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July 23, 2008

Blogs: The Many Voices of a University

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Blogs: The Many Voices of a University
(go forward past the first minute)

Sunday afternoon I skibbled off to Atlantic City to attend EduWeb 2008, a conference for Web development professionals in higher education.

The critical point of the conference—for me—came Tuesday afternoon at 5:00 when I presented Blogs: The Many Voices of a University. As some of you know, I'm more of a writer than a public speaker, so I faced the challenge with a wee bit of trepidation. Many kind people told me it went well though, so I will now share it with you. If you who were unable to attend, or if you wish to demonstrate the power of blogging to your university's administration, you may watch the video and view the slides here. I've also included the presentation abstract below.

Presentation Abstract: Blogs: The Many Voices of a University

Whether marketing to prospective students, engaging the community in campus life or reaching out to alumni, our mission requires us to distribute a wide range of information that will allow our various audiences to connect with our colleges and universities. Such information could include features of our academic programs, the impact of research, faculty scholarship, student achievements, campus activities, event announcements, etc. Through the use of campus blogs we can build on this informational foundation by letting the members of our community share their own thoughts and viewpoints with the world. By giving voice to these individuals we present an inside look into their experiences, activities and intellectual pursuits.

At Case Western Reserve University we have made blogs available to all members of the campus community including students, faculty, staff and alumni. Staff members use these blogs to share information, to teach and to provide customer service tools online. Faculty use them to share both their personal ideas and as classroom tools to engage students in online discussions. Students may blog about their overseas experiences, their athletic activities or classroom assignments while alumni may discuss their careers or political beliefs. This presentation will provide examples of the various ways individuals at Case, and other schools, are using blogs and how these individual voices come together to present a richer portrait of university life.

Blogging at Case

This presentation would not have been possible were it not for the Case Blog System provided by ITS, and the rich content created by our blogging alumni, faculty, staff and students. Thank you Lev, Jeremy and the many Case bloggers who gave me something to show off at the conference!

You can learn more about blogging at Case by visiting these resources:

Forthcoming: reflections on the conference.

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Posted by Heidi Cool at 11:17 AM | Comments (8)
Categories: Blogging , Content , Heidi's Entries , How-to , Web 2.0 , eduweb2008 , marketing , presentations , video

July 14, 2008

Testing Web sites with multiple browser versions

portableapps.com
Firefox 3 from PortableApps.com (Windows)

Until recently I was one of the only nerds who had yet to upgrade to Firefox 3. I'd been waiting until I could find an easy way to install it alongside (rather than in place of) Firefox 2. When I'd tried doing this a few months ago—with the beta version of Firefox 3—it hadn't worked properly, so I'd put the idea on hold.

I mentioned this in a meeting, when a colleague piped up with a simple solution. He suggested using the PortableApps version, a standalone version of the program that can be installed on a Flash drive—for portability—or simply in a directory you designate on your computer. This was so obvious I immediately wondered why it hadn't occurred to me before, but then, practical ideas are like that.

PortableApps.com offers a plethora of portable software solutions—including Firefox—for Windows

Once I got back to my office I hopped over to http://portableapps.com/, looked for Firefox 3, then proceeded to download it. Within minutes it was installed, separately and independently of Firefox 2. When I tried to start it up I discovered that you can't run them both at the same time—I had to close out of 2 to open 3, then close out of 3 to reopen 2—but you can run them on the same computer. This will be tremendously useful if I discover some quirk in Firefox 3—such as an add-on that no longer works and has yet to be updated—or if I need to see how a Web page renders in each version.

That solved the problem for the Windows P. C., but what about the Macintosh?

FreeSMUG: Portable Applications for OSX

freesmug.jpg
Firefox 3 from FreeSMUG (Mac)

A quick Google search turned up FreeSMUG's portable applications section. FreeSMUG offers a portable version of Firefox 3—in several languages—as well as other popular open source programs such as Open Office and Audacity. Those new to many of the Open Source programs available through FreeSMUG can learn more about them through a variety of helpful tutorials available on the site.

