Web 2.0 Ideas for Canvas website
After analysing the ‘web 2.0′ ideas of The Times Online, I have developed some ideas on how we can make the features of web 2.0 be beneficial to our own Canvas website. I feel the benefits of web 2.0 – community, interactivity, accessibility, customisation, feedback – are essential for a website that targets students, and the implementation of these ideas could be the major factor in gauging how successful our site will be.
Possible web 2.0 ideas include: RSS Feeds, Flash, Comments, Blogs, E-mail & text alerts, Social bookmarking and Multimedia.
RSS Feeds
We could incorporate RSS feeds along the sidebar that are relative to each section, i.e. student news, sports news, entertainment news etc. In terms of having our own feeds, I think it would be good, but only appropriate if we updated content daily. If we were to stick to our original plan which was to update the site weekly, then users who would want to check for new content could simply check each week, rather than subscribe to a feed which they would ideally want to check daily. If implemented however, the feeds would help to keep users coming back to the site. One lesson learnt from my analysis of The Times site would be to stick to the conventional ‘orange feed icon’ and put it in a prominent place, to make it clear and accessible for users.
Flash
We decided as a group that we would use a flash sideshow on the homepage under the ‘Your Union’ section in the sidebar. A picture gallery of student pics will grab users’ attention as soon as they hit the site. Flash could also be used to create ‘photo-essay’ style features and to make a scrolling headline of latest news at the top of the page. The general benefit of using flash would be that it makes the site more attractive and student orientated.
Comments
It would be useful to incorporate comment boxes at the end of each news piece or feature. Allowing comments gives users a chance to give feedback to the articles and feel part of the Canvas community. This increased interactivity may also keep them coming back to the site. It would make sense not to have a forum for commenting, as this would be hard to maintain. By keeping all comments on the corresponding content pages, it can be easily managed and ensure all comments are associated with the article. Obviously this feature is open to abuse, so a form and a regulator are needed.
Blogs
I feel blogs can be extremely useful to our site, and possibly deserved a section of their own. There could be a blog for each section that is updated once in the middle of each week, half-way between update days, e.g. if we update content on a Friday, then post on the blogs on the Tuesday. They could be used to comment on latest issues/events/stories for each section, or as a personal thing to let users know how working on the site is going in, possibly acting as a preview to the ‘new content’. Targeting Farnham students specifically, we could ask each course to run their own course blog, which we could then link to from the site. The blogs would now have to be accessed on the sidebar. There is also a possibility of including a collection of user generated blogs, akin to Comment is Free, on Guardian Unlimited. We could have a blog section homepage linked from the homepage sidebar, and section specific blogs linked to from each section homepage. I would suggest hosting the blogs on external blogging platforms such as wordpress or typepad and linking to these. The benefits of adding blogs would be to generate more interest, more debate.
Social Bookmarking
We could make use of bookamarking, as it could seriously increase traffic to our site. Based on the assumption that the content is good enough to want to share to others and that our users would be bothered to bookmark it, it could help us reach a different user that may not have visited our site. People can use sites like del.icio.us to search for specific content, such as sport or entertainment news in Surrey and be directed to our site, where they may have previously just visited the Surrey Ad website. It could be an idea to focus social bookmarking efforts on content that we think would be worthwhile.
E-mail and text alerts
Obviously the amount of content on the site currently does not warrant this treatment. However, if it was updated regularly, an e-mail updating students on the latest content could be worthwhile. Thinking of UCCA student specifically, an all-campus email could be sent around letting students know what is new on the site, and could link out directly to the site. This would help generate more traffic, and be an excellent way of retaining readers.
Multimedia
Multimedia is one of the main benefits of accessing news content online. By adding audio, podcasts, embedded video and flash, we can re-purpose material from the newspaper and make it worth reading online again, or even better for a first time reader. As a group we decided that a Canvas Podcast would be appropriate, and this could be linked to from the homepage. Embedded video and audio could be place in the sidebar to compliment re-purposed or original copy, and increase interactivity on our site.
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How web 2.0 is The Times?
