Here are some websites and resources that may be useful for a redesign of UTC.edu.

Higher Education sites

College of Southern Nevada

Case Study:
Acquia | College of Southern Nevada | Acquia Engage Award 2016 Finalist

• 68 percent increase in page views
• 60 percent decrease in bounce rate
• 90 percent increase in mobile visitors

Austin Peay State University

This is a newer design that is built on OU Campus CMS.

• Very clean design, mobile first.
• Prominent but not obtrusive Apply/Visit/Give sub-menu on home page.
• Great organization to introduce Admissions up front: Explore Austin Peay.
• Student profile cards: diversity of people; could use diversity of disciplines.
• Visual index of major colleges with department landing pages.
• Visual calendar layout for upcoming featured events/dates/deadlines.

UT Knoxville

One of the most innovative and fresh website designs in higher education.

Home page & Vol Stories built with Expression Engine CMS; interior pages with WordPress CMS, and other portions such as maps are custom-built.

• Fresh and simple, very fast page load; only 1 large image.
• Featured Vol Story changes frequently.
• Menu is main part of the page. Most frequently used links are grouped with logo at very top left.
• Separate landing page for news.

South Dakota State University

Mobile-first, recruitment-first. Close to our color palette. Drupal 8.

Florida International University

Very close to UTC color palette. Creative use of photography and marketing in the image carousel. Proper use of HTML titles vs. text-on-image. Intersting, simple calendar “teaser”.

Chicago Booth Review

Drupal 8 CMS.

Excellent news magazine style. Featured/Cover article, popular articles, latest articles, video.

Corporate sites

The Guardian

Ultra-responsive and fast loading news site with excellent use of color.

• large custom serif type, readable on all devices
• multiple versions of headlines, subheads and excerpts for home page, indices, and stories – very readable and scannable

First Tennessee Bank

Features a “task-oriented” home page.“I want to… do X” actions, “I’m looking for… Y” interactives & animated menus.

There are multiple pathways to common tasks:

• prominent top-level menus with icons and action words
• call-to action panels for other common tasks or features
• common pathways have several routes
  • also enables A/B testing to see which method or path is most effective

National Trust for Historic Preservation

Beautiful site with video backgrounds, clean-yet-interesting design with some slanted lines to add interest.

• Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG images) for headlines.
• Extensive and beautiful photography.
• Simple interactivity on wide hover in the CTAs, blog article cards, etc.

United States Postal Service

Action-oriented interface: Track Package, Create Label, Buy Stamps, Order Boxes.

• Intersting use of slanted elements that match the logo geometry.
• Basic white background lets the corporate colors stand out.
• “Blades” Section in the middle of the page gives a more visual & interactive option for CTAs.

Chevrolet

Chevy.com, like many auto sites, has rich mega-menu content.

• Clean white palette, which gives photography and brand-color highlights a chance to stand out.
• Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) icons and display text are accessible and look great on all devices.

Sucuri

Long-scroll page, heavy use of icons.

• Strong use of a very limited color palette.
• CTAs right in the top menu, then repeated throughout page.

Drupal

Simple and clean design with a hero video background.

Mercury Marine

Good visual menus: icon top menus, image-filled megamenus.

• Correct use of slider/carousel with delayed titles and CTAs.

 AirServer

Cute animations & graphics with a consistent style.

Menu: desktop effect on top menu after scroll; pinned/fixed menu on scroll; mobile menu interactive animations.

Creative Sites

Macau Design Biennial

Long-scroll with definite color cues between sections.

• Does not look like a website… looks like print.
• Very creative interactions  invite exploration.

gskinner

Fast loading site with a long-scroll, landing page feel and multiple calls to action. Nice scrolling behavior for the Calls to Action (CTAs).

ustwo

Clean and simple logo + teaser video engages the viewer, shows off products, staff, users, services… makes you want to click or scroll down to learn more.

No menu or layout until click or scroll, then more user interface elements, navigation appear.

HTML5up: Solid State

Super clean responsive landing page designs from a Nashville designer, see others at html5up.net.

Palantir

Drupal agency… design, use of colors, CTAs with interesting layout, interactivity/rollover effects, forms, etc. Very clean and mobile-first design.

Drupal 8 Premium Themes

These provide many more user interface elements than the base Bootstrap Drupal 8 Theme. Inexpensive jump-start for a project; typical price is $40-60.

