Site Architecture: knoxmercury.com

David DoyleINSC 597

Spring 2015

Group Information

Q: Who has two thumbs and had about a week and a half to bring this site to production?

A: This guy.

Organization:Knoxville Mercury

• Local altweekly newspaper formed after Knoxille’s Metro Pulse was shut down without warning by its parent company, KNS Media Group, 10/15/2014

• Editorial staff composed of core Metro Pulse editorial team members; many writers from Metro Pulse joined Knoxville Mercury as well

• Local, regional, and national award-winning writers and designers

Purpose and Goals: knoxmercury.com

• Deliver Knoxville Mercury content in digital form• Short-form (~700 words) and long-form

(2000+ words) journalistic articles• Multimedia content: image galleries,

streaming A/V content, podcasts• Deliver content on platforms that readers

want: Desktop, mobile, tablet

Target Audience

• Young, urban, liberal*, local

* At least, liberal in the mid-sized Southern American city context. Your mileage may vary.

Client Needs & Design Goals

• “As natural an extension of the print edition as possible”• Design must match stylistic cues from print edition

• Robust, simple CMS, equipped to handle text and multimedia content• User-friendly• Scalable to large amounts of content over years of service

• Responsive Web design• One site, one URL, automatically scaling to browser

window size and adapting on the fly via CMS and CSS wizardry

Data Collection

• Institutional knowledge• Metro Pulse editorial staff (now Knoxville

Mercury editorial staff) have decades of experience running a profitable(!) altweekly in the Knoxville area

• Professional/academic resources• Altweekly community• UTK JEM school community

User Groups

• Readers• Read-only access (user comments

notwithstanding)

• Editors• Write access: Article creation

• Designer (that’d be me)• Full access: build, read, write, edit, add users,

add categories, create, destroy

Content Inventory

• Static pages: basic informational pages with little to no dynamic content• Home, About, Contact, Advertise, Donate

• Dynamic pages: categories, subcategories, articles, built against database content, organized by PHP templates• Category: main top-level categories (e.g. News,

Features, Arts & Entertainment, etc.)• Subcategory: second level categories that group

articles together (e.g. columnists, performing arts, restaurant guides)

• Article: single story

Site Blueprint

SitemapHomeAbout UsContact UsAdvertiseDonate News

Feature StoriesWords With…

ColumnistsPatrice ColeGeorge DoddsDonna JohnsonJack NeelyStephanie PiperJoe SullivanEleanor ScottKim TrevathanChris WohlwendEditor’s Notes

Arts & EntertainmentArtClassical MusicMovie ReviewsMusic ReviewsMusic StoriesPerforming ArtsProgram NotesShelf LifeInside the Vault

FoodHome PalateQuick GuidesRestaurant NewsDirt to ForkSips and Shots

CalendarSubmit an Event

Databases

• Article database: stores article data and relevant metadata

• Event database: stores event listing data and relevant metadata

Server/Environment Requirements

• Web hosting• Offsite, managed hosting• Dedicated technology staff would be cost-prohibitive

• Content Management System• WordPress: open source, easy to use, highly

customizable and extensible, handles multimedia content well, high adoption rate in small- to mid-sized media environments

• Database/PHP compatibility: Web host must play well with WordPress’ MySQL/PHP requirements

• Web storage: Lots. High priority

Content Map

Wireframe Excerpt: Home

Wireframe Excerpt:Single Article

Wireframe Excerpt:Submit an Event

Task-Oriented Blueprint: Submit an Event

Constructive Process

• Site programmer (again, me)• Install CMS, build user accounts, harden site• Build static pages, create framework and hierarchy for categories and

subcategories, create menus• Build homepage, set “selected stories” fields to populate from correct categories• Integrate Events Calendar software into site• Train users

• Site Writers• Static page content• Pre-launch article content (“Vol. 1, Issue 1” content)• Post-launch article content• Events Calendar content

• Graphic Designer• Text design: fonts, font sizes, font weights, line spacing, capitalization use• Visual design: Color palettes• Logo and art design: All original line art and logo design• Image design: Design and optimization for Web of images from photographers

Site Build Schedule Targets

• Test environment ready for testing: 2 days

• Static pages ready on test environment: 4 days

• Events Calendar integration testing: 1 week

• Test environment graphic design elements in place: 1.5 weeks

• Article content ready for testing: 2 weeks

• Testing with article content in place complete: 2.5 weeks

• Post-test changes and bugfixes: 3 weeks

• Final rounds of testing, tweaking, bugfixes: 3.5 weeks

• SITE LIVE IN PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT: 4 weeks• NOTE: These are “perfect world” estimates – actual start-to-finish

on v1.0 of site was ~2 weeks