Laura LaForest Synthesis

Part of me is very excited that there is only a couple weeks left in the semester, but another part of me is very stressed out with all of the final projects that are due this week. And to top it all off, I have caught whatever virus is going around and am fighting that as well. It has made the various presentations (including this one) rather difficult to do without sounding awful.

I am hoping to get the final go ahead to switch the site over to the redesigned one this week when I go into the office. It has been hard the last couple weeks between getting sick and my car breaking down to meet with my client.

I hope everyone finishes strong in these last couple weeks of the semester.

Well this week has been one I’d like to soon forget. It has just been so busy again, I have yet to figure out if I’m going or coming.  I’ve been working hard on Module 5 to attempt to get feedback from both within the office as well as outside of it. All of which would be easier if I had the everything completed.

I’ve been using Google Forms to try and get feed back since this is the way that the office wants to gather information and thought it would be a good test of usability. Unfortunately even with email reminders, and reminders while I was in the office this week I have not gotten many formal responses back. Everything I’m hearing while I talk to and have meetings with various people in the office have many good things to say, I hate to not have a survey completed by everyone to go on.

I’m crossing my fingers that everything comes together this week so I can wrap this project up.

On a note about the CMS Rhythmyx…

I have come to the conclusion it is the most annoying CMS on the face of the planet. In order to edit a page, that page must me moved from “public” to “edit” then it can be edited (only after you click in the main content box, then click on windowed mode), then to move it back to “public” each page must be moved from “edit” to “Content Review” and finally to “publish now” …I understand why all of these steps are necessary for a site the size of BGSU’s, but at the same time it’s awfully annoying when trying to update a single line of code.

Also, it would be great if there was some from of mass upload for images/files, each has to be uploaded individually, then go through the same process as above to make it live on the server.

So this week has been exciting for a couple of reasons. For starters I finally got to meet with the Director of the OSL in person for the first time in a few weeks. She really likes what she’s seen so far. And offered me a new challenge.

As it stands I have put the links to their social media pages just on the front page below a twitter news widget. Working within the CMS restrictions set by BGSU’s website at times is a real challenge. She really wanted them within the grey bar known as the “short title” across every page on the site. As it stands code cannot be put into this field in the CMS, but I told her I’d email one of BGSU’s web folks and check it out. Turns out the gentleman I spoke with thought it was a great idea and they are actually going to implement it into the CMS!

Here is potentially what the template for the site will look like when this is implemented in the next couple weeks.

Well this week has been exciting in that one of my clients actually got some content for me! There is still a long way to go, but at least we have a start.

This week while I was in the office I took it upon myself to do some digging through old files to be able to create archives for the site. It was a long and tedious process due to the lack of organization and documentation but I did succeed in finding some of the archive documents I was looking for.

Well my client is finally back from her conference, but I am still waiting on content for the landing page as well as the student section. I think part of my frustration is that some of the staff in the office are still sending information to a work email that I had while I was co-oping there this summer. This wouldn’t be a big deal if I had access to this account out of the office, but alas I can only check it while im in the office one day a week. I have on multiple occasions asked them to use my personal address, or at least cc my personal address so I can get back to them faster.

On a completely unrelated note…This weekend I am back in my home town of Ft. Wayne, IN for the ISSMA State Marching Band competition. It is my high school band director’s 25th year teaching so there is a big celebration and to top it of they won the state competition last night!

Well I’m glad to see the sun finally come out this weekend. If this week has shown me anything it is that I’m not ready for winter by any stretch of the imagination.

This was week 2 with my client out of communication due to a conference. So again I talked with Paul to make sure the design for the student section has the feel he was looking for. Unfortinutly getting content from anyone is like pulling teeth so at this point I’ve started putting in filler text.

Here is what the landing page and student page look like so far…
Landing page

Student page

Well this is the first week that I have not been able to meet with my client in person. She is out of town for a conference. In her stead I met with the two assistant directors for co-curricular programs to discuss the student section of the site and finalize the information structure.

They both like the feel of the new student orientation site so I have started work on similar rollover buttons that still incorporate our branding for their section.

As requested from last week, here is the banner for the landing page.

Well this was another busy week. While my husband is doing much better, I am still struggling to figure out which end is up & get my mind focused back on everything.

I did get the banner for the “student” section of the site approved as well as got some new feedback on the updated homepage. My next challenge is finding a twitter feed to use as a news update on the homepage so the “non-VCTs” can update the news without having to have CMS training.

Well for how eventful this week has been, I have gotten very little accomplished.

While I did meet with my client and continued discussing the massive amounts of content and what we could possibly use as pdf links vs. live html content.

What really made this week hectic was that most of it has been spent in St. Lukes Hospital with my husband who had some complications from his kidney stones that he had last week.

Hopefully everything will calm down around here, and I’ll get quite a bit more accomplished next week.

This week has been spent in discussion with my client about how content should be linked from both sides of the site. With how much content the current site has, my client is finding the process of figuring out what is important to keep and what is excessive overwhelming so I am working on helping to ween down all of the information.

This week I started working on updating the homepage of the OSL website. Having a solid landing page is important to not only catch the eye of those coming to the site, but also to get them where they need to be to get the important information.One of the interesting challenges has been working to find some widgets that show national service conferences and awards to make updating the site easier.

Having talked with the Director of the Office of Service-Learning and shared my ideas for the web redesign I have started working on finishing up Module one. I am working on a finished version of a new site-map so Jane has something visual to see how the simplified site is going to look compared to the current sitemap which is just a mess.