Resources:

• 12 Elements of an Effective University Website Design
  (Louis Miller, 4/14/16, ecityinteractive.com)
• Take the Time to Use Fewer Words
  tl;dr: If a user experience needs an explanation, something is broken. Redesign until people do not need explanation.
  (Torrey Podmajersky, Microsoft Design)
• U.S. Web Design Standards
  Best practices in user interface and user experience, accessibility, etc.
• Digital Services Playbook
  Tips for project management, design and execution of gov’t digital projects
• Taking Pattern Libraries to the Next Level
  (Vitaly Friedman, smashingmagazine.com)
• Brent Spore – User Experience Designer
  Case studies of high-profile projects for major clients
• Style Guide Boilerplate
  Catalog of the basic HTML user interface items; use to make a style guide page
• Magazine Article Inspired Layouts
  These are nice for featured articles or landing pages; don’t look like web pages.
• Microsoft Inclusive Design
  Opening up digital experiences to everyone, helping everyone interact with the world around them.

The post University Website Redesign: Scrapbook appeared first on Chris Gilligan » new media.

The web team of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga uses PHP and RSS to syndicate blog content, news releases, and calendar events into their main website.

PHP SimpleXML is used to parse the XML of the RSS feeds. We import a variety of feeds, from WordPress, from Master Calendar, and from other sites such as an external athletics CMS. WordPress provides some RSS features, including RSS from categories, tags and search strings, but we have added media attachments and a customized template to output a more complicated RSS feed on the University home page.

• this is a companion blog post for a presentation given at
  OmniUpdate OU Campus User Training Conference 2016
• shortcut to this blog post: utc.edu/outc16
• links below are production examples of the concepts outlined in this post

News releases, events and content from WordPress via RSS

Example web pages:

• OU Campus PHP page with news feed and events feed from WordPress
• OU Campus PHP page with news feed from SideArm Sports

WordPress plugin & PHP to add media attachments to RSS feed

Example RSS feeds (view XML/XSL styled page in FireFox; View Source to see XML structure, namespaces, node names and structure):

• normal WordPress RSS feed
• customized WordPress feed with additional namespace and media attachments
  • headlines-customfeed.php (custom feed template)
  • functions.php: load_template (registers and loads the custom feed template)
• RSS feed with inline images (open in Firefox to see XML & XSL)

Custom WordPress RSS feed template, followed by the functions call to load and create it:

<?php
/*
Template Name: Custom Current Headlines Feed

*/

$numposts = 10;
$category_id = get_cat_ID('Current Headlines');

function custom_rss_date( $timestamp = null ) {
  $timestamp = ($timestamp==null) ? time() : $timestamp;
  echo date(DATE_RSS, $timestamp);
}

function custom_rss_text_limit($string, $length, $replacer = '&hellip;') { 
  $string = strip_tags($string);
  if(strlen($string) > $length) 
    return (preg_match('/^(.*)\W.*$/', substr($string, 0, $length+1), $matches) ? $matches[1] : substr($string, 0, $length)) . $replacer;   
  return $string; 
}

$posts = query_posts('cat='.$category_id.'&showposts='.$numposts);

$lastpost = $numposts - 1;



header('Content-Type: ' . feed_content_type('rss-http') . '; charset=' . get_option('blog_charset'), true);
$more = 1;

echo '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="'.get_option('blog_charset').'"?'.'>'; ?>

<rss version="2.0"
	xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
	xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
	xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
	xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
	xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
	xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/"
	<?php do_action('rss2_ns'); ?>
>

<channel>
	<title><?php bloginfo_rss('name'); wp_title_rss(); ?></title>
	<atom:link href="<?php self_link(); ?>" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link><?php bloginfo_rss('url') ?></link>
	<description><?php bloginfo_rss("description") ?></description>
	<lastBuildDate><?php echo mysql2date('D, d M Y H:i:s +0000', get_lastpostmodified('GMT'), false); ?></lastBuildDate>
	<language><?php bloginfo_rss( 'language' ); ?></language>
	<sy:updatePeriod><?php echo apply_filters( 'rss_update_period', 'hourly' ); ?></sy:updatePeriod>
	<sy:updateFrequency><?php echo apply_filters( 'rss_update_frequency', '1' ); ?></sy:updateFrequency>
	<?php do_action('rss2_head'); ?>
	<?php while( have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
	<item>
		<title><?php the_title_rss() ?></title>
		<link><?php the_permalink_rss() ?></link>
		<comments><?php comments_link_feed(); ?></comments>
		<pubDate><?php echo mysql2date('D, d M Y H:i:s +0000', get_post_time('Y-m-d H:i:s', true), false); ?></pubDate>
		<dc:creator><?php the_author() ?></dc:creator>
<?php the_category_rss('rss2') ?>
		<guid isPermaLink="false"><?php the_guid(); ?></guid>
<?php if (get_option('rss_use_excerpt')) : ?>
		<description><![CDATA[<?php get_the_excerpt(); ?>]]></description>
<?php else : ?>
		<description><?php echo '<![CDATA['.custom_rss_text_limit($post->post_content, 256).']]>';  ?></description>
<?php $content = get_the_content_feed('rss2'); ?>
	<?php if ( strlen( $content ) > 0 ) : ?>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<?php echo $content; ?>]]></content:encoded>
	<?php else : ?>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<?php the_excerpt(); ?>]]></content:encoded>
	<?php endif; ?>
<?php endif; ?>
		<wfw:commentRss><?php echo esc_url( get_post_comments_feed_link(null, 'rss2') ); ?></wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments><?php echo get_comments_number(); ?></slash:comments>
<?php rss_enclosure(); ?>
<?php do_action('rss2_item'); ?>
		</item>
	<?php endwhile; ?>
</channel>
</rss>