FreeSMUG says of its portable applications, "OS X FOSS portable applications are packaged so you can carry around on any portable device, USB thumb drive, iPod, portable hard drive, memory card, other portable device (or also on your internal hard disk), taking your preferences with you." This of course could be handy for any number of reasons, but the ability to run multiple versions of browsers to use for testing Web sites, is particularly useful to me.

Why test in multiple versions of the same Web browser? Why not just upgrade?

As a Web developer, you probably upgrade your browsers fairly often. That's not true of the average user. In many cases the people who visit your site are using the same browser that came with their computer.

The most popular browsers used by visitors to the Web Development Blog this month are:

  • Internet Explorer 7.0 - 24.6%
  • Internet Explorer 6.0 - 24.3%
  • Firefox 3.0 - 12.7%
  • Firefox 2.x - 17.8%
  • Safari - 5.4%

Interestingly .5% were still using Netscape 4.0, which is over 10 years old!

To ensure that you, my site visitors, can view and use this site with ease, I need to make sure that it works properly in the browsers that most of you are using. This requires testing in multiple browsers and versions.

When a browser releases a minor upgrade, this isn't a big issue. But when a Web browser makes a significant upgrade it can make a big difference. A site that looked fine in version X, may look horrible in version Y.

When Internet Explorer 7 came out, users and developers quickly noticed that many pages didn't render properly in the new version. I.E. 7 was actually more standards compliant than I.E. 6, but developers who had used I.E. hacks to make pages look right in I.E. 6 found they didn't work with I.E. 7. This led to a lot of sturm und drang about I.E. 7 "breaking the Web," as those developers needed to modify those hacks to make their sites work in both I.E. 6 and 7.

Here at Case our templated sites don't rely on many I.E. hacks so they transitioned smoothly from I.E. 6 to I.E. 7. But when I'm building new sites, I may sometimes incorporate new styles or features that I've not used before. This is when I make a point of testing in multiple browsers. Tredosoft's Multiple I.E. Installer provides a convenient way to run different versions of Internet Explorer on Windows XP. They also provide information for running I.E. 6 natively on Vista.

Must your site work in every browser available?

No, the Web has evolved enough since 1993 that making a site backwards compatible with every browser version is pretty much impossible. But if you adhere to Web standards, build sites that degrade cleanly in older browsers, and test in the browsers used by most of your readers you should be able to provide a good user experience for all of your visitors.

Web Browse Testing Resources

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Posted by Heidi Cool at 12:45 AM | Comments (11)
Categories: Accessibility , How-to , Tips and Tricks , Web Browsers , Web Standards , test , usability

June 18, 2008

Tips for installing Google Analytics on Case and other Web servers.

Google Analytics traffice Sources
Traffic sources: a wee fraction of the data available

There comes a time in every Web maintainer's life when the boss or client asks to see the Web stats for the past 6 months/year/5 years or what have you. Ideally you or your server administrator set this up long ago; you—being equally keen to understand the usage patterns of your site, and to use that knowledge to improve your content—check them on a regular basis, and can provide the information immediately.

Then again, if you've been busy building and updating sites, this may be one of those projects that has been patiently waiting on your to-do list. If your server doesn't have analytics software pre-installed, and you've not yet installed any yourself, now—before the boss asks—is the time to do so.

This is particularly important for users who host sites on the main Case server.

Since upgrading the Web server, we have switched from using Aurora Stats to using Google Analytics on our sites. Where in the past you would have run a monthly report using the A.P.A.S. utilities, now you just install your tracking code once—after which you can view your data at any time. (We are also exploring additional server-based analytics software that we may install in the future to augment what is available through Google.)

Getting Started

To begin the process go to http://www.google.com/analytics. If you have an existing Google account you can login here to set up your analytics account. If you don't already have a Google account you can sign up to create one.

