#cascadeserver @hannon_hill
TheCollege.syr.edu launched in February 2010, first time a CMS had been used to manage online contentPurpose: repository for academic information(the “business” side of TheCollege).
ASNews.syr.edulaunched in September 2010, a sister sitePurpose: showcase activities, research, student and alumni accolades, news and events unique to Arts and Sciences.
Based on Press Releases (“Stories”) Primary Categories aligned to the
academics of TheCollege:◦Sciences
◦Humanities
◦People Classify each Story as “News” or “Event” Current Stories and searchable Archive
#cascadeserver @hannon_hill
Press Releases created by two staff writers SU Calendar (VT Calendar application)
provides xml feed of daily events Social Media postings Video (YouTube Channel and Ensemble
streaming server) Custom Slideshow Stories Outside News “snippets” as links
Content will always have some updated material (daily)
Story selection and rotation determined by the editorial staff (of two)
Any moderation or approval of content done offline (no workflows required)
Auto-Publish nightly with optional on-demand as needed
# Story pages
2010 (95)2011 (142)2012 (174)2013 (110)Over 500 total to date…(adding 6-7 stories weekly during academic year)
In addition to TheCollege and ASNews sites, my technical staff manages: 18 department, 3 intranet, 5 cultural, 40 research sites and the online faculty directory, for a total 3500 pages. (All in Cascade)
LOW MAINTENANCE PREDICTABLE EFFORT INVOLVED CREATE ONCE, USE MANY Get a lot of mileage out of a “Story” Editorial components can be used in
multiple places in ASNews and in our other web sites
Present the content in such a way to look like more (especially in periods of low academic activity)
Home Page
CURRENTStory Pages
Story PagesArchives
2013201220112010
“CURRENT”List Pages
Center column is the editable region
Left Sidebar:navigation plus up to three additional blocks
Right Column contains the calendar feed
default regionStory Page
This area contains the content we repurpose to other pages
Metadata assigns the Category affiliation(s) and the designation as News or Event item
Based on the checked affiliations, this page will be included on both the
People and the Science-Math listing pages
Event or News designation is a preference of our editors
We decided not to include the photo as a thumbnail –but could have.
Story Page in relation to List Pages
Story Page Resides in the Newsevents_2013 folder
A reference to it is placed in the appropriate “Current” folder (Events or News)
Story shows up on the List or
Lists checked in the
metadataand shows up in ALL-Current
WHY?
Our Writers understood references
They could see references and move them around in the folders
They could delete a reference and not panic
They could recreate a reference if wanted to rerun a story
They stopped deleting the list pages by accident
The story pages stayed in their original folder and the links always stay the sameThey stopped calling and emailing me!
Home Page:Stories in rotation (3+)
4 more feature stories
Only a small amount of custom information accompanies the Story Page link in a Rotating Story
Only a Rotating Story requires a different size picture (4 smaller features can use same size picture as the Story Page)
In The News Left Sidebar: external recognition of our stories lends authority(and helps our search ranking!)
Home Page - Home Page - Reuse other people’s content…
EventsRight Sidebar:
XML feed from the SU News calendar
Filtering is applied at either the inbound feed link or in the XSLT
This feed will pick up Events that don’t have a Story Page
Events drop off after they occur (at the calendar level) and combined with daily publish is always current
Various ways to sort items from the feed, including
By Category(Humanities, Sciences, People)
By department(English, Physics)
By number to display and placement
Combination of feed filters and XSLT filtering
Twitter feed tends to reinforce what is already in the Stories or Calendar (so we added it)
Facebook feed is a potential addition but is less legible and more repetitive
YouTube channel is linked in the Multimedia sidebar…and…
We havea modifiedStory Page for video embeds…
That draws from an Arts and SciencesYouTube Channel with a subgroup of playlists
We have tested Hannon Hill’s video embed tools in the WYS
For accessibility compliance, we only use videos which are captioned
The “Ticker Line” features academic links
Because (virtually) all our sites are in Cascade, we have the ability to cross reference content easily
Cascade’s Page Chooser has recently become one of my favorite tools to replicate content to other areas.
Same basic functionality as Category Lists with different ordering
and an upper right navigation created by an index block that counts the List pages within annual archives
List Pages in archives are restricted to a numerical range of pages so the list does not become too long.
The Story Page link does not “expire” when it’s referenced by outside media or our own web sites. We can add a link on a faculty member’s personal page to the Story Page that featured them-and it will always work.
Stories in archives update any changes in sidebar or header/footer as well (2010 stories get new feeds, links to social media) and are republished nightly as well.
So much of the ASNews site is text it’s highly searchable
Story Page Master Elements added at the Template or Configuration Set Level(they all share the same side elements)
Story Page has sub-versions: video, slideshow, notesField) all of which do not have a right sidebar
Home Page is unique, has its own Template
Category List Pages (current) share a Configuration set but have Left side elements added at the Page level. Archives are basically the same with an added block and format for the page count-and nothing is customized at the page level.
I looked at what sidebars needed to drop into every page in a section and planned around that.
Content draws directly from the story page and does not require rewriting
Changes made in the links to convert from browse path to url
Publish to a folder on the file server instead of the web server
Weekly mailing and event-specific
Our Physics department has been using a Cascade email format for weekly notifications to faculty, staff and students
From August 25-September 14, 2013 ASNews had 1,800 unique visitors (3 weeks)
A typical month during the academic year is 3,000 unique visitors
We see outside promotion driving viewers to ASNews (we want that!)
George Saunders Video on YouTube posted Friday night at 5pm. This followed the announcement his book just made the NY Times bestseller list. Link added to ASNews
By Monday morning, thousands of views of the video and the Story Pages featuring Saunders were getting lots of hits
To date, Saunders video has over 40,000 views.
ContentDesign
Reuse ContentStrategically
TechnicalDesign
Consistent User Interface
CascadeTOOLS
For reference
Index Block Listing Current
Index Block Listing Current
XSLT Listing Current (Science-Math)
Page Chooser DTD
Page Chooser XSLT