/* Custom RSS Feed for Home Page headlines */

function create_my_customfeed() {
load_template( get_stylesheet_directory() . '/headlines-customfeed.php');
}
add_action('do_feed_headlines', 'create_my_customfeed', 10, 1);

OU Campus PHP helper file and code asset

To parse an existing external RSS feed, such as a standard or custom WordPress feed, we use a helper file that employs PHP’s simplexml_load_string to load the targeted RSS feed, traverse the XML document, select node content, then echo out a block of styled html for each set of targeted XML nodes. The helper file accepts the $feed variable to specify the location of the targeted feed, and the $maxitems variable to specify the number of items to select from the top of the that feed.

On its own, the PHP helper file can be hit in a browser, to verify the targeted feed type exists and is parsed correctly. The browser will return an un-styled html page from the helper file URL.

The OU Campus Code Asset includes the helper file, over-rides the helper’s default variables, is and is very simple to copy and modify, according to the intended target feed and desired number of items to be presented on the final page. Many different Assets can include a single helper file.

(Vinit from OmniUpdate outlined a much better way to handle the feed URL and number of items in his Server Side Scripting class: via PCF Page Parameters.)

PHP file

• parses feed and displays HTML
  • variables set to defaults for testing
    • may need to verify feed access and XML structure
• various types of display html
  • title, excerpt, thumbnail from WordPress
  • title only from WordPress
  • RSS feed with formatting or namespaces different from WordPress

<?php

$input = $_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'];
parse_str($input);

if (!isset($feed))//script or page property will choose which feed to display
	$feed = "http://blog.utc.edu/news/headlines.xml/";

if(!isset($maxitems))
	$maxitems = 3;

$file = file_get_contents($feed);
$file = str_ireplace('src="http://', 'src="//', $file);
$file = str_ireplace('media:content url="http://', 'media:content url="//', $file);
$file = str_ireplace('media:thumbnail url="http://', 'media:thumbnail url="//', $file);

$sxml = simplexml_load_string($file);

$i = 0;
	foreach ($sxml->channel->item as $item) {
		if (++$i > $maxitems) {
				break;
			}
		$namespaces      = $item->getNameSpaces( true );
		$content         = isset($namespaces['content']) ? $item->children( $namespaces['content'] ) : '';
		$content_encoded = isset($content->encoded)      ? $content->encoded                         : '';
		$media           = isset($namespaces['media'])   ? $item->children( $namespaces['media'] )   : '';
		$html       = "<div class=\"row-fluid\">"
					.     "<h3><a href=\"{$item->link}\">{$item->title}</a></h3>"
					.     "{$content_encoded}"
					.  "</div>";
	echo($html);
}
?>
<script>
	$(document).ready(function(){
		$('.sidebar img').removeClass().addClass('thumbnail pull-right span5');
		$('aside.well img').removeClass().addClass('thumbnail pull-right span5');
	});
</script>

OU Campus Assets

• simple structure
  • specify RSS source
  • number of posts to display

<?php
$feed = "//blog.utc.edu/hr/category/benefits/feed/";
include($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']. '/_resources/php/get-headlines-sidebar.php');
$maxitems = 5;
?>

(Vinit from OmniUpdate outlined a much better way to handle the feed URL and number of items in his Server Side Scripting class: via PCF Page Parameters.)

More Speed

After you verify the final production page, you should set up cron jobs for any external feeds that are created via database calls on the external servers. A WordPress feed will require a bit of PHP and MySQL work to generate the RSS feed. This requires some processing, and will introduce a delay in service of the OU Campus PHP page. To avoid this latency, we create cron jobs on the production server to periodically fetch the feeds and cache them locally on the production server. The speed increase for the final page product is noticeable.

If your OU Campus Sites include development, test, training, or mobile Sites, you will want to duplicate the local static feeds on all of the OU Sites.

If you control an external WordPress site, you can employ caching mechanisms or plugins to more efficiently serve RSS feeds.