Competitor Analysis – Mainstream news media site: THE TIMES
You may remember earlier in the year that I looked at some student newspaper websites in preparation for starting to design our very own newspaper website. Well we thought it would be a good idea if we looked at how the big boys do it, so each member of the team was assigned a news media site to look at and analyse, focusing this time specifically on web 2.0. I went for The Times and you know what, it isn’t half bad!
DESIGN & INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
The Times Online, which was launched in 1996 was subject to a £10 million overhaul in early 2007. In an effort to be more web 2.0, they ditched the old black and white design in favour of a colour-coding scheme incorporating a rather surprisingly attractive lime green, blue and grey. One of the men behind the overhaul, Tomaso Capuano, calls it ‘classic with a twist’. Another creator, Jon Warden said the redesign process involved a discussion of “everything from YouTube to blogs to Amazon to the BBC to Google News“. It’s probably changed significantly since then, but I have to agree that it feels quite funky and in tune with the web 2.0 era. Hey – it even won News Site of the Year at the 2008 Newspaper Awards!
There is a lot of white space, rules, bold and light contrasts, and straight edges, that give the site a ‘clean-cut’, clutter-free image. The main content is highlighted typically on the left, with the latest main news stories clearly visible at the top of the page. The other main stories are grouped into their relevant sections, and follow beneath the top headlines.
The sidebar is used typically for adverts, most read stories, quick links, podcasts and search tools. The navigation is at the top of the screen, which is good as the user gets to see the entire main contents of the site without the need for a scroll. The header runs above it, but beneath a rather large flash advert, which causes the fold to be slightly higher than on some other news sites.
CONTENT
The majority of content on The Times Online is re-purposed, although there is a great deal that is specific to the site. As well as traditional methods of re-purposing, the Times also adds to the articles by including related links, allowing users to have their say, including audio and video wherever possible, and adding flash picture galleries. By including these various multimedia extras, The Times Online is taking advantage of the web’s potential, and giving stories available in the printed version an extra dimension, which could make them worth reading again.
WEB 2.0 FEATURES
Web 2.0 enhances creativity, information sharing, interactivity, customisable accessibility, and a sense of community between users. Many of the features described in ‘re-purposing’ above are web 2.0 features, but for the purpose of this analysis I will split each feature into sections: RSS Feeds, Flash, Comments, Blogs, E-mail & Text alerts, Social bookmarking, Links, Multimedia, Podcasts and Mobile News. From the sheer size of that list, we can begin to gauge how successful The Times incorporates web 2.0 features onto its sit.
Although not immediately recognisable from the homepage, The Times Online does take adavntage of ‘real simple syndication,’ all be it under the banner of ‘news feeds’ right at the bottom of the page. Once you have clicked on the link you see the ever present orange rss logo (that wasn’t present on the homepage) to let you know you’ve found the right place. There is easily over 100 feeds, ranging from top stories, to business, to specialist, to columnists, to blogs, to podcasts to… (to quote Jim – you get my drift).
The feeds allow users to keep up to date with articles, blogs and multimedia from Times Online by adding an RSS feed to a reader or compatible web browser to receive instant notifications of new content to view on the website. Each feed entry displays a headline, description and URL back to Times Online, or a link to a downloadable audio, video or pdf files. This tool is a perfect web 2.0 feature, and although a little hidden away, is simple and effective. Oh yeah – and they Twitter. – i.e. they up-date regularly on Twitter the latest headlines and links to the stories on the site.
FLASH
The Times Online takes advantage of flash via their picture galleries, scrolling headlines on the top of the homepage, and as an attractive yet efficient way of highlighting numerous feature/stories using minimal space on the homepage. Flash is also used for adverts – but lets not credit them with that shall we. Flash adds to the on-screen interactivity and allows more content to be presented in a smaller space.
At the end of each article, The Times Online allows you to ‘have your say’. This web 2.0 tool increases a sense of community amongst users, as often people now like to have their opinion on everything known to everyone (or that’s how it seems anyway). No really, the way I see it is that it is usually the same 50 people or so who comment on every article, and they probably just enjoy winding each other up – a glorified chat room. However, in terms of web 2.0, I guess it increases interactivity via discussion. Noticeably though, the comment form is concealed and instead you have to click -’have your say’, which at first is not all that obvious.
