
• Serve as primary resource for the university’s central social media presence. Determine appropriate avenues and editorial tone for articles based on the audience of each site. Facilitate questions, concerns and feedback originating from various sources.
• Serve as liaison with IT personnel campus-wide to identify and resolve Web page related problems. Work with clients, designers and vendors to ensure established standards and expectations are met.
• Develop and implement mechanisms and processes designed to evaluate the effectiveness of university electronic communications. Provide analysis of collected data and submit reports and recommendations as requested.
• Review and edit all university Web sites, remove Web pages that are offensive, inappropriate or deemed to be in poor taste.
• Establish and maintain effective working relationships with unit administrators hosting Web pages not included in the university program.

Qualifications

• Graduation from an accredited college or university or an equivalent combination of education and/or experience. Major concentration in journalism or communications preferred.
• Knowledge of Web site technology and applications.
• Project management experience.
• Excellent writing, editing and communication skills.
• Experience writing and editing marketing, advertising and promotional copy.
• Ability to establish and maintain effective working relationships with units university wide.

How to Apply

Please do not send resumes directly to me. You must apply before February 2nd, 2010 at jobs.wayne.edu. Posting #036773

It is a sad week, Meghan Pomroy, our Web Content Administrator after 5+ years has moved on to bigger and better things. Meg has been crucial in making the Wayne State web environment where it is today. She will be missed greatly but we are very proud of her, she will go on to do great things.

• 21 Tips to Decrease Website Server Load
• Listen before you spend a billion dollars (customer experience lesson)
• Upload your files and access them anywhere with Google Docs
• Accessible HTML5 Video with JavaScripted captions
• Using Jquery and Google Analytics events to track form abandonment. | Distilled blog
• SquaredPeg – Strategies for using Facebook Groups and Pages to Yield Students
• Book Review: Linchpin
• The Book Cover Archive
• Fetch as Googlebot
• Best Practices To Develop Perfect Websites for iPhone and Mobile Devices – woorkup.com
• Are Homepages Dead Or Are We Missing The Boat?
• 4 Design Elements Behind a Good Call to Action (letscounthedays)

The first Friday Links of 2010, not much going on yet. I have a feeling there is going to be some great stuff going on this year. Especially in the space of Mobile, Usability and Efficiency.

• “Smart” pasting at The New Yorker site
• Techniques for Mastering cURL | Nettuts+
• Top 5 Tips for Pitching your Local TV News Station
• The six fundamental ways of adding depth to your designs « CreativityDen
• SiteSucker
• XSLT as a templating engine for PHP
• Web Accessibility Conferences in 2010
• 12 Lessons Learned for Getting Better Results from Developers
• 3+ Ways to Preload Images Using CSS, JavaScript, or Ajax • Perishable Press
• RMSforms – A flexible CSS Forms Framework to Help Style Those Pesky Forms

Internet Explorer 6 & 7 have a different approach in handling the button input submit tag.  In IE it posts the innerHTML of the button rather than what the value attribute is (like other browsers do).  This becomes an issue when checking the submit value to handle a form post.  See the following code:

if($_POST['submit'] == 'Submit') {
// Do Something
}


<button type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit"><img src="tick.gif" height="16" width="16" alt="Tick" /> Submit</button>

Looks normal right?
You would assume the post value would be equal to “Submit” after submitting the form. Well, in IE6 and IE7 the post value would actually be “<img src=”tick.gif” height=”16″ width=”16″ alt=”Tick” /> Submit”.

How can we fix this?

By applying two functions to your conditional statement you can easily ensure that it will be the same so long as the text inside the value attribute and the text inside the HTML are equal. See the following code:

if(trim(strip_tags($_POST['submit'] ))== 'Submit') {
// Do Something
}

Strip tags will remove the img tag, and trim will ensure there will be no spaces around what is left. This will result in “Submit” = “Submit” which is exactly what we want.

A few weeks ago I attended the Case V Conference in Chicago. They asked me to present Realigning your Redesign Process, it went really well and the slides are now posted.

I mainly attended the Web track and wanted to run down some key takeaways from the conference. Below are my notes from each session, they are not proofed so please ignore incomplete sentences and typos.

Creating an Online Brand: From Buy-in to Execution

• Disney was the first integrated marketing company in the 30’s
• Integrated Marketing is driven by data and customer centric, relationship building.
• Consistency is crucial to higher ed for integrated marketing
• Create a climate of openness to ensure the change sticks, Blamestorming gets you no where
• Make sure you value institutional history
• Hard numbers of results are what change the mind of senior management
• The primary focus of the homepage is always prospective students even tho the majority of traffic is internal
• Not every site needs to be on the homepage. If they are strategically placed they will get more traffic

It’s the end of the Web as we Know It (And I Feel Fine!)

