Spice Up Your Department’s Web Site
It’s a new semester, a new year, and you’re thinking it’s time to dress up your department’s Web pages.
What to do?
ITCS has added several exciting new features worth checking out. Here’s a quick overview of three:
Tabbed Interface Element
Sometimes called a “notebook interface,” this element allows you to add a tabbed feature to your page. This is a great way to divide a lot of information into manageable “chunks” that users can easily scan. This element is very easy to configure; just name the tab and enter the information into the rich text editor box and format as you would any regular text box in CommonSpot. The hardest decision is which color to make the tabs.
ECU Tab Bar Element with Custom Icon Control
True, the ECU Tab Bar element has been around for awhile, but this new, updated version lets users choose up to three custom icons, add a Facebook or Twitter link or not show any icons at all. However, the old tried and true icons are still there if you need them, but you can choose only those you want to show on your page.
Insert the YouTube Custom Element
If one picture is “worth a thousand words,” think what an entire video can do. Easy to configure, users choose whether or not to include related videos, border, player size and whether or not to use a purple skin. Very useful in letting the world know what’s new in your department.
These are just three of the newest elements the ITCS Web team has hatched out for CommonSpot users. We’re adding new elements all the time! To find out what’s new—and to learn some of the old tried and true elements, if you need to—visit the ITCS Learning Center at http://collab.ecu.edu/sites/ITCS-LearningCenter. Sign in with your piratemail address and passphrase.
ECU’s Self-Service Web Sites a Hit
Need a Web site fast to complete a class assignment? Want to post class information for your students outside Blackboard? Crave your own blog?
Look no further than ECU’s new self-service Web site creation tool, My Web . With a few mouse clicks, your site space is created—you can be online within minutes.
Introduced to the ECU community at the start of fall semester, many faculty, staff and students have already taken advantage of this service.
Interested? Read on to get started…
Get Organized
First, browse the ECU Web page policies, accessibility guidelines, sensitive data guidelines and copyright tips found on the ITCS Web Publishing Home page and ITCS Policies page. It’s important to consider that all ECU users are required to follow these mandated guidelines.
Next, sketch out the site, beginning with the home page. Decide how many pages you need and how they will link together. If you’re planning to create a blog, this is a good time to plan the topic and categories.
Create the Web page/s and save them to your computer. Faculty and staff can download Microsoft Expression Web authoring application. Students, faculty and staff should also check out the Dreamweaver application at the Virtual Computing Lab, or use any free/affordable Web authoring application such as KompoZer (Mac and Windows, free) or CoffeeCup (Windows, $49).
Now you’re ready to create the space and upload the pages.
Create the Web Space
Go to the My Web interface at http://myweb.ecu.edu/ and sign in with your PirateID and passphrase. Agree to the Web terms & conditions, and the next screen allows you to pick which Web space you need.
Basic Web Space. For faculty and staff. Not encrypted.
Secure Web Space. For faculty and staff who need an encrypted site.
Student Web Space. For students who need academic Web space.
Blog. Faculty, staff, students and university organizations can request a WordPress blog.
Pick the type you need and click the Submit button. That’s it!
Manage the Web Space
You can manage your new site from the same My Web interface. Upload your new pages, updates, add or delete users and configure security. There’s also a utility called, Smush It, to help you optimize your Web images.
To learn more about using the My Web tool, visit http://collab.ecu.edu/sites/ITCS-LearningCenter to download a PDF tutorial on using the My Web interface. Or call the IT Help Desk at 252.328.9866/1.800.340.7081 for more information.
Give Your Site “Web Presence” Using Keywords and Headings
One question often asked by CommonSpot users at ECU is, “How do I get my Web site to show up in a search list?” By understanding how the ECU site is indexed, it’s surprisingly simple to optimize your department’s Web pages so that their links appear in a search list.
Add keywords
Choose three or four terms which truly describe your page’s content and add them to the Standard Metadata (Other) tab of your CommonSpot page.
Use headings
Just as a book has one main title with many chapter titles, create the most important title on your page as an H1 heading with subsequent subordinate titles on the page as H2 or H3 headings.
If possible, include one of the keywords in your H1 header. The graphic shows how to change the type format.
Use back links
A back link means your page is linked to another page. The SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Glossary at Springboard SEO Web site (http://www.springboardseo.com/seo-glossary.html ) gives this example: If a Web page from Site A links to a Web page from Site B, then Site B has a back link from Site A.
ECU’s Google Mini begins indexing at the ECU home page and follows each page’s links until there are no more links to follow. Therefore, if your page is not linked to another page within the ECU site, the mini has no way of finding or indexing your pages.
Word of caution
Don’t just make up a bunch of nonsensical keyword terms that don’t really pertain to the subject on the page so that you can get more hits. Two to three genuine keywords will do the trick.
There are many online resources explaining Web presence and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) on the Web. A good place to start is the SEO entry of Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization
What’s an RSS Feed Anyway?
RSS icon
If you have favorite Web sites you often visit—this blog, for example—check to see if there’s an RSS feed available. When you subscribe to a site’s RSS feed, you don’t need to visit the site to see any updates because the updates are delivered to you! News sites, blog sites and sites that often update information usually provide an RSS feed for users.
It’s easy to subscribe to an RSS feed:
Internet Explorer. Click the RSS feed icon in the menu bar. When the feed page opens, click the subscribe button.
Firefox. Click the RSS feed icon in the address bar. Choose the folder in which to save your feeds.
Firefox for Mac and Safari. Click the RSS feed icon in the address bar. Choose the folder in which to save your feeds.
Did you know you are subscribed to a few RSS feeds already? Click on the RSS folder in the Outlook mailbox to access current Microsoft feeds automatically included with Outlook 2007. You can also add your own feeds to this folder, if you like.
See the RSS feed folder in Outlook
There are also several good stand-alone programs to manage RSS subscriptions.
To find out more about managing RSS subscriptions and other general information, visit Common Craft’s, RSS in Plain English. This video explains RSS simply and also shows how to manage feeds through Google Reader.
Top 10 Windows RSS Feed Readers and News Aggregators lists ten popular feed readers and where to get them.