Creating your site profile
  1. Login to Google Analytics, then select "Analytics Settings"
  2. Click on Add Web site Profile
  3. Choose your profile type. If this is the first time you are setting up analytics, choose new domain. If you are adding another Web site within the same domain, choose existing domain. In this example we'll choose new.
  4. Type or paste in the URL of your site's domain. Note: If your site, like many Case sites, does not reside on the root of the domain, do not include the full path to your site, only include the domain. A complete URL, such as www.case.edu/community, will give you an error message as pictured here. Instead just include www.case.edu or whatever domain you use. (You will modify this later in step 13.)

    Create Profile

  5. Select your location and time zone then click continue
  6. On the Tracking Code page, you will see 2 options. Select New Tracking Code (ga.js). This will give you the tracking code for your site. The code will look something like this:

    <script type="text/javascript">
    var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
    document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
    </script>
    <script type="text/javascript">
    var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-1279047-11");
    pageTracker._initData();
    pageTracker._trackPageview();
    </script>

  7. Add the code to your site

    Instructions for those on the main Case server

    1. Create a new blank file in Dreamweaver or any plain text editor and copy the tracking number into the file. In our example the number is UA-1279047-11 as shown in red.
    2. Save this file as .googleanalytics. In Dreamweaver select "all files" in the "save as type" dropdown box to make sure no extension is added to the filename. If your program saves it as something like .googleanalytics.html or .googleanalytics.txt simply exit the file and rename it without the extension.
    3. Upload this file to the root or main directory level of your site. The server will use this file to embed the code into your pages.

    Instructions for those on other servers

    1. Copy the full code provided by Google and paste it into the bottom of each of your Web pages immediately above </body>. If you are using server side includes (ssi), templates or some other method for including standard content across your site, you can put this in which ever file controls the lowermost content on your pages. I generally put mine in the bottom of the .ssi file I use to include the footer on my pages.
    2. Upload your edited pages to your site.
  8. Click the Finish button. This will take you back to the Analytics Settings page. If you have a site at the top level of your domain and everything was installed correctly you should see "Tracking code installed Waiting for Data" under the status column to the right of your profile listing. Your installation is now complete and you can return in 24 hours to see your data.
  9. If, like accounts on the main Case server, your site is hosted in a subdirectory within your domain, you will see "Tracking code not detected" under the status column. This is perfectly normal and will be remedied in the following steps.
  10. Click Edit under the Settings column to the right of your profile listing. This will take you to the profile settings for your site.
  11. Click Edit in the upper right corner of the Main Web site Profile Information box.
  12. Change the name of your profile to one of your choosing.
  13. Replace your domain URL with the complete URL for your site. In our example we're using http://www.case.edu/community/.
  14. Type in the name of your default page. On the main Case servers we use index.html as the default pages within directories. Other servers may use default.html. If you're not sure, check with your server administrator or Web hosting provider.

    Edit Profile

  15. Click Save Changes to return to the Profile Settings page. On this page you can click on "Check Status" to make sure everything is working. It may take a minute or two for Google to process everything after which it should say "Waiting for Data -
    Analytics has been successfully installed and data is being gathered now    ." Your installation is now compete.

Additional reference materials and instructions have also been provided by ITS as part of the new Aurora Project Administration System (APAS) Toolkit (login required).

Tracking .pdf, .mp3 and other downloadable files

As one of our campus Web maintainers recently observed, Google Analytics doesn't track downloadable files such as .pdf's by default. Google offers a way to do this by adding a small bit of code to each download link, but this requires you to edit each applicable link and move your tracking code towards the top of the page.

If you would prefer to install this on a site wide basis I recommend using the javascript solution offered by Good Web Practices. With this method you simply download their Google Analytics link tracking JavaScript, save it to a scripts directory on your site, and add <script src="http://www.yoursite.com/scripts/gatag.js" type="text/javascript"></script> immediately before the Google tracking code you installed at the bottom of your pages. Those of you using the Case .googleanalytics file method should add this to the bottom of your pages just above </body>—the same way maintainers not on the main server did to add the tracking code in step 7.