• Paradigm – Your set of experiences that shape how you see the web
• The way students use the web differently than you do
• Mobile as the 7th mass media, The mobile is as different from the internet as TV is from radio.
• QR code – 2d bar graphic – Add to print publications to send users to a URL
• The Horizon Reports – Good resource for upcoming trends – “Experimentation must be encouraged and supported by policy”
• The singularity is near – technology will change so fast you will not recognize as change anymore
• Information literacy – knowing how to determine the legitimacy of a source.
• Top 10 web trends
  1. The mobile web
  2. The social web
  3. The Real-time web
  4. End of the Web page paradigm
  5. Read/Write web
  6. Rich media
  7. The web as a platform
  8. Virtual reality
  9. The world network
  10. The end of print
• Slides available at: http://markgr.com/presentations/casev/

Social Media and Student Recruitment

• North Central College Private Social Network
  • New touch point for relationship development
  • Everything pointed to a social network, two way communications
  • Be the Bird their network. bethebird.com, built on abeedle.com
  • Approx 5 hours per week, One main staff member but there are others who interact
  • Every out of state student joined the group
  • The most valuable part is they can see conversations they otherwise would not have
  • Yield has been going up ~30% year after year
• The Ohio State University Facebook Ads
  • Targeting people on Facebook is very easy
  • ROI is potentially great
  • Goals were to increase traditional applications, then increase the regional application then lastly military personnel
  • Come up with something catchy to cut through all the other noise on FB
  • Headline then some up with all information in once sentence
  • Facebook is about faces – Ads need of have close ups of faces
  • If you can go directly from the online ad to the online app you won’t loose people in the translation
  • Using the “create an ad” tool you can preview what the landscape is like before actually running an ad
  • Facebook bills you every day so you can start changing your strategy.
  • Just do one alteration at a time, increase the amount per click or keywords
  • Specific landing pages per audience
  • Paying per impression is a great way to get your ad out there before people who are paying for clicks

Why Twitter Matters

• Didn’t really take notes on this one
• Slides available at: http://www.slideshare.net/karlynmorissette/why-twitter-matters-2714438

Social Media: Ask the Experts

• Didn’t take too many notes about the discussions taking place on the panel
• Using Yammer to get internal communications out
• Using Zinch to connect with student admissions office
• The first think you have to ask yourself is what problem you are trying to solve
• How likely is it that you would recommend this company (college) to another colleague or friend?

Realigning your Redesign Process

• My presentation
• Redesign is not all about pushing new pixels It’s about refining the user experience
• Not all sites need a complete redesign
• Signoff ’s – Make sure the “client” knows the signoff is a commitment and changes afterward will effect timeline and cost
• Discover your real users
• Talk to the people in charge, assess the primary goals early
• You need to make sure the person responsible for content knows it and are competent
• Training content contributors, not just on the CMS or how to physically update the site but more importantly how to structure web content
• The whiteboard is an invaluable tool
• Take all the visual elements and take 100 “points” to divide between them
• Copy and paste is NOT a content transition strategy, make sure every page gets looked at by at least one person
• Use the goals set for each page to influence the design
• If you have multiple options start with the worst, only decision makers should be in the meeting
• Make the site as light as possible. Attach Javascript actions after load, use sprites and combine/minify CSS and JS
• Walk the decision makers through the primary tasks of the site
• Send out an email or personally thank everyone involved for their hard work
• Maintenance – By far the toughest part of the redesign process, if your CMS has out dated page alerts use them
• Slides available at: http://wcs.wayne.edu/blog/2009/12/16/realigning-your-web-redesign-process-my-case-v-presentation/

Putting Your U in YouTube

• Don’t need an expensive camera
• Goal is to keep a buzz going about events and announcements
• Easy to setup, make sure central marketing has control of the main account
• Include the video in news releases
• Small TV stations may use your content during broadcast
• Make sure the content is timely
• “The science of Watchmen“
• Worked with the production company
• Student content is by far the best but hard to craft

Overall I thought CaseV was a great conference. The Web track was a little smaller than I hoped but the people who attended were very engaged and knowledgeable. The lack of free Wifi was another downside of the conference. It would have been great to live blog as the sessions were going on.

One big theme this year was social media. Since most admissions and marketing offices are already using it on a consistent basis it felt like all the alumni and development folks were just jumping on board. It’s not a bad thing since most of the discussion was about strategy and tactics.

I am thankful to have been invited to the conference and hope I have the same opportunity in years to come.

Wrapping up the year with another list of links. It has been a wild ride, so much has happened in the past year not only at Wayne State but on the Web as a whole. I cannot begin to list all the significant developments, but you can check out the past Friday Links to get an idea.

I will leave 2009 with this quote, thank you Christa for passing it along to me.

“Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.”
- Dr. Seuss

• Chrome Extensions and webOS Applications look quite similar
• If you must use a dropdown menu, make sure it’s keyboard friendly
• Psychology and restaurant menus
• Elements Of a Social Media Calendar
• phpwebsocket – Project Hosting on Google Code
• 10 Examples of Beautiful CSS Typography and how they did it… » – Web Design Marketing Podcast & Blog
• Use Appcelerator Titanium to build mobile apps for iPhone & Android and desktop apps for Windows, Mac OS X & Linux from Web technologies
• Free Sketching & Wireframing Kit
• Firefox 4 Design Mock-Ups Get an Update [Firefox]
• Robert Harder » Stream iTunes over SSH
• Cleaner Code with CSS3 Selectors
• In search of customer intimacy
• Virtual Slot Machine Teaches the Logic of Loss