I use Technorati as one of the ways to see how Colgate is being discussed out here on the wide world of the web. It was interesting to see how they've redesigned their homepage. It now lets you check all aspects of what they call the Live Web, which includes blogs, user-generated video, photos, podcasts, music, and games.
The same day they announced the redesign on their blog they also suffered a major network outage. Brought down by the bot army. Ouch.
Anyway, Technorati is a powerful tool and reinforces for me the importance of tags and tagging. I'm exploring how we can use a blogging platform to replace our current CMS, only for the news and events section of our website.
You can see the tags I'm able to add to this post, for example, and I want that power and the organizational structure for the stories we post regularly each week. We see it as a great way to get our faculty members' names "out there" and to better promote all things Colgate.
We also want that section to be a bit more free-flowing and nimble, while maintaining a news-oriented, objective feel to it. Maybe an event on campus is worth noting but perhaps it doesn't merit a full-blown story or time constraints don't allow for that. A few paragraphs posted to the blog could do the trick.
Blogging platforms such as Movable Type, which I'm using right now, offer the ability through CSS to design the blog so it mimics the rest of the website. I'm exploring outside vendors to host our news blog, and we'll then bring our 'gatelife and other student blogs over to that same platform.
We're in the early stages, but it's something we're looking to get in place soon.
Comments (4)
How about installing a version of WordPress on your campus server? That would do the trick without requiring a lot of maintenance after the initial set up - plus it comes with a great comment spam plugin: Akismet.
Just a suggestion.
Posted by Karine Joly | May 31, 2007 12:00 PM
Posted on May 31, 2007 12:00
Hi Karine,
Believe it or not we have a version of Movable Type installed on a server here on campus, but it's on a test server and it's not fully supported. After a meeting with our IT folks, I'm told getting a dedicated server for a blogging platform and determining the support for it could take up to a year. Ouch. So I'm looking at a vendor. I'll look harder at WordPress, though after using TypePad for some time and now Movable Type, I have to say I like those products, particularly the new widgets that are added often. Tim
Posted by Tim | June 5, 2007 7:29 AM
Posted on June 5, 2007 07:29
Tim -
Is your intranet behind a firewall? And if so, will that pose an issue with using a remotely hosted blogging solution? Our IT folks raise that as a problem, so I was looking at the locally hosted solutions like WordPress. I'm curious if that's an issue you're dealing with.
Jim
Posted by Jim McCann | June 6, 2007 5:57 PM
Posted on June 6, 2007 17:57
Jim,
I was chatting today with an IT staff member who will be working on the transition to a blog platform, and right now we don't see this as an issue for us. Because the blog will be hosted remotely, the only tie-in will be an RSS feed that supports our homepage and, of course, we'll be making sure the news page is linked back to the main site etc.
How would your intranet be affected by using an outside vendor? What would the tie-in be?
We already have an alumni site that is hosted by an outside vendor, for instance.
Tim
Posted by Tim | June 8, 2007 9:05 AM
Posted on June 8, 2007 09:05