• cache RSS feeds via WordPress plugin, e.g. W3  Total Cache
• cron job to fetch feeds to local production servers
• minimize external requests for faster page load

This cron job can be placed in /etc/cron.hourly to fetch WordPress feeds, check lastBuildDate, and compare that to the existing build date, and create a cached RSS xml file.

#!/bin/bash

# Preload WordPress Feeds for Website

# UTC News
wget http://blog.utc.edu/news/headlines.xml/ -O /data/web/prod/www/_resources/rss/wp-news.tmp >/dev/null 2>&1
TMP_LASTBUILD="$(xml_grep '/rss/channel/lastBuildDate' --text_only /data/web/prod/www/_resources/rss/wp-news.tmp)"
XML_LASTBUILD="$(xml_grep '/rss/channel/lastBuildDate' --text_only /data/web/prod/www/_resources/rss/wp-news.xml)"
MIMETYPE=`file -b --mime-type /data/web/prod/www/_resources/rss/wp-news.tmp`
if [ "$MIMETYPE" == "application/xml" -a  "$TMP_LASTBUILD" != "$XML_LASTBUILD" ] ; then
    mv /data/web/prod/www/_resources/rss/wp-news.tmp /data/web/prod/www/_resources/rss/wp-news.xml
fi

# Duplicate for development, test & training environments
cp -p /data/web/prod/www/_resources/rss/wp*.xml /data/web/test/www/_resources/rss/
cp -p /data/web/prod/www/_resources/rss/wp*.xml /data/web/test/train/_resources/rss/
cp -p /data/web/prod/www/_resources/rss/wp*.xml /data/web/dev/www/_resources/rss/

For other RSS sources, the structure may be different; maybe we can’t do a lastBuildDate check. And… some servers may not respond to a default wget request from a shell script. No problem: just specify --header and --user-agent, don’t do the lastBuildDate check, and just write the RSS XML file.

#!/bin/bash

# Preload GoMocs Feeds for Website


# Gomocs.com News
wget  --header="Accept: text/html" --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.8; rv:21.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/21.0" http://www.gomocs.com/rss.aspx -O /data/web/prod/www/_resources/gomocs-news.xml

# Duplicate for development, test & training environments
cp -p /data/web/prod/www/_resources/rss/gomocs*.xml /data/web/test/www/_resources/rss/
cp -p /data/web/prod/www/_resources/rss/gomocs*.xml /data/web/test/train/_resources/rss/
cp -p /data/web/prod/www/_resources/rss/gomocs*.xml /data/web/dev/www/_resources/rss/

Event Calendar RSS feeds from Master Calendar via RSS

Example pages that include feeds from Master Calendar. MC has a very rudimentary RSS output of title, date/time and description. MC caches its RSS feeds by default, and expects a lot of traffic to the feed locations, so it is not so necessary to create cron jobs to fetch them. However, if you have an OU Campus page that fetches and displays a large number of MC feeds, you will see a performance increase by using cron jobs. UTC.edu’s home page fetches a number of feeds, and we saw a noticeably faster page load after moving these calls to cron jobs.

• home page tabbed calendar
• simple sidebar calendar

Social Media Streams

UTC uses a jQuery plugin and PHP to pull in social media posts for the university account, as well as for individual departments and colleges. This is an easy way to create a social stream sidebar or social wall page.

• jQuery Social Stream
• program site with Twitter feed
• home page with multiple feeds in a sidebar stream
• social wall page with YouTube videos

Facebook, Twitter and Instagram require PHP  API script for connection to signed apps. jquery.imagesloaded is helpful for the wall display

Code Samples

(A compilation zip including all code mentioned in the presentation is available. Comment and subscribe to this post to be notified of updates.)

• WordPress plugin to add media attachments to RSS feed
• WordPress functions.php changes
• PHP files to parse feeds and display HTML
• OU Campus Assets to specify RSS source and set number of posts
• cron job to fetch RSS feeds to local server

The post Integrating Content from External Sources into OU Campus Using RSS, PHP, and JavaScript appeared first on Chris Gilligan » new media.

This was a team project for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, my alma mater and current employer. I was hired by UTC as web development specialist in late 2012, and worked with a cross-discipline team on the redesign, information architecture, 10,000 page migration to CMS and user training for over 300 web editors.

The design was built on Bootstrap, a versatile framework that includes a flexible, responsive grid system, icon font, and LESS/CSS styling for nearly any imaginable UI element. The site looks great on desktop, tablet and mobile phone; images are resized according to users’ maximum screen width by Adaptive Images.

We worked with OmniUpdate to port the functional HTML templates to the OU Campus Content Management System.

A companion WordPress theme was created to retrofit the UTC Blogs MultiSite. Enhanced WordPress RSS feeds in the media namespace populate news feeds on the home page.

Deets for Devs

The post University Website and Blog Redesign appeared first on Chris Gilligan » new media.