Dialog Web Communications at OSU

Sher Fenn from Central Web Services, who has done an amazing job in helping the OSU Web community get the most out of Drupal, is piloting a new brown bag series. Here are the details:

Drupal on Rye is a brown bag, open forum that will attempt to draw  together intermediate to advanced OSU Drupal users who are interested in the  following:

• Providing feedback to CWS regarding OSU Drupal
• Establishing a real-life Drupal community with a focus on mutual  support and encouragement

The  Drupal on Rye atmosphere will be informal, flexible, and may include guest  speakers from CWS or other departments involved with OSU Drupal.  It will  take place in a seminar room to allow participants the ability to bring food  and beverages during discussion.  The primary focus of this forum is  discussion.  Participants can bring their own laptops if they wish to  review any websites discussed during the session.

Our  first session will be held on Feb. 17th from 11:30 to 1:00 pm in the  Willamette West Seminar Room, Rm. 3622, 3rd Floor Valley Library.  Follow  the provided URL for a map, if you’ve never visited Willamette West  before: http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/locations/floor3.html.

Topics  will be fielded prior to the event. If you have a particular topic or issue  you would like to discuss, feel free to submit it either via the Drupal  Support List at http://oregonstate.edu/tools/mailto/drupal_support or through a CWS Help Ticket at http://oregonstate.edu/cws/contact.  We can’t guarantee that all topics will be  covered in the given time and will give higher consideration to those topics  that are more universal in nature.

This is  an experimental pilot forum.  Continuation of this event will hinge on  the demonstrated participation of 10 or more users.  If successful, CWS  will offer this opportunity on an ongoing basis.

We hope  to see you there!

This is a great opportunity to meet more folks in the community of Drupal users. You’ll certainly run into some folks from Web Comm if you go.

Do you have other ideas for topics, seminars and workshops that you’d like to see happening on campus? Be sure to join the OSU IMC Network on Ning (imcnet.ning.com), and become a member of the Web Communicators sub-group.  Suggest your topics there, or in the comments on this blog post.

Popularity: 8% [?]

The home page redesign project is moving steadily forward. We’ve produced mock-up and a prototype for testing. We’ve run the front page design past the steering committee, and members are now gathering and providing feedback.

We’ve also been testing with users, gathering feedback on the visual design and layout. Reviews have been promising so far. Students, staff and faculty have rated the new design higher, the layout easier to use, and the content more organized. You may have seen us set up in the MU, giving away pizza or Powered by Orange gear in exchange for a few minutes of users’ time.

So check out the design and let us know what you think. Our goal is to have the new home page and top-tier pages launched this Spring.

Mock-up of new home page

Popularity: 13% [?]

Interim home page with Google search

During the break, we’ve made some changes to the main OSU home page. We added the new tag to the OSU logo and updated some colors to make them brand compliant. These changes will be live beginning Monday, January 4.

We’ve also moved the site search to the banner. Thanks to Central Web Services, OSU’s search is now powered by a Google appliance. This version just uses the standard features, but having the search appliance in-house allows room for enhanced features that we hope to help roll out over the coming months.

Our goal is to have the new home page in place early spring/late winter. We’re testing prototypes now, and I’ll share mock-ups in coming blog posts.

Leave a comment and let us know your thoughts on this interim step, and your hopes for the new site. Also let us know how the search is performing.

Popularity: 58% [?]

YouTube DirectGo Beavers

It’s Civil War time again and battles of all types have been raging between Oregon State University and the University of Oregon. In the middle of it all the Web Communications department has been waging a war of our own. For the last few months it has been our goal to surpass the number of Duck channel views and subscribers on YouTube. Well what better way to accomplish a goal than to take advantage of a rabid and passionate audience. Because of the incredible support and dedication of Beaver Nation we were able to accomplish our goal (on the actual day of the civil war none the less!).

Much of the success can be attributed to clever cross promotion on our other social networks. Also, we had some real success recently with a couple videos. Even reaching the top 25 videos on YouTube EDU.

