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Redesigns 2012: The Simpsonian

September 25, 2012 in Redesigns

The Simpsonian at Simpson College recently underwent a redesign. Here’s the new site:

Lots of white space, big graphics, and a prominent place for their seemingly frequent Twitter feed. I might suggest a few more teaser paragraphs on the front page, and some differentiation of headline sizes. The Simpsonian switched to the TownNews Blox CMS last year from College Publisher, but I don’t have an image from the previous version of the new CMS. Here’s an old version from the Wayback Machine from 2011:

The new site is a clear improvement over the old site design.

 

 

 

 

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Redesigns 2012: KSU Sentinel

September 18, 2012 in Redesigns, Websites

The Kennesaw State U. Sentinel redesigned their website recently. Taylor White writes in an e-mail that the Sentinel “previously used a standard WordPress template. The layout was created to match the new look of the printed paper–both designed by former website manager Chris Dailey.”

This really is a major redesign, as the old site had a “blog-like” look. The new design features large graphics, bold headlines, and a clear navigation structure in the left sidebar. The one thing I might suggest is moving the search bar to the top of the right ad sidebar. Web readers expect a search box at the top of the page somewhere.

Here’s the new site:

Here’s the old site:

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Redesigns 2012: DoaneLine

September 17, 2012 in Redesigns, Websites

The Doane College Doaneline has redesigned for the fall semester. The new version features a colorful branding of the site name and nav bar, more information above the fold, and larger photographs.

Here’s the new version:

And here’s the previous version:

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Redesigns 2012: UT-Arlington Shorthorn

August 21, 2012 in Redesigns, Websites

It’s that time of year again, when the fresh paint is revealed on college media web sites. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be showcasing the changing “face” of college news on the web. If your organization has a new web design, send me an email at bryan.murley@gmail.com. If possible, include a screenshot of the old design for comparison.

First up is the UT-Arlington Shorthorn, which moved from a self-hosted Joomla CMS to TownNews. Here’s the new look:

And here’s the previous version:

The new version is a few pixels thinner.

The main differences I can see:

The flag now has BIG branding and a new motto – “UT-Arlington’s main news source since 1919″.

The nav bar now has a grey background.

The section headers are color-coded, as seen in this screenshot of the second screen:

The sections are also now vertical and asymmetrical. And there is more variety in headline sizes.

The social media icons at the top of the page are bigger, and the top banner advertisement has been moved out of and above the flag, replaced by traffic, weather and a calendar in the flag.

UPDATE: Adam Drew also sends along a screenshot of the HTML5 mobile version of the site:

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Detroit Softworks closes shop; SNworks takes over Gryphon

July 27, 2012 in Content Management Systems, Gryphon, industry news, Media Companies - College Related, Websites

 

UPDATED AT 10:41 AM (CDT) WITH ADDITIONAL INFORMATIONDetroit Softworks, provider of the Gryphon CMS and hosted news platform, has shut down. The message above is all that remains of their website. They had approximately 15 client college news outlets for the hosted platform. However, the demise of DSW doesn’t mean the end of the Gryphon CMS. In fact, Gryphon is poised to be something of a phoenix this fall.

Omar Sofradzija, editorial adviser/permissions manager of The State News at Michigan State said Friday that the State News would be launching a new marketing effort for Gryphon in the next few weeks. The State News originally developed the CMS and licensed its use through DWS.

“With the end of Detroit Softworks, we feel like we have a product worth sharing with our peers,” he said. “We are looking this fall to offer (Gryphon) to additional clients.”

Sofradzija said the new home for the Gryphon CMS will be called SNworks. There’s no web site (or logo) at the moment, but you can follow them on Twitter, or check their Facebook Page for updates. Anyone interested in the platform can also contact Sofradzija at omars@getsnworks.com.

The company plans to have booths at ACP/CMA, CNBAM and WAUPM conferences coming up this fall.

In the meantime, this changes the calculus for CMS providers for college newspapers, and I’ll be updating my list soon.

 

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Berkeley mobile field guide reviews hardware and software in interactive format

July 20, 2012 in General Media, Mobile, software, Tech Talk, video

The UC-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism has released a mobile reporting guidebook with reviews and ratings for a variety of software and hardware. It’s available as a PDF and as an iBook. The iBook features sample clips and screencast videos from various software and some of the capture hardware. This is similar in some ways to the Mobile Reporting Tools Pocket Guide Will Sullivan and crew produced at the Reynolds Journalism Institute a while back.

The iBook version also showcases some of the things you can do with the interactive book format.

