When you insert (or update) a link into a page in omni you will notice something a little different. Links will look like {{f:242}} for a file or page, and {{d:445}} for a directory. These are called dependency tags.

(Please note: only files/pages maintained inside of omni will have this appearance. External links will remain http://www.whateveryourlinkis.com)

Since you can’t tell what is being linked to just by looking at this tag, Omni has included the actual path right below the dependency tag (as seen below).

Smarter Updating

The benefits of the dependency manager kick in when you rename or move a file or directory. When this occurs you will get a prompt saying all other pages containing a link to this file or directory will be republished. Click OK and those pages will be updated with the new path.

Previously, if you had renamed a page, and that page was linked to from 35 different pages of your website, you would then need to manually go back and fix each link individually to reflect the new filename or path.

Now when you move or rename a page, omni “knows” that page has been renamed and will automatically update the links to the new path and republish all of those pages in one step.

We provide the following Facebook tabs for use on any official Vanderbilt page. Add one or more today!

To add these tabs to your page, use the following links:

• VUCast Tab:   http://vanderbi.lt/addfbtabvucast
• Research Tab:  http://vanderbi.lt/addfbtabresearch
• Undergraduate Admissions Tab:  http://vanderbi.lt/addfbtabadmissions
• News and Events Tab:  http://vanderbi.lt/addfbtabnewsevents

1. From the dropdown menu on the page that appears when clicking on the INSTALL links above — should be a list of all the pages you are an administrator for. You can choose as many pages as you want to place the tab on and then click ADD PAGE TAB.
2. It will then open up a new window displaying the content of the tab you’ve just added. You can close this window.
3. Now go BACK to the facebook pages that you’ve added the tab to. The new tab should appear in the list of links on the left below your profile photo.
4. You can click the EDIT button at the bottom of the link list to reorder this list. (Please Note: some of the default facebook links cannot be reordered).

That was the overarching theme of many of our discussions with the Office of Undergraduate Admissions when imagining a new Web presence. Let’s step back and make things easier for the user. Focus on the key MESSAGES that UoA wants to get out there about Vanderbilt. What are the key ACTIONS we want prospective students to take when they visit the site? Once we know those things — it flows from there.

The old site had an unwieldy main navigation bar that consisted of a dropdown menu with approximately 200 links (!! YES, 200!). The main focus on the homepage was a flash video player that wasn’t accessible on many mobile devices. The key messages were getting lost in a sea of information.

Through focus groups with various student groups and UoA staff, and a thorough review of the existing site analytics, we came to a site plan that we think better presents what Vanderbilt is. We believe students and their parents will more easily be able to get to the information they are looking for — by guiding them through VERY simple navigation (going from 200 links in the main navigation to 8) and focusing on Admissions strategic priorities and key messages. Many, many new “landing” pages were created for these (and others) that strive to condense the massive amount of information on the Admissions website into easily digestible “chunks”. You can read more about UoA’s take on the new website on the Admissions blog.

A few highlights:

Homepage Tabs – While we wanted to simplify things, we also still wanted to provide information easily accessible from the homepage. We accomplished this with a simple tab structure — highlighting our blogs, videos, dates and deadlines, social media links, etc — all there on the homepage, but without overwhelming the user with the information. We can also easily create seasonal tabs — currently we have a Class of 2016 tab. When the Vanderbilt Roadshow begins – we could have a RoadShow tab there instead. The tabs give us a lot of flexibility for highlighting things on the homepage while, again, keeping things SIMPLE.

Saying goodbye to flash – Using jQuery and HTML5 for video, the site is now accessible on all devices. (I’m particularly excited about rolling out the simple jQuery + Youtube Playlist video player I’ve built for use on the STORIES tab on the homepage, also in use on the videos page. Powered by a YouTube playlist and about 6 lines of jQuery– it works on all devices. Love jQuery and PHP and VUFairyDust™. We’re going to be using this code everywhere to display video playlists.)

Find Your Admissions Counselor – this section has been expanded. There are now bios and photos of each counselor — and contact forms for each counselor so that students can quickly and easily reach their counselor. The student can start typing their state, and the list of counselors will automatically filter to display only the counselors from their state.

Contact a Student (encompassing Tour Guides and Global ‘Dores) — this allows a prospective student to find a current Vanderbilt student to talk to. Prospective students can find someone from their state or country, from the school they’re applying to, by class year, etc. They can easily contact them to get the “Inside Scoop” on what it’s really like to go to school at Vanderbilt.

Find Your Major – Using the same datasource as our top level Disciplines and Majors site, here we are presenting a filtered view of only the undergraduate majors. This allows us to keep the visitors on the Admissions website, while still providing them with some of the most frequently accessed information.The student can just start typing and the list will automatically filter to the majors matching their words (e.g. start typing engineering — and only the engineering majors will display).

Telling the Vanderbilt Story – this is a project that Beth and I have been working on as a side project. At first we weren’t thinking of Admissions at all when we began building it out; we just thought there were all these really great stories about Vanderbilt students, faculty, staff and alumni — and we thought — why not create a feed of those stories? The people behind Vanderbilt — one story at a time. Powered by the Vanderbilt News site, anytime a story comes through that would be perfect for this section — all we have to do is tag it and we can pull it through. For Admissions, we’re pulling some videos from that section into the homepage STORIES tab — and linking off to the full Vanderbilt Story microsite from there, where the visitors can browse, for instance, only stories about faculty. This microsite is going to be an evolving presence — with new content being added on a regular basis as more and more cool stories about Vanderbilt people come along!

