Want to copy an event?

When you have a new event that closely resembles a previous event you can now use your previous event as a template for your new event. You’ll have to know where to look for the copy event link though. We decided to tuck the event management links away to clean up the page and make it a little easier to scan for your event. Mousing over the event with reveal the Copy Event link as well as any other event management links available on your event.

Need to copy your RSVP too?

Event copying doesn’t stop at the event. If your event has an attached RSVP you can also choose to copy the RSVP along with your event. At the bottom of the copy event screen you’ll see a few extra fields (this will only display if your event has an attached RSVP). The only catch is that the short name has to be unique, so you’ll need to come up with a new short name for this rendition of your RSVP. If selected the entire RSVP will be copied and attached to your new event.

If you use the online Campus Map to directly link to a building you will notice some changes today with the building and category list page. We added some additional information about every building on the map. Check out the old version (left) and the new version (right) above. Here is also run down of the features.

Full mailing addresses
Each building new has the full mailing address displayed. This information was not available at all before so we added it in.

Easy to read format
Instead of just listing the name and the full URL the names are now the links and the address is directly below it. Linking options are now to the right, there is room for multiple.

Links to campus and Google Maps
Some people don’t like our Flash based map and prefer Google so we included direct links to the locations on Google for those folks. We are in the process of moving away from Flash but don’t have a date when the new map will launch just yet.

Microformats
Each building is equipped with hCard microformat to increase the amount of structured data available for anyone who wants it.

Individual building pages
In addition to the listing page redesign each building or location now has its own page with unique URL to link directly to. It includes a photo and additional information about that building if available.

Upcoming events for each building
On the individual building page the next five events in the Events Calendar taking place at that building will be listed. A screen shot of that is below, click it to see the actual live page.

Thank you everyone who has given us feedback on the campus map. It has all been incorporated in to this recent update and there is still more in the works. We will continue to adjust and tweak it as users needs change.

Recently I have been going around campus talking with various groups and administration about new communication tools and how was are using them to reach further and more personal than ever before. These tools are key to that new communication strategy.

Why we decided to put them on the homepage

We decided to link to them from the homepage for two reasons.

1. After a year we had a pretty constant growth rate and we wanted to start sharing this space with people who have not stumbled upon us yet.
2. Second is that we now have an extended network of students who just started blogging for the university. We have not officially announced them yet but soon enough we will, we snuck them in on the homepage RSS button if you want to get a preview.

We didn’t want to give the buttons too much attention since they are not one of the primary goals of the homepage. We placed them in the bottom right corner and grayed them out. We also put a “What are these?” help link for someone who is not already familiar with these icons.

Go ahead and check them out and start following if you find us interesting. If you don’t like how we are promoting our extended web presence let us know why, we would love to hear about it.

Well search no further, check out Wayne State Campus Map for food venues around campus!

If you are not familiar with our campus map, click here

Why this made sense then

It made sense when we first launched because it had to portray a “new outlook” of Wayne State. After being stuck promoting events the last 5 years the main focus of the homepage was to show how vibrant and enjoyable campus is.

Why it was time to make a change

It is time to make the change now that the site has been up for a few months, students have come back to campus and are now accustom to the new homepage. We did a few tests and we found that the stories behind the More Information area were not getting as many views/clicks as we wanted. These were the real success stories that change minds and hearts and we needed to bring these to the forefront.

We tested different options

The best way to get these stories in front of users eyes is to remove a layer of the branding images so we started by just removing the branding images all together and put the most recent three stories up front. This got us the clicks we wanted but came at the cost of less people going to the More Information area and completely threw out our impacting images.

Our second test was to keep the first layer of impacting images but when someone clicks on a category within More Information it would go directly to the most recent story and not to another branding image. This would allow the user to not only get right to the most recent story but it also allowed them to easily click through the five categories to see if there was anything by image and not rely on the title.

What we decided on

We decided to keep the second test running. This offered the best results, it still allowed us to bring the impacting images front and center and allowed users to get to the success stories with fewer barriers. It has yielded a +10% increase in views of the newest stories.

Final Thoughts

Keep your users at the forefront of all design and information decisions. Although we did not get any complaints about the success stories being difficult to find we knew we could get more pertinent information to users instead of them just looking at pretty pictures all day. A users time is their most valuable asset and for them to spend any time on yoru site at all you should be flattered, don’t make them waste that time with barriers to information.

We were right, upgrade was a snap, backup, disable plugins, upload, run script, enable plugins and back to normal, took about 10 minutes. Agile software without all the clunky overhead. Fully extendable, customizable and powerful yet free and light.

After reviewing RFP’s from software companies trying to sell old school software to the university it is easy to tell what companies have adapted to the new development styles and which ones are holding tight to their old school software griping it for every dime they can.

Small teams creating the least amout of code to create the most amount of impact. With limited resources we have to adopt these principles or die. Every peice of code we create is part of a larger master plan, it has to be forward thinking and be useful to most of the unit around campus.

Great work Wordpress and Happy Cog for the interface.

Subscriptions

You can choose your calendar or subscribe to the main events calendar (really large list, you have been warned) by visiting the iCalendar page. Subsequently if you want to subscribe via RSS you can still do that at the RSS page.

Saving individual events

When viewing an event, below the contact information is this bar, with the last option on the bar a single ical file will be downloaded and can be imported into your favorite desktop calendar, Outlook 2007, iCal…

Subscribing via Google Calendar

Google calendar is a popular web based calendar and the process to subscribe it straightforward and can translate to most web and desktop calendars.

Step 1:
Find the iCal feed you would like to subscribe to at the iCalendar page, right click on the feed link and select “Copy Link Location”

http://events.wayne.edu/ical/theatre/calendar.ics

Step 2:
Open Google Calendar and click the Add link on top of all your calendars. You will want to “Add by URL”, I have it highlighted below.

Step 3:
Paste in the URL and click Add.

The site transitions completed two weeks ago and we made some modifications to the CMS so it was not dependent on the old server. This weekend we made the switch and shed the php4 baggage and old server.

Working with such a large system can be difficult, especially since it has been coded over many years and still some legacy code exists. Having it in one environment will allow us to refactor that code quickly and get it into production.

First order of business is to update our WYSIWYG editor, this will allow us to support Safari and Opera finally.

Having the system just in one environment will also improve performance since it will not have to contact the slower server for information.

Happy editing.

Information for the parents section of the admissions site has been expanded to separate the information into Just Started parents and Already Admitted groups. Both groups have different needs and could not be served equally on the same page.

In addition to information expansion the campus is expanding too. An update to the Campus Map includes the South University Village and its parking structure. Both currently under construction but will be open soon. We also added a more detailed map for the Macomb extension center to help with directions and details about getting around the large Macomb campus.

We know this is not a widely used framework because we take an active role in its development and feature set. (We also track its download rate :-X) But we use it for a few specific reasons, knowing we are probably not the only ones in this situation we outlined them below.

1. We work in a shared server environment where we don’t have root access to the server.
2. We do not have direct control when the server software gets updated.
3. We are called upon to produce sites or applications in a rapid manor.
4. We control so many sites that having to install the framework for each would be a inefficient.
5. We use the same functions and methods throughout many sites.
6. We have more than one developer building and maintaining sites, consistency determines our efficiency.

The update notification can be found at the unofficial PHPSimpl site and we have included some useful URL’s below. We are always here to help so any question about the framework and its implementation just fire away.

• PHPSimpl 0.8.4 (96Kb) Download
• Installation Guide
• API and Examples