As Lauren Rabaino notes at 10,000 Words, it’s iPhone-specific. So if you have an Android, not so much, although some of the hardware and software is not device-specific. Students helped produce the guidebook.

This guidebook was the result of a mobile reporting class at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and is the work of Casey Capachi, Evan Wagstaff, Matt Sarnecki along with instructors Richard Koci Hernandez and Jeremy Rue.

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Redesigns 2012: Red & Black

July 11, 2012 in industry news, Redesigns, Websites

It’s mid-summer, and we’ve got our first redesign of the new school year. The Red & Black at UGA recently switched CMS’s from WordPress to TownNews.

Here’s the new front page:

and here’s their old design from 2010:

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Web options for college publications, 2012 edition

April 16, 2012 in College Media, Content Management Systems, Tech Talk, Websites

UPDATE JULY 2012: Detroit Softworks is no longer in business.

It’s been two years since I did a round-up of hosting options for college news sites. In the wake of the recent discussion of the Online Pacemaker Finalists, I figured it was time to take another trip around the field to see what’s out there.

And, a disclaimer: This is not a “critical review” of the different options. Each option has its pros and cons, and every college media outlet has different needs and resources. If you want to know more about a particular option, contact the companies listed. I’d also encourage you to ask around at other college media outlets who are using these options.

I want to start off with the hosted options. All of these will cost money, usually a set-up fee (for training, design and database transfer) and then a monthly subscription fee (for maintenance, tech support and other costs of maintaining a server). The content management system (CMS)  is hosted on server space provided by the company. The other side of that coin is that they do not necessarily exercise any control over the ad spaces on the site, or the ad revenue.

Hosted Options

College Publisher: College Publisher just announced a new version of CP5 called CollegePublisher Pro. Since the last round-up, College Media Network changed ownership and updated its revenue sharing model for advertising. They will charge if you don’t have a certain amount of traffic to your web site. And they also offer a server option where you can park your WordPress install.

Detroit Softworks: Detroit Softworks hosts the Gryphon CMS, and has 15 client newspapers, according to a list on their website. There is a monthly subscription and a set-up fee for the service. It is a hosted solution, meaning the content is stored on DS servers. SEE THIS POST FOR UPDATED INFORMATION ABOUT GRYPHON CMS.

TownNews: TownNews  is the content management system company that runs the online sites for newspapers in the Lee Enterprises newspaper chain. The CMS itself is called Blox. It is a hosted solution. There is a one-time setup fee, and a monthly subscription. The subscription fee varies based on the size of the news outlet.

School Newspapers Online: SNO started out as a solution for scholastic (aka high school) newspaper sites, and has expanded into the college market rapidly since last I wrote about this topic. They now list 58 college newspapers as clients. They offer a hosted WordPress solution. The costs are spelled out on their site: $600 for first year (including set-up) and $300/year after that.

Ellington CMS: The Ellington CMS, originally created for the Lawrence Journal-World’s web offerings, is another hosted service. Its college media penetration is not sizable. The system is built on top of the Django web framework.

Uncertain:

 When I wrote about this topic in 2010, Alloy, an advertising and marketing company that aims at the college market, had started providing a hosting solution similar to what CoPress provided. The set-up was much like what you would find on any commercial hosting service, except they hoped to offer some added benefits to college media in the future (like an ad network, for instance). The basic cost was $250/mo. plus a set-up fee. I am not certain that they are still providing this service, and my e-mail asking for further information has received no response yet. I will update as information is available.

That about covers the hosted solutions that are out there in the college media market. I know of a few college media outlets that have partnered with a local professional newspaper to host their sites. But that situation varies so widely that it’s probably not an option for the majority of news sites.

Host Your Own

The other option is to host your own content management system, whether using an off-campus server host, or an on-campus server. There are literally hundreds of hosting services out there, so I won’t even pretend to make a recommendation in that area. Most of them have a one-click install system for installing a variety of open-source software, for the less technically inclined.

The most commonly used open-source (i.e., free) CMS’s are:

 WordPress: This seems to be the most popular open source platform for college media outlets. It’s highly extendable, relatively easy to use admin area with lots of options, and a number of premium themes which break the traditional blog-style format. It’s based in php and (normally) MySQL database. There is an extensive community of developers to help out if you need technical support.

 Drupal: My impression is that Drupal has more popularity among professional news outlets. It’s also based in PHP and an SQL database, but has a steeper learning curve than WordPress. One of the things that makes this system popular is its emphasis on community site engagement, which it had long before WordPress incorporated those features. It also has a very active development community. The site has a list of case studies of web sites built on the platform.

