Category: Work

New SLU Dot Edu

It’s been a crazy past few weeks. I meant to write about this sooner, but haven’t found the time.

The site not only looks a thousand times better (Bryce!) but the slick new navigation (Mark and Robert!) and the awesome content (Amy!) make this something I’m really proud to have worked on.

Here’s some of my personal favorite things we’ve added:

Consistent Left-hand Navigation – We now have highlighting of the current page you’re on (the little red arrow) and a nestled view of sub-pages. This looks much cleaner and is also a lot easier to navigate.

On the content creation side our users now have a clear understanding of how their site is organized and how to manage their content.



More space (wider layout)

We increased the width of the site by 25% giving us more space for content. Video can now be embedded at full SD resolution and pictures can now be much larger to boot. Along with a consistent placement of our navigation we no longer have to munge content around the right-hand navigation found in the previous design.


Flexible framework – We can now develop new interactive elements

We’re already starting to add new ‘widgets’ to the content of our page. Things like what you see in the screenshot above. News tickers, embedded video carousels, instant response polls, you name it. All due to the new framework we’re using to display our content.

We’re not done adding additional features; like a new search engine, custom departmental banners and a mobile stylesheet!

Thanks again to everyone involved and for those who let me be a part of it. It feels good to be proud of one’s work.

A Side of Lent

Part of my job is developing a web strategy for the division of Mission & Ministry at SLU. Recently we completed a project that pivoted around a site for the Lenten activities on campus this  year. On short notice we got something up and running using Google Sites and I was able to train a few non-web folk to keep it up-to-date.

They kept the site running for all of Lent with over 5,000 visitors and daily updates. The project was a success and something that I’m proud of.

As it was nearing it’s end I started studying the analytics and noticed a trend.  It quickly became apparent that the length of time on the site was exceptionally long due to the type of content being written.  The average time on site was over four and a half minutes. Longer than any other site I’ve maintained.

I thought to myself, “Wow, these daily reflections would be about a page and a half if printed.”

And in fact I was correct.

lent-book

Interested in brushing up my InDesign skills* I looked into self-publishing options and found Lulu.

Learning a bit about how to format my document, page numeration, margins and all the other fun elements of layout I created a 91 page soft cover edition of the Lent website.  All 45 daily reflections seperated by the approprate weekly reflections. The end of the book even contains a list of all the Lenten pledeges that users submitted to the website.

I printed off 4 of these at about $6 a pop. Having enjoyed the professionalism and dedication during this project I gave them as gifts to the key members involved. I think they all liked them – as much as I did while creating it.

*The last time I used InDesign it was called Pagemaker. 🙂

Room Worth a View

roomworthaview_large

A poster for a project I’m working on at work.  A simple design, but I think it came together well.

Created in Illustrator CS4 using Rockwell Bold with a simple fill and some existing photography from the archives. 11×17 prints on matte.

The project hasn’t launched yet, it will tomorrow. So if you’re a SLUser this is a sneak peak!

Adventures in Portland

Skyline

I’ve returned from Portland, intact if not a little tired.  Portland is a beautiful city, with a lot to see and do.  Their downtown area is about the same size as ours.  Two things struck me as very interesting.

Nice Coat

First, the city is by far the cleanest city I’ve ever visited.  I don’t recall seeing any trash on the street.  It actually appeared as thought everyone in the city pitches in to keep the place looking nice.  Yes that is a homeless man walking around in a sleeping bag.  They all stayed to themselves in the city and didn’t bother me at all.  In fact I was quite impressed by their age.  Most of them were younger people.

Isengard

Second, everything is larger than here in STL.  The sidewalks are twice as wide, the buildings go right up to the edge of each block, and speaking of city blocks, they seem to be larger as well. I think this has to do with the city being so far west. They just have more space to spread out!

The conference went well, we were the last presentation to go (for the day and the entire conference!)  We had a good turn out of about 50 people, all of them were paying attention to us the entire time.  

The next Fall SIGUCCS conference will be next year in St. Louis.  I encourage anyone working in higher education & technology to attend.  I plan on writing another paper for next year myself.

I’d talk more but I’m tired and need to get caught up.  The rest of my photos are embedded below and can be found on my flickr set.  Josh has some photos up on his flickr as well. His take on our adventure can be found on his blog (Parts 1,2,3,4,5)