Although it aids the design by creating less clutter, the inclusion of a permanent comment would likely increase the number of comments left, thus creating a bigger, better and more active community. Comments are also encouraged via the ‘most commented on articles’ in the sidebar on the homepage, and the ‘call to send your views’ in the banner under the columnist promotion.
The Times Online has a good selection of typepad based blogs, although you have to click into the comment section before you can access them, which for me took about 10 minutes. Maybe I’m stupid. Maybe they’re stupid. Maybe it’s late and I just couldn’t think. Whatever the reason, they could be made a little more prominent. They use widgets cleverly to display recent comments, and take advantage of social bookmarking and feeds to draw readers into the blogs and keep them staying tuned, also allowing them to comment. Even though the blogs migrate to typepad, there is no real obvious design difference to that of the blogs and the main site, which ensures the transition, is smooth.
EMAIL AND TEXT ALERTS
The Times Online offers to send readers the news they want on the move, via e-mail news bulletins or short text alerts. The free e-mail service also includes previews of the next day’s newspaper.
After each article and after each blog post, The Times Online allows users to social bookmark the news story along with giving you the option to print or e-mail it. The site currently gives you icons that allow you to bookmark using Del.icio.us, Yahoo, Digg and Fark, although similarly to the RSS feeds icon, they are not as distinguishable as possible due to a design decision to make them blue to match the colour scheme. Social bookmarking allows users to share information they find interesting with other web users, and also keep articles of interest organised so they themselves can go back to it easily at a later date.
LINKS
Although not strictly speaking a web 2.0 feature, I feel if used in a certain way, can add to the web 2.0 experience. Related inks appear in the sidebar on every story, and also at the bottom of the page. These link out to related stories within the Times Online site, whilst also linking out to material of interest on other sites. The stories also often link to related blogs on the sites, which again link out to relevant material.
For the purpose of this analysis, when talking of multimedia I’m talking audio, and video. Whenever possible for a story, the site includes related videos and audio that adds to the story, increasing interactivity and participation. All the videos are collected and are viewable in the ‘Times Online TV’ section. The link/icon for this can be found at the bottom of the homepage under Services and Tools, along with podcasts, news feeds etc. The online TV section works well as Time’s very own Youtube, with all their videos viewable and easily searchable on one page.
The podcast section again comes under the banner of audio and video on The Times site, but more often than not related podcasts are promoted and linked to via the sidebar on the homepage or various content pages. There are lots of podcasts to choose from, but it seems the sport ones are the most popular. They are easily accessible, and there is a link to allow you to subscribe to them via itunes.
This could I guess come under multimedia, but basically the times offers a free mobile internet service that you can subscribe to by text or access via the internet on your phone. They have even made an iphone specific web page that is based solely around images, when touched link to the related stories – a pretty cool feature.
CONCLUSIONS
From all that analysis, I feel that The Times Online is a great example of how to do news sites. Since the re-launch, the design is one of the best I have seen, and it is really accessible for users. They make use of various web 2.0 techniques to engage and interact with the user, and have a lot of ‘exclusive’ content that cannot be found in the paper. When they do re-purpose content, they usually add multimedia features and link appropriately to make the story worth another visit. Via social bookmarking, comments and blogs, they have increased the sense of community and it is clear that users are leaving their mark on the site – which is good. The widget on the homepage showing the most visited, most commented, and most curious stories is a clear example of this, and in itself encourages more users to get involved. One downside is that in places due to the design scheme, non-standardised icons are used for feeds and social bookmarking, which could lead some lesser knowledgeable users believe that these tools do not exist.
All in all though a great site that makes great use of web 2.0, and hopefully we can take some of their ideas and try and emulate them with our own Canvas site. I hope to post some of these ideas up in my next post so keep an eye out.
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Squeeky bum time
Where have I been? My last post was over a month ago! The blame lies firmly at the door of ’squeeky bum time’ – a phrase coined by Sir Alex Ferguson to summarise the end of the Premier League football season when things are really tight and there is little room for error. Well it’s certainly squeeky bum time at Uni. The aforementioned print assessment deadline is looming, along with an online deadline, an essay deadline, a logbook deadline and a dissertation proposal for good measure… Oh the joy!
