It occurs to me that I should probably give this project a name other than “University website rebuild”. Bob comes to mind but… For now I’m going to refer to it as NUMedia because the project encompasses all different types of online media whereas the old site could barely handle HTML. So here’s the latest on the project.
Tuesday Mar 25: I did a beta test with 6 faculty members on the Faculty Profiles plugin. A couple of issues came to light quickly.
The first was that Visual Form Builder doesn’t allow you to selected multiple options from a drop down list. I had built the list of majors & minors using a drop down and some of our faculty teach in more than one major or minor. I assumed that the VFB drop down list would function just like any other. Wrong. So I had to rebuild that part of the form.
I also learned that our research faculty do not teach at all. My lack of experience in higher ed showed with this issue. They assist students with how to research in certain subjects. So some of the required fields on the intake form were focused on what the faculty member taught. I will have to rework this part of the form as well. I plan to add a radio button that asks the user to self-identify as either research faculty or teaching faculty. Then I can add logic to display the appropriate set of questions.
Wednesday March 26: I contacted a faculty member about a website they own and publish their class information on. This item opens a bunch of potential issues but the biggest concern I have is the domain name has our name – Norwich University – in it. I made it clear that all branded domain names should to be owned by the University. The faculty member cited the reason for having the website in the first place was because someone – before my time – took down a web server that the faculty had been allowed to build their own websites on. Apparently they had FTP access and could upload anything they wanted. Multiple issues with this scenario but it will have to wait. The domain name is my concern at the moment.
The search for a new Senior Web Editor
I neglected to mention that I let go a staff member a few weeks ago. The ads seeking someone to take this position have been out for over a week and we’ve had modest response. I have interviews today and tomorrow. A few new people sent in their info yesterday. One stepped down as the salary wasn’t high enough. I noticed that indeed.com somehow determined the salary is $100K. Um… sorry but no.