Month: October 2008

Jessamyn West highlighted our project on her blog at librarian.net.

Aw, shucks. *blush*

As to who in Kansas are the brains behind the project, it was started by Brenda Hough and Liz Rea at the Northeast Kansas Library System in 2006. Liz is still on the project (*wave*) but Brenda has moved on, her place being very capably filled by Sharon Moreland, NEKLS Technology Consultant. It is funded by NEKLS and the State Library of Kansas.

Thanks for the nod!

What’s new in Library Web site development?

• Johnson County Library – buttons and drop down menus
  
• Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library – chat reference, content added by multiple staff members, RSS, events and tag clouds
• Yorbalinda Public Library – Book Feeds widget
  
• Ann Arbor District Library – Drupal open source software
• Westerville Public Library – Director’s blog, Flickr feeds, account and catalog links, videos, and RSS

What is WordPress?

• Blogging application
  • traditionally, blogs are frequently updated, personal websites featuring diary-type commentary and links to articles on other Web sites.
    • main content area has articles listed chronologically, newest on top
    • articles are organized into categories
    • older articles contained in an archive
    • people can leave comments about the articles
    • links to other related sites are listed (called a “blogroll”)
    • “feeds” like RSS, Atom or RDF files are available
• Open source
  • freely distributed, collaboratively developed and modified software code
  • collaboratively written support materials – www.wordpress.org

Exploration of WordPress

• What the world sees…
  • Header
  • Post
    • Title
    • Categories
    • Comments
    • Images
  • Sidebar(s)
  • Pages
  • Archives
  • Categories
  • Links (Blogroll)
  • Meta
• Behind the Scenes…
  • Dashboard
    • Settings
      • Update/Edit header and “General Settings”
      • Site Administration
    • Plugins
    • Users
  • Write
    • Write Post
    • Write Page
    • Write Link
  • Manage
    • Edit/Delete posts
    • Edit/Delete pages
    • Edit/Delete links
    • Add/Edit categories – index/group posts by topic
    • Add/Edit tags
    • Add/Edit link categories
    • Edit/Delete media library (images)
  • Design
    • Themes
    • Widgets
    • Install a Theme
    • Header/Theme customization
  • Comments
    • Moderate comments and Spam
  • HELP

Thinking About Content

• What is the purpose of your site?
  • Promote news and events
  • Provide information about Library operations (hours, contacts)
  • Provide hard-to-find information
  • Provide access to local information
  • Local history
• How simple or complicated do you want the site to be?
• Who will add and update content?
• Who will check for dead links?
• What information do you NEED and WHERE do you want to put it?
  Home page (sidebar widgets) :: Pages :: Posts organized by Category
  • Widgets – Hours :: Catalog :: Images via Flickr :: Search boxes :: Audiobooks, Music and More
  • Pages – About :: Policies :: Feature Page :: Board Information :: Teens :: Kids :: Readers

Tips and Tricks

• ColorSchemer – For Themes that allow color customization
• Buttons – Use a photo editor to generate a hyperlinked ‘button’
• Simple How To guide for tasks like adding and editing images and making hyperlinked image buttons for a Text widget.