Search — another VUFairyDust™ recipient. Vanderbilt is fortunate to have an awesome yellow box on the premises. What is that yellow box, might you ask?  It’s a Google Search Appliance. It makes search pretty great. We can tune it for a specific site — for specific words — so that you always get what you’re looking for. UoA can put keywords into the search appliance — so that when any of those words are searched on — the search appliance knows exactly what result the user really wants. (e.g. What are the deadlines for applying?) Magic and awesomeness.

Content Management — and of course, all content for Admissions is managed through OmniUpdate (for the main site) or WordPress (for the blogs). The combination of these two systems makes for a powerful backend that can handle pretty much anything we can think of that we’d like to do. The UoA staff are able to manage all the content across their sites with workflows in place to ensure approval of all content before it goes live.

Facebook — we rolled out a coordinating Facebook tab with the new site. It includes all of the content found within the homepage tabs, formatted for Facebook. And as with all apps we create within Facebook, the same tab can be used on multiple Facebook pages. One source, multiple applications. I love reusable content!

This has been a rewarding project to work on — made more so by the great collaboration we have with the Office of Undergraduate Admissions, especially with Ryan Burleson (who has only been at Vanderbilt a few months — he jumped in with both feet!)

Login to your current WordPress website.

Click on EXPORT under TOOLS.

Choose to export all content.  And click Download Export File.

It will then download a file to your computer with the export from your site. You will use this file in the next part.

Part TWO: www.domain.com/yournewsite

Login to your new WordPress website.

Click on IMPORT under TOOLS.

Click on WORDPRESS at the bottom of the list of possible import formats.

Click the CHOOSE FILE button and select the file that you downloaded from blogs.vanderbilt.edu

Click Upload file and import.

It will prompt you to match your old user account with new user account.  I always tell it to assign posts to an existing user — so choose that user from the dropdown list.

Also click on DOWNLOAD AND IMPORT FILE ATTACHMENTS.  This will download any images and files from your blogs.v.e website — and put them on the my.v.e server.

Then click on SUBMIT.  It will now import your content.  It may take a few moments depending on how many posts you’re importing.

• How to Show, Hide, and Edit Breadcrumbs
• How to Check-in and Check-out Content
• How to Create a New Directory
• Create a New Page Using “Save As”
• Create a New Page
• How to Delete Documents and Images
• How to Edit the Main Navigation
• How to Access and Edit the Page Properties
• How to Edit a Page
• How to Edit the Slideshow
• How to Use the WYSIWYG Editor

How to Show, Hide, and Edit Breadcrumbs

How to Check-in and Check-out Content

How to Create a New Directory

Create a New Page Using “Save As”

Create a New Page

How to Delete Documents and Images

How to Edit the Main Navigation

How to Access and Edit the Page Properties

How to Edit a Page

How to Edit the Slideshow

How to Use the WYSIWYG Editor

Or in simpler terms, Vanderbilt engineers and doctors are working together on some REALLY cool projects. This new initiative was established in the Fall of 2011 and one of the first orders of business was establishing a web presence. Almost all of the individual projects have their own websites, but there needed to be a central location that provides information about each of the projects and persons involved.

We built the ViSE website in WordPress, heavily using custom post types to organize the projects, publications and people sections.

I have to say – this has been one of my favorite projects in a while. ViSE is working on some truly innovative research projects, and the people involved have been a pleasure to work with. Special thanks to Dr. Benoit Dawant and Anna Allen for working hard alongside our office to get the site up and running within just a few short weeks.

Grazie mille to Véronique Homer!

Watch video of Carlos Hooper from VUMC Strategic Marketing speaking Oct. 31 at a DigitalVU month event.

Hooper, who holds an MFA in interactive design and teaches at the Art Institute, discusses best practices of UI design.

The event was part of DigitalVU month at Vanderbilt, co-coordinated by Medical Center Web and Creative Servicesand University Web Communications with support from the Jean and Alexander Heard Library, Information Technology Services and partners across campus.

Watch video of popular blogger and social media expert Jessica Turner sharing some of the industry’s best blogging practices to create a space that is read, utilized and shared on a regular basis.

Turner has much experience working with individuals and companies to create blogs that reflect their personalities, achieve their goals and generate traffic.

The event was part of DigitalVU month at Vanderbilt, co-coordinated by Medical Center Web and Creative Services and University Web Communications with support from the Jean and Alexander Heard Library, Information Technology Services and partners across campus.

The presentation slides are below – full session descriptions and code examples are also available, or you can read the writeup on the session at link.highedweb.org. A podcast of the presentation will be available soon from the Association website.

Extensive coverage of the 2011 HighEdWeb Conference is available on Link: The Journal of Higher Education Web Professionals, where the Link staff blogged almost all of the sessions and storified the keynotes with Chris Wilson (Google) and Shawn Henry (W3C). I’ll be posting a few of my favorite sessions and links to more info next week.

Interested in attending the HighEdWeb Conference? Put it on your calendar:  Oct 7-10, 2012 in Milwaukee!

Watch video of an Oct. 20 presentation “Using technology to engage students beyond the classroom walls” with Corbette Doyle and Stephanie Milne.

This session provides a hands-on look at Twitter as a tool to encourage students to think critically about course content — before, during and after class ends. To increase faculty comfort with the technology that will be discussed, the audience was encouraged to use the link below to post a question in advance of the session. Poll Everywhere, a cell phone “clicker” application that does not require advance registration, was also used in the session.

The event was part of DigitalVU month at Vanderbilt, co-coordinated by Medical Center Web and Creative Services and University Web Communications with support from the Jean and Alexander Heard Library, Information Technology Services and partners across campus.