Joomla!: Joomla! is a robust CMS that comes at site management from a different perspective than WordPress or Drupal, and it seems to have heavier adoption in other commercial arenas. At one time, the CMA web site ran on Mambo, the previous version of Joomla! and it was relatively easy to run the basic admin templates.

Other

Finally, there is Django, which is a web framework and not specifically a CMS. Repeat, it’s not a CMS. It’s built on the Python programming language, and it is the framework that undergirds the Ellington CMS, for one. The framework is used to power a pretty impressive list of database-driven sites. It’s open source, but you’ll need a server space to host it

 

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WordPress leads pack of Pacemaker finalists picked

April 10, 2012 in Content Management Systems, contests, Websites

The Associated Collegiate Press announced their list of 2012 online Pacemaker finalists yesterday. There are 55 finalists, and lots of familiar names. Congratulations to all the nominees.

Beyond that, I’m always interested in what’s going on under the hood, in the “CMS Wars!” So, I went through the entire list, looked at lots of source code and page footers to find clues, and identified all but four of the sites’ CMS’s. Previously, we looked at these numbers from 2008 and 2009. In 2010, I commented on the CMS’s used by the winners.

The results for the finalists this year are below, and somewhat astounding:

By CMS

WordPress 29 53%
College Publisher 2 4%
TownNews (Blox) 3 5%
Detroit Softworks 4 7%
dotnetnuke 1 2%
Surreal 1 2%
Ellington 3 5%
HTML (handcoded) 2 4%
Django/Custom 5 9%
Unknown 4 7%

WordPress powers 53 percent of the finalists, far more than any other CMS. Meanwhile, College Media Network, once the largest player in college media site hosting, is only powering two of the finalists.

There are obvious qualifiers in this data: it’s highly selective, non-representative of the broader college media web environment, and, as I’ve said before, the best CMS won’t put lipstick on bad journalism.

Also, WordPress is an open-source CMS that you host on your own server location, as is Joomla and dotnetnuke. TownNews (Blox) and Detroit SoftWorks (Gryphon) have hosted, proprietary CMS’s and cost significantly more. Ellington is also a pricey system. Surreal CMS is a hybrid, cloud-based CMS that costs a small amount per month. And django is a web framework, not a CMS.

This is not a knock on any of the systems, either. I’m from the “whatever works best for you” CMS school. They all have pros and cons.

BUT, here’s an interesting bit I did discern from this small sample of college journalism outlets’ web sites.

Smaller outlets are more invested in WordPress.

Since the CMS is “free” (you still have to pay for or arrange hosting and tech support), it’s more financially feasible for small sites. As you can see from the chart below, the larger the enrollment, the more likely the outlet was to have another system beside WordPress.

 Larger sites are more likely to spend on a hosted solution or a custom framework.

Notice how the penetration of WordPress goes down at the larger newpapers? Detroit Softworks shows up only among schools with over 20,000 enrollment, TownNews only above 10,000. (Disclaimer: The Daily Eastern News online site runs on TownNews’ system). These schools are more likely to attract programmer/journalists, and also more likely to have the funds to invest in one of the hosted suppliers.

Now, this is little more than a thing of interest, and something to peek at a population to see what’s going on. It would be good to have a look at all the CMS’s of the news outlets that submitted entries. I’ve reached out to Logan Aimone at ACP, and although I can’t look at which schools entered, he’s going to see about getting me the data on CMS use. I’ll keep you posted about that.

And one final note about this: Whether you are a Pacemaker finalist or not, how about giving your site visitors a way to find out what system you’re using? Even just a note in the meta of the source code. It is frustrating to have to peck through playing Sherlock Homepage when your coders rename the wp-content folders, or you take out the metadata that indicates you’re using a CMS (the hosted systems are more easy to detect). The best site for this was the Maneater at the University of Missouri, which had an actual colophon! If you’ve done your own system, maybe put it on the “About” page, with the name of the developers who worked on it.

Here’s a spreadsheet of all the finalists and the CMS they use, where available.

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Redesigns 2011: WVU Daily Athenaeum

November 15, 2011 in Redesigns

The Daily Athenaeum at West Virginia University just updated the design of their web site, run on College Publisher. Here’s a screenshot of the new design.

And here’s a screenshot from Archive.org from February:

The most dramatic change appears to be the header, which is larger and uses more white space. They also seem to have made the choice to emphasize the web address as opposed to the newspaper name. Notice as well that they cut down the number of items in the nav bar from 10 to eight – features and blogs being eliminated.

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