Meeting 8/6/2009

Design:
We have more templates from White Whale and they are getting pretty! You can see them here – look at the jpegs mock-ups at the bottom of the page.

http://miis.babywhale.net/pages/

Sidebars:
We now have access to edit sidebars!!! We have two sidebars – one on the right in the white box which we’ll call “content sidebar” and one under the navigation menu in the blue area that we’ll call “navigation sidebar”. To edit your content sidebar, you’ll notice a new box when you edit the page:



You can add text/links/pictures/what have you. Currently you can’t add RSS feeds – we’re working on that.

If you also want navigation sidebars, please contact me so I can add them. You can have the same navigation sidebar in all of your section or have them specialized by page. Please let me know what you would like and where – heck, it might be easier just to stop by!

Story:
We continued to talk about story. Bob shared a site, www.ilovemountains.org, that uses maps and stories to tug at your heartstrings. We also looked at the stories found in our current communique as good examples of written stories – short and dynamic – would totally make me want to go here (wait, I did!). Check out the second page of the current communique in the section on distinctive students: http://www.miis.edu/comm/communique.html

We didn’t discuss this at the meeting, but we have a new content type! If you have a google calendar to embed, just add google calendar.



You can write text in the body explaining the calendar and all you’ll do is add the email address of the calendar where it asks for it.



I’ll keep you posted about other developments – we’re hoping that we’ll have info in the file uploader by early next week.

UPDATES:

1. The "Page" content type is now named "Basic Content". This puts
it at the top of the list. So you should now pretty much be adding "basic content" to your pages to just put in text with a title.

2. The editing interface tabs are now in a floating window in the upper
left with the title "Edit Console". Also remember that the log on button is right at the bottom - next to "An Affiliate of Middlebury College". Drupal now logs us off if we're inactive. You won't see you content until you log in.

3. You should be tagging your FAQs with one word descriptives. Patricia's FAQ of What is the ESL schedule? Is a good example - she tagged it calendar, dates, schedule. This will help with searching for these FAQs and potentially provide some organization. You do not need to tag your FAQs by theme or program - just with one or two one word descriptives the best describe the content.