Category: Uncategorized

Web Strategy Team Meeting 12.15.11

Mobile Site Soft Launch: m.miis.edu

A couple of caveats:

  • You’ll see that the events calendar module hasn’t been posted yet.
  • There will be a few more changes to the Admissions pages, which currently link to our website.

MontereySTART Launch: sites.miis.edu/montereystart

MiddMedia Developments

Eric spent sometime this week tweaking his Final Cut settings, so that from now on, all videos on the MIIS homepage will be hosted on MiddMedia.

Protocol for Moving Webpages

  • When you’re moving a webpage to a new URL, please use the proper syntax (i.e. http://miis.edu/student-life) Please use a dash (-) to separate words in your URL.
  • Email Rebecca and say that you need a 301 Redirect implemented, which will automatically take the users from the old URL to the new one. This prevents broken links on our website, which take users to a 404 Error page.

Looking Back on Our Goals

  • Revisit the “Be the Solution: Areas of Study” (for the big wigs)
  • Change “Community” to “Student Life” in the global navigation
  • Bonus Step: Check for broken links
  • Bonus Step 2: Re-create the campus map – in January
  • Bonus Step 3: Watch out for that pesky error on faculty program pages

Web Strategy Meeting 12.01.11

Wikipedia Project

Top Social Web Articles: Thanksgiving Week

  1. Men’s Basketball Wins Ramapo Tourney (5, 2, 2)
  2. MIIS Student Alexandra Shaphren Named “Outstanding Philanthropic Young Adult” of the Year (4, 261, 276)
  3. Sharing the American Tradition of Giving Thanks with International Students (4, 52, 56)
  4. Elmira Tops Men’s Hockey In PrimeLink Tourney (3, 0, 0)
  5. Strauss Earns Player Of The Week Honors (3, 1, 1)
  6. Men’s Hockey Opens With A Win (3, 19, 19)
  7. PrimeLink Tickets On Sale (2, 0, 0)
  8. Greer Is Regional Player Of The Year (2, 18, 18)
  9. Alumnus and Adjunct Professor Russ Howard Widely Quoted in National Media (2, 0, 0)
  10. Build A Library To Secure A Future (2, 50, 64)

MiddMedia

What are the benefits to MiddMedia for faculty, staff, and students? Any ideas?

GO Links

How many people know how to create a GO link? What are the benefits of a GO link? Check out the KB article: How do I create a go link?

Weekly Lesson: No Index

How do I hide MIIS webpages from search engines?

Web Strategy Team Meeting 11.17.11

MiddMedia

Now that we have both MiddMedia and YouTube as video servers, I think that we should make our YouTube presence solely a recruiting tool. Any informational videos for current students – such as “Graduating Student Sessions” – or other internal campus audiences can be hosted on MiddMedia.

Social Media

Please mark your calendars: Anna and I would like to reserve the week of December 5th to promote MontereySTART projects on Facebook and Twitter.

With so many people from various departments using our social media accounts, I’m wondering if we’re posting the most compelling stories. For example, on Twitter I not only post the news stories, but also student blogs, Communique stories, & YouTube videos. Maybe we could think about doing the same for Facebook?

Campus Map Presentation

“Careers by Field” Mock-up

Web Strategy Meeting 05.05.11

Facebook Integration

We now have the ability to add Facebook boxes (See Admissions), like buttons (See Class of 2011 Challenge), and comments to miis.edu webpages. The like buttons allow visitors to like the webpage, and it posts this information to their Facebook profiles. The comments feature allows visitors to leave comments on your webpage, and these comments appear on the visitors’ Facebook profile.

To add this feature, click on “Add” in the Edit Console, and choose “Facebook Element.” You will then choose between a “Like Box,” Like Button,” and “Comments” and select various layout options, such as “Show Faces” or “Show Stream” for Like Boxes.

To add a Like Button to your webpage, there’s an extra step of adding “Open Graph Tags,” which are located under “Meta Tags” section. Ian McBride, Middlebury’s Drupal programmer describes the importance of open graph tags:

“When somebody links to your page in Facebook, or when they click a Like button you have put on the page, Facebook makes a request to our website to see what the page is about. If you don’t have any Open Graph tags on the page, Facebook will try to guess what the page represents, taking its title, description, and often an image from content it finds on the page. Using Open Graph tags, you can help Facebook by removing the guess work.”

Middlebury’s Story “Carousel” Feature

We will soon have the ability to add the story “carousel” feature to the bottom of miis.edu webpages. Check out Middlebury’s Student Life webpage for an example of this feature. It’s important to note that the carousel works better for pages with less text, so users don’t have to scroll far to find the stories. You also need at least 5 story items (stories, photos, videos, RSS feeds, etc.) to activate the carousel. And remember if you don’t like this feature, feel free not to use it.

Changes to the Main “Faculty” Page?

What if we removed that long ugly list of faculty members from the page? Instead users could use the search box to find specific faculty, click on the faculty by program links, or watch featured videos of our faculty members…

Creating a 4Q Survey

Google Analytics training this summer?

Web Strategy Team Meeting 1/27

SEO Moz

  • Find Google Rank for different keywords
  • Link Building Tools
  • Also, 301 Redirect Enabled on Drupal

Tedx Monterey’s New Look

  • http://www.tedxmonterey.org
  • Video by Jesse Pluim (Jesse’s working on stories for the next couple of weeks. If you have any ideas, let him know.)
  • Should we also give the Communique a new look?

Web/Social Media Headlines

Sites DOT MIISThe Middlebury Institute site network.