Advanced Techniques in Google Analytics

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Analytics Resources

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Posted by Heidi Cool at 10:02 PM | Comments (5)
Categories: Heidi's Entries , How-to , Recommendations , analytics , marketing

June 08, 2008

Plurk: Social Media Marketing in Action

My Plurkstream
Messages appear in a horizontal stream on Plurk

Something interesting happened last Sunday. Plurk, a new social network, grew it's subscriber base from a handful of beta users to over 2,000 in one day. Since then they've continued to grow exponentially. As a marketer, and one of the 2,000+, I think it's been a fascinating process to watch. In this one week we've seen some very effective marketing strategies in action. Back in March I shared my reflections on social media networking and marketing, but that was more a tale of slow growth. Plurk's rapid growth gives us a chance to look at some of the techniques they used and see how effective they can be.

Social media marketing, like other forms of viral marketing, depends on getting your customer base to help market your product or service by spreading the word among their friends. But, as with any type of marketing campaign, it helps to have a good product and a keen understanding of your target market. Plurk has both (you can learn more about the service in the Plurk resources list at the end of this entry).

Attract the attention of the media & influential users in your target audience.

Plurk did both by attracting the attention of Leo Laporte, who is both a popular technology journalist and a very active social media user—as is of this writing Leo is the most followed person on Twitter with over 41,418 followers. Last Sunday, Leo sent Plurk invitations out to his friends and followers on Twitter and Pownce and spread the word through his various media enterprises such as TWiT.TV.

When I saw the invitation last Sunday I paused briefly and asked myself, "Do I really need to go experiment with yet another social media service?" The fact that it came from Leo Laporte—rather than someone with less credibility—influenced my decision. New services pop up all the time, but if Leo had singled it out, it was probably worth exploring. So I clicked the link and there I was on Plurk.

Make it easy and compelling for new users to invite more new users.

Social networks are only interesting if you know other people, hence the term: social. After spending a few minutes exploring the service it was time to acquire more friends. In this world the best way to do that is to recruit the friends you have on other social media sites. These early adopters are more likely to play with the new toys than are your friends from the real world.

Plurk made this very easy. In addition to providing the usual "invite the friends from your e-mail address book" interface, they also provide an invitation link that you can post on your blog or other social networks. I posted mine on Pownce and FriendFeed and people started joining up. Others on Pownce and Twitter did so too. Within hours Plurk was switching servers to handle the load. (If you would like to join in the fun, here is your invitation to join us on Plurk.)

Keep them coming back for more.

Social media users aren't so much fickle as they are demanding. With so many services available, and only limited time to use them, most users stick with the 1-3 services that help them with their own goals and productivity. If a service like Plurk offers more useful features it may draw some of the crowd away from others that are lacking such features or that experience a lot of downtime.

For users to understand these features you have to get them involved fast and early—and keep them coming back for more. In doing so you will create a usage habit.

Plurk mascots
After reaching 25 Karma points I was able
to upgrade from the "rabid dog" to the
"mutant fish."

The Plurk team understood this from the start. They've included a feature called Karma that induces people to Plurk actively—and often—to accumulate Karma points. By inviting more friends and posting messages users can reach certain Karma levels that give them additional features such as the ability to pick from more choices of Plurk mascot creatures (curious critters that sit on your home stream) or additional emoticons one can include in posts.

While these features aren't necessary to the Plurk experience, they do make it more fun. The goal of accumulating Karma also taps into the competitive streak of social media users—many of whom actively try to get their stories on the front page of Digg, acquire the most followers on Twitter, and so forth. Already I've seen numerous posts from users comparing Karma points.

Conclusions

In the right market, social media marketing—in combination with a useful product, site or service—can be very effective. While I don't know how many users are on Plurk as of today, Alexa rankings show that their page rank has gone up by 619,776 in the past three months, while the percentage of global Internet users on the service increased by 2,490%.

Will this growth continue? Who knows? Perhaps in three months time we'll all be using some other cool service with a funny name, but for now Plurk's marketing efforts seem right on track.

Plurk Resources
Social Media & Marketing Resources
June 10th update

As of this evening, according to Plurk Top Users there are 7,651 Plurkers. Thus the group has almost quadrupled since Sunday.