YouTube DirectThriller at OSU

Popularity: 15% [?]

The themed intros tie into the PBO campaign and focus on the areas of food, energy and water.

The video intros we created for the Powered by Orange campaign are now available for download and incorporation with your video projects. In this phase of the campaign we’re trying to emphasize the positive impact that Oregon State makes in the areas of food, energy and water.

If you have similarly themed material, and you think these would be an enhancement, feel free to use them. They’ve really helped to add a level of polish to our PBO video series, which is now focusing on research impact in the three key areas.br

Popularity: 11% [?]

It’s official, Whitehouse.gov has followed OSU’s lead and made the switch to Drupal. It just goes to show that this content management system is versatile, reliable and, unlike other open source projects where support and development might dry up over time, this one isn’t going away anytime soon.

A large number of OSU sites have moved to Drupal, and more are making the switch all the time.  Central Web Services offers robust support and training, and we will have a new highly customizable theme available soon as well.

We also should acknowledge the role our Open Source Lab plays in supporting the Drupal development community.

The fact that the President’s site is now hosted on our platform is good news for us.

Popularity: 13% [?]

This wireframe diagram divides the screen into functional areas (click to enlarge)

This past summer we formed a project team and steering committee to address the design of OSU’s home page and top-tier pages. The home page is OSU’s public face, with more than 70,000 hits per day, it regularly reaches a broader and more diverse audience than any other communication.

The timing for this redesign is ideal, given the fact that the look and feel of the home page hasn’t changed in several years, and also the new Brand Identity Guidelines for the university were officially launched in September.

A team of advisors and Web professionals from across campus are collaborating on the redesign project. Most of the work from this summer focused on the information architecture, the physical structure of the links and navigation was determined, and the allocation of the screen real estate for different tasks was determined. The work produced a wireframe sketch of the new home page. This is our roadmap for moving forward. We will now be filling that wireframe with design, content, navigation and imagery.

There are three teams currently working on the redesign. A Visual Design Team is creating mock-ups of the look and feel; the Content Team is determining parameters for links and feature content, and the Technical Team is deciding on the architecture and performance. A steering committee representative of the entire campus is reviewing the process.

Our goal is to have a new home page ready to demo and launch for the new calendar year. I’ll be posting regular updates on this blog so that our users can follow the progress and provide feedback. Don’t hesitate to share your thoughts.

Popularity: 100% [?]

True Beaver Believer Kegan Sims officially joined Web Communications as our Social Media Specialist

Beginning on October 1, Kegan Sims officially joined Web Communications as our full-time Social Media Specialist. Join me in welcoming him aboard.

For the past few months Kegan has been devoting several hours per day to fostering conversation and driving traffic and membership to our various social media groups. He’s sponsored popular contests and earned quite a following. During that time, OSU was recognized by industry outlets and authoritative blogs as an institution to watch in the social media space. This recognition is due in no small part to Kegan’s efforts, as well as those of our Web Writer and Twitter Maven, Celene Carillo.

We’re pleased to have Kegan now devoting a bulk of his efforts to social media initiatives. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us with questions, suggestions and for consultation as you explore this exciting area of communications.

Popularity: 23% [?]

Students and staff gather in the MU quad for orange giveaways on Monday, September 1st.

We’ve launched the latest version of the Powered by Orange Web site. So far, the PBO initiative has netted us thousands of pageviews and thousands more social media connections. This week’s events marry online activities with live events to celebrate the start of a new communications effort, a new school year, and a year of OSU contributions to Oregon and beyond.

Popularity: 21% [?]

OSU Web sites were recognized as top performers in a blog post about SEO and college sites. The author notes:

Congratulations go out to you, the web and marketing teams and anyone else who touches the Oregon State University website because you’re all doing a tremendous job at effectively optimizing your site for search engines.

Recognition also needs to go to our Admissions and Enrollment Web and marketing folks who’ve led OSU’s SEO performance efforts.

Popularity: 32% [?]