Basically I’m still alive. Expect to see a few posts regarding my online assessment in the coming days. As part of creating a website for my student newspaper, Canvas, every student was requested to conduct some competitor analysis. I’ve already written a post looking at other student newspaper sites, but I’m in the process of looking at how the professionals do it – namely The Times. Im also posting up some Web 2.0 ideas for the site. On a side note is it ‘two point nought’ or ‘two point O’? TomATEO – TOMARTO I guess!
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Long time no see
First things first – apologies for the long delay in posting. The last couple of weeks have flown by with the Uni workload ever increasing (plus United dumped the Gunners out the FA Cup = high alcohol consumption = low productivity). While I’m over using the equals sign, I might as well warn you, long catch up = long post!
Firstly we are trying to crank out the next edition of the newspaper – Canvas. I’ve come to realise that editing the sports section and playing for the football first team are roles that simply cannot work together efficiently. Having to rely on members of the other sports teams in the Uni to provide some copy with which I can edit and work with is proving a fruitless way of gathering content. I try to report on a few games myself, but I can’t be everywhere at once! The deadline for the copy was today. Notice WAS, meaning I didn’t hit the deadline and still waiting for copy. No doubt I’ll be laying out the page myself next week anyway, so for now this is no big deal.
As discussed before, we are working on creating a sister website for the newspaper in my online unit. After looking in my last post into how others do it, you will be glad to know we are now well on our way to starting to create the site. The class looked at the actual paper, which although very good, is quite traditional in both design and content. We wanted a more student focus, which coincidentally is an approach we are trying to work towards for the second issue of the paper. Nevertheless, we split the paper into five larger sections which we thought would be more suitable for the web. With section heads allocated for ‘News/Sport’, ‘Your Union’, ‘Entertainment & Lifestyle’ (yes that is ONE section), ‘Events’ and ‘Showcase’ , I along with Nereasha have been tasked with the design of the site. A scoot around the web brought me to a site called modernlifeisrubbish, that has some good advice for effective web design. My lecturer pointed us there before I’m sure, and with some sound advice on how to keep things simple I can see why. With these points in mind, we have started laying out the homepage visually in Fireworks, so we can later create the site in Dreamweaver by tracing tables over the Fireworks file (a technique learnt in the Dreamweaver tutorials that Jim runs through with us). Seems simple – but it’s early days!
Alongside this, in Print we have begun work on our final assessment. Already you ask? Well this is because we have to effectively produce an original mini-magazine. With four men making up my group, we thought a men’s lifestyle mag would be the best option. We’re aiming to plug the gap between your lads mags – FHM, Maxim, Loaded etc.. and your more upmarket, aspirational mag – GQ, Arena, Esquire. I guess this has already been tried (My lecturer quotes early FHM?), or maybe their isn’t a market for such a mag.
We going with it anyway. Brainstorming names, we went from Acquiesce, to Subscribe, to ‘In’ (it could be known as In Magazine?). We tagged it with Invest. In style. Insatiable. At the moment nobody reads this blog, but if you happen to stumble upon it let me know what you think? We’re aiming to be the refined men’s interest magazine covering accessible fashion, current affairs, entertainment, technology, women (quite a generalisation I know), and sport. Our target is the younger astute male, BC1 18-30 , who aspires to be upmarket but doesn’t have the high disposable income. We’ve got some good feature ideas that hopefully will distinguish us from the rest, but for now they are under wraps!
So as you can see I’m quite busy, and that’s just Uni stuff. DV8 are requesting copy from me for their up and coming Guildford/Woking ‘out and about’ guide, Valentines came and went, the sports centre where I work want me to look at ‘jazzing up’ (their words) the text on their site, and I’m hooked on Devil May Cry 4on Xbox 360. Oh the life of a journo student!
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Tags: Canvas, My Work, Online Journalism
Ok so I left for lunch on Friday promising to post back looking at some current student newspaper websites that are currently online. Well it’s now two days later, and I guess you could say that I took a pretty long lunch break. In reality, work combined with watching my United boys embarrass themselves at Old Trafford, today of all days, is the real excuse.
