Testing a New Portal for blogs.setonhill.edu

Update: The tooltips are working as well as they were before. It looks like the system is choking on entries that bloggers have composed in a word processor and then copied-and-pasted into the MovableType blog entry.

Since word processors do things like add curly quotes and other special characters, that's causing some minor JavaScript errors.

I'm still trying to determine whether MovableType or JavaScript is where I should be looking for the answer.

Hmm... looks like in my latest design I've broken the tooltip boxes.

Thanks, Karissa. I'll build on your design during your hiatus.

Well, I'm going to be on a slight hiatus till after Sunday with family things, especially driving my father around to all his church services...

However, what I've done so far is pretty basic. I plan to incorporate a few of the suggestions you mentioned in the email, Dr. Jerz, to help the design mesh more and become more "user friendly." The columns and colors are my main concern--getting things visible, useful, and attractive looking--though cutting down on the number of comment trackings on the left hand side may reduce some of the "bulk" of text on the page.

Vanessa's recent "nonacademic" blog and now Dr. A's comment reinforces, to me, the idea of having the login closer to the top (I did place it on the left at the top, if I recall, in "my" template). Additionally, a few images would be a welcome change if, as Dr. A said, it won't kill the page's load time.

A blog directory wouldn't be a terrible idea. I just don't know how one would integrate that, or how one goes about maintaining that sort of list. Seems complex. And I agree that the search page needs assistance--the random style it chooses for display is really chameleon-like, and I haven't been able to pin down how in the world it chooses what style of whose blog it uses! Odd.

Anyway, I'm happy to keep working on some things. Suggestions thrown my way are welcome. It needs work still, but it's a beautiful work in progress and I'm happy to see it coming along.

Thanks for the feedback.

I agree the page has too much text.

If I could figure out a way to integrate my own blog entries in with everybody else's I'd just do that, but my blog is on a different system. But I can imagine a box, above the fold, that has a photo and a profile of a featured blogger. (That would alleviate the text-heavy design problem.)

What about "Who's Blogged Recently at blogs.seton.hill.edu"? I wasn't intending the main page to be comprehensive, but rather a page that showed links to the latest updates. If Eye Contact or The Setonian or Admissions posts something, their name will appear in the blogroll on the right.

I wonder if I can make an automatic, alphabetical directory of all blogs that have been updated in, say, the past 30 days?

I wonder... if folks uploaded into their root blog directory a 100x100 photo called "logo.jpg" I could display that on this page along with the entries. Would that be worth the trouble?

Mike, you're right about removing the extraneous links from the bottom of the portal. I just copied and pasted what was previously on blogs.setonhill.edu, because I didn't know how many people actually used the login boxes there.

I agree that the search engine is a bit puzzling. It returns the first result from each blog, with the blogs -- not the hits -- sorted in alphabetical order. That's because MT wasn't really designed for the kind of community portal we've got, so the out-of-the-box settings for the search engine don't make much sense for us.

Maybe when I update to the latest version of MT, there will be some new search options I can check out. What do you think -- should I just replace it with a link that uses Google to do the searching?

There's a reason why I chose "Active Threads." When a visitor has posted a comment, but the blog owner hasn't yet approved the comment, the blog entry shows up on the list of "recently commented on blog entries," but with the version of MT we have there's no way to tell whether the comment has been approved or not. I imagine this will be fixed in the software upgrade that's currently availalbe (but which I haven't had time to implement).

Karissa, would you like to comment on the work you've been doing?

I'm so happy to finally see this coming together. Applause, applause, Dr. Jerz (and anyone out there helping him)!

Random Revision ideas:

+ The login fields at the bottom of the page should be in the upper left corner in my opinion. The field boxes can be made smaller to accomodate. Just like I want to be able to search immediately when I open google, I want to be able to login immediately when I load this portal page.