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Posted by Heidi Cool at 05:27 PM | Comments (22)
Categories: Heidi's Entries , Social Networking , Web 2.0 , marketing , social media

June 06, 2008

CaseLearns: 2008 Summer Semester Classes

Kelvin Smith Library
Classes take place in Kelvin Smith Library

Registration is now open for summer classes at CaseLearns. Whether you're building your first Web site, adding video to your blog or just want to learn something fun, CaseLearns has a number of options available.

The classes listed below may be of particular interest to those developing or maintaining Web sites.

If you are new to Web design and want to learn Dreamweaver, I recommend reading I'm not going to teach you XHTML/HTML, but you should learn it anyway and doing the homework assignment before taking your first Dreamweaver class.

All CaseLearns classes are open to current Case faculty, students and staff, emeriti faculty, alumni, and Senior Scholars. Case affiliates may register if openings are available. Class schedules are subject to change. Please visit the CaseLearns Web site for the most current information.

Adobe Acrobat 8: Introduction
Instructor: Debbie Korodi
Prerequisites: Familiarity with Windows or Mac OS; knowledge of Microsoft Word.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008 9:00am-Noon
Adobe Acrobat 8: Creating PDF Forms
Instructor: Debbie Korodi
Prerequisite: Knowledge of Adobe Acrobat 8.
Thursday, August 7, 2008 9:00am-Noon
Digital Images I: Introduction & Basic Photoshop
Instructor: Jared Bendis
Wednesday, July 9, 2008 3:00-6:00pm
Digital Images II: Advanced Photoshop
Instructor: Jared Bendis
Prerequisite: Digital Images I: Introduction & Basic Photoshop
Wednesday, July 16, 2008 3:00-6:00pm
Digital Images III: Even More Advanced Photoshop
Instructor: Jared Bendis
Prerequisite: Digital Images I and Digital Images II
Monday, July 21, 2008 3:00-6:00pm
Dreamweaver CS3: Introduction
Instructor: Thomas Hayes
Tuesday, July 15, 2008 1:00-4:00pm
Dreamweaver CS3: Intermediate
Instructor: Thomas Hayes
Thursday, July 24, 2008 1:00-4:00pm
Dreamweaver CS3: Advanced
Instructor: Thomas Hayes
Tuesday, July 29, 2008 1:00-4:00pm
How To Make Web Pages Using HTML: Part 1
Instructor: Thomas Hayes
Tuesday, August 12, 2008 1:00-5:00pm
How To Make Web Pages Using HTML: Part 2
Thursday, August 14, 2008 1:00-5:00pm
Introduction to Pachyderm
Instructor: Jared Bendis
Wednesday, July 30, 2008 3:00-6:00pm
Understanding RSS Feeds
Instructor: Brian Gray
Thursday, July 17, 2008 10:00am-Noon
Video Workshop I: Introduction To Digital Video
Instructor: Jared Bendis
Thursday, July 10, 2008 3:00-6:00pm
Video Workshop II: Advanced Digital Video
Instructor: Jared Bendis
Prerequisite: Introduction to Digital Video
Thursday, July 17, 2008 3:00-6:00pm

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Posted by Heidi Cool at 04:35 PM | Comments (1)
Categories: Announcements , HTML , How-to , Recommendations

May 28, 2008

Meme: How has blogging impacted your work?

chained to computer
I never feel chained to the computer
when blogging.

While driving home tonight I began pondering this week's blog entry. As I considered various topics, my mind wandered back to the events of the day—events that included more than the usual number of e-mail and phone calls, many of which included some mention of the blog. Sitting in traffic I started thinking about how this blog has impacted the work I do here at Case Western Reserve. This in turn made me wonder how blogging impacts others.

To find out I'm starting this meme. Here are the rules:

If you blog professionally, or even semi-professionally (this would include students blogging on their field of study) and you think participating in this meme would work with your editorial agenda, please do the following:

  1. Write a blog post describing how blogging has impacted your work. (If you have any data on how it has affected your audience and how it reflects on your organization feel free to include that as well.)
  2. Post the link to your entry in the comments area below. (If the spam filter gives you a hard time, just paste it in as plain text or email it to me, and I'll make a list of these links at the bottom of this entry.)
  3. Tag 3 or more bloggers you think should also participate.
  4. Link back to this blog, so we can get more participation and keep track of who is posting entries.