+We can get rid of (or move to more appropriate places) the links that read "Sitewide: Recent Comments | Recent Entries"

+ Under the "Active Threads" column (not sure that's the most user-friendly title, by the way): I like the smaller font and use of itals. There probably needs to be a space between the excerpt and the source title; it might help to boldface the date or author heading. It isn't clear what makes a thread "active" (are these all just comments from the past week or just the ten most recent comments or...?)

+ I agree with Karissa: too much text...the visual separation between columns needs more contrast

+ I don't get why it says "Who's Blogging at Seton Hill University?" in the banner. Is that going to be a clickable link to a full directory of blogs? (btw, I'd like to have something like that, even though there's a lot of driftwood on the server, I'm sure).

+ I think the list of the latest Jerz blog entries should have a little smiling photo beside it. I'm not joking! More art/photo/images would be great, so long as the bandwidth is small.

+ Maybe go ahead and feature some links? The Setonian, for example. Maybe Eye Contact's blog and Admissions.

+ I tried doing a search to test that engine, and, a) it's slow, b) a login dialogue box popped up for some reason

Thanks, Moira!

I love it! Very rockin'

Karissa, I agree we need some kind of vertical bar, or at least more white space. I don't really like the light gray borders I have around the various sections.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean about the gradient... Would you like to fiddle around with a copy of the template? I've made a copy of the template under the name "Karissa Test" and given you the necessary permissions on the NMJ site.

I would like to keep the New Media Journalism sign visible on this page, since one of the reasons I maintain the site is to increase the visiblity of the NMJ program.

I wanted to move the community portal to this site, so that I can make better use of the fact that the NMJ blog is the top hit for a Google search on "new media journalism". (I want to put links there about citizen journalism and a brief overview of weblog scholarship. But that will be another day.)

Yes, the search will look at all blogs on the site. After it displays the first set of results, it defaults to searching only on the blog where you started from.

First of all, I think this page is a terrific idea and has been something we need for quite awhile now--good to see it's up-and-coming!

But if this is supposed to be simply the portal for "blogs.setonhill.edu" then is it entirely necessary to include "New Media Journalism" in the corner of the title bar? I know it gives balance to the thing, but perhaps "Seton Hill University" should be centered, with the "blogs.setonhill.edu" blurb below it since you do link to the group blogs directly.

I enjoy the page's design. It's a clean look; however, if there was a bit more of a contrast to divide up the content in the three columns (a personal favorite layout of mine!) I think it wouldn't be so much to take in all at once. It -is- a lot of writing to take in all in a small amount of space. I suggest a gradient of gray to break it up, and/or a vertical divider.

I enjoy the hover action on the links--that's something I adore since it shows me what I'm clicking on. And the "Find" at the top of the page is great. Is it still searching all of the blogs under the domain?

Thanks for the comments, folks. Mike, I'll get your graphic up soon. Marcia, thanks for pointing out the typo, and for the typeface suggestion. The only way to make sure "blogs.setonhill.edu" appears in the same typface is to make the title of the page a picture, rather than words. If it's a picture than it won't be searchable by Google. I'm OK with including 2 pictures on the page, but I'd like to leave the main page as plain text. But nothing's set in stone.

This is beautiful, Dennis. Is the font you used the standard font for the group blog's logo? If not, then how about using the same font for the blog logo as you used for NMJ and SHU? Also, I think your mind was moving faster than your hands when you typed the word, individual. Over all, it is visually appealing and easily readable. Looks great!

Dr. Jerz,

I love the new page! It's really easy to read, and is a better fit with the actual Seton Hill website. I was able to view it in OS 10.4 with Safari on my mac, and everything looked good... except that those pop-up boxes only worked 1/4 of the time, as you mentioned with firefox.

However I must add that the pop-up boxes are quite excellent.

As for the logo... don't worry, help is on the way ;-)

Thats great Jerz. I like how you put the updated individual blog section with our blog's name. Very nicely done.