And now to get things started, here's are my thoughts on the topic.

3 ways blogging has impacted my work
Blogging as customer service

When I started this blog, my intention was to use it as customer service tool that would provide how-to resources to the the various Web developers here at the university. As the content has accumulated this has worked out rather well. Regular readers know they can peruse the blog in search of answers to many frequently asked questions, and if something isn't here they can pose it to me as an entry for the future. This saves me time and makes it easy for clients to find the information they need.

It's a great place to post announcements and instructions for procedural changes, such as those we've recently experienced with the new server, and it's a place I can send callers when they need a tutorial on how to crop images, upload files, etc.

Most importantly though the blog can educate clients so that we can work together more effectively. Today, for example, I received a call from a woman who wants to update her department's site. The site is a bit old and she wants to be able to manage it herself so that she can add materials easily and focus the content on the needs of her own clients.

When she called me this afternoon she had already perused the blog. She'd read through a lot of the material and already had a good sense of how she wanted to take the site to the next level. In our short conversation we came up with some next steps for her to take and planned to meet in a few weeks after she has followed them. Although Web development is not her field, she'll be sufficiently versed in the subject so that when we meet we'll be able to work together to construct a productive plan.

The Case Blogging system provides tools and features unavailable in a static Web site.

I often hear from clients who want to include a feature in their site that would normally involve a database and some sort of complex programming that we don't provide on our server. As we examine the actual goal it is not uncommon to conclude, "I bet we could do that with a blog." Not only does the blog provide the tagging, archiving or whatever else they need, but it also makes it easier for their staff—usually unfamiliar with HTML—to enter their own content.

RSS lets the world know when new content is ready. While visitors can't easily tell when, or if, I've had added new material to our Web development site, those who subscribe to the blog know exactly when this happens. I can also use the RSS feeds to provide fresh content to other sites. For example, I pull in the headlines from the Web development blog on the Web Toolkit as well as on our Web Development page on Facebook.

Although this is the only work blog I write myself, I work with a number of sites that use the Case blogging system. At the end of 2005 I moved the Case News Center to the blog server. Where in the past we'd have to create a new page and update various index pages or menus, now we just add an entry. We still post them in HTML, but using the blog has been a great time-saver. It also offers convenience to readers. Whether they're members of the media, or alumni trying to stay in touch, they can subscribe via e-mail or RSS feed.

To teach—via blog or otherwise—is to learn

Case professor and blogger, Mano Singham, has said that the act of blogging helps him to formulate his thoughts and fine tune ideas that he may use in future projects. I find it also helps me to learn. In a field such as Web development I need to keep up-to-date on technology, social media, marketing, etc.—whether by attending conferences or teaching myself.

In this spirit I read any number of blogs and online resources, but I find I learn the most when I'm trying to explain something to you, my readers. Although I usually have a good sense of my topic when I'm writing, the desire to be thorough and accurate also requires me to do further research—to understand the topic in greater detail and to see if there have been new developments in the field.

Once these thoughts have assembled in my head, it is the act of translating them—into something that will make sense to you that—really brings it all together. If I can explain a topic clearly to others then I know that I've mastered it too.

Back in college, one of my professors used to say that the reason he could keep teaching the same subjects year after year was that he expected to learn as much from us as we would from him. I think blogging is similar. I learn from the process of writing as well as from the insightful ideas you all share in the comments. There is something very satisfying about the whole process.

Tag: you're it!

To get things started, I think the following bloggers could add some interesting insights to this topic. (It's more than 3, some of whom are super busy, but I thought I'd dream big.)

How has blogging impacted your work: meme participants

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Posted by Heidi Cool at 09:11 PM | Comments (17)
Categories: Blogging , Heidi's Entries , RSS , meme

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