After analysing some mainstream newspaper sites, I decided to focus in on how other students are doing it. If my class are to produce a successful incarnation of Canvas then it would be wise to look at the competition. Googling ’student newspaper websites’ proved very fruitful (good ol’ google). Funnily enough, it took me to a post on another student journo’s blog, Dave Lee’s jBlog. Turns out he’s the editor of his university newspaper ‘The Linc’, and back in August he decided to attempt to put it online via a website. The post is great, as it links to various other student websites and discusses what he thinks are ‘must-haves’ for a newspaper website. Definitely worth a look!
His post directs you to a number of sites. The first, and in my view the best, is Oxford Uni’s Cherwell 24. I agree with Dave that the content may not be entirely suitable in places, but hey – we got the content sorted. The layout and design is spot on. The main navigation bar is suitably incorporated with the top banner, with the main content highlighted in the centre. An automatic/manual multi-headline mechanism at the very top of the page is a great way for a site to focus on a number of main stories, whilst the site and blogs seem to be kept very up-to-date, with new stories and post appearing nearly on a daily basis. Multimedia videos, polls and a print archive are all great features that our site should attempt to re-create.
Dave goes on to look at Cardiff’s Gair Rhydd and UClan’s Pluto. There is also his own newspaper’s site, theLinc, which since his post now seems to be well established. All three, unlike the Cherwell site, uses the left hand column to hold the main navigation. The Giar Rydd is the more modern looking of all the sites, with plenty of white space, and a content area that seems a lot less cluttered than others. Larger text and pictures highlight the main stories at the top, with smaller text and accompanying pictures used to display the smaller stories on the main homepage. This type of layout that reflects editorial choices on the site is something that we could draw inspiration from for our site.
UClan’s Pluto and the Linc are very similar sites, in that they are relatively small scale, and are focused strongly on text. Although this approach would be easier for us to adopt at first, I feel we should attempt to have a strong visual presence with our site, so as to reflect our status as a cutting edge, up-and-coming art university.
Keeping our original Canvas masthead from the paper is essential in order to build on our brand, whilst this could be aided by keeping a running appropriate colour scheme throughout the site. If we kept our original headings from the paper, News, Sport, Lifestyle, Entertainment etc. then this could form the basis of our nav bar, and enable us to create a multi-page site. Recent leads within each section could be highlighted on our main hompage, with our big lead splash at the top. I agree with Dave that blogs and multimedia are essential to have on the site, and it may be an idea to talk to some of the radio students to arrange the publication of some of their popular podcasts. I like the idea of .pdf of our current Canvas issue to be accessible on the site, so that’s another thing to try and attempt.
More research is clearly needed, but for now I feel I have a rough idea of where we should be heading. Students like Dave Lee have set the benchmark by which we can measure how successful our site can become. I’ll let you know how we progress.
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Tags: Canvas, Online Journalism Class, Student Journalism
Free music for all
Completely off the subject of student websites, but just as I browse the web I thought I’d share with you a rather useful website – Deezer.com. The site allows you to listen to copyrighted music, and keep albums and playlists saved on your account so you can listen to your favourite music whenever you sign in. A pretty good idea I must say! Obviously you never actually own the music, as it is streamed to you, so you could never burn your playlists onto disc, or export them to your itunes library. But, it’s free, and handy if you spend a lot of your time on the web and want to listen to free music on the go, and do it legally.
Try Wikipedia for the ins and outs on how they can get away with doing this, but in the face of all this music piracy ‘hate’ that surrounds the internet and music downloads, it is certainly refreshing to know that there are some legal ways to access free music without having to wait for the stuttering YouTube videos to load up. If you listen to music via YouTube you know what I mean…
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Tags: General, Music
The first task we were greeted with in online this week was to develop some ideas for a website that we could produce and run as a group. To think of some original ideas for a website that we could all find a role working on was initially quite daunting. However our lecturer Jim suggested something quite achievable – a site for the student paper.
It made sense. Last year saw the founding of ‘Canvas’, UCCA’s first student newspaper at Farnham. With issue one a huge success, issue two is well and truly under way and pencilled in for an early March release. As Sports Editor, I’m currently busy gathering stories for my section, which hopefully will be increased to two pages in this issue (given that it is the best section).
Anyway this is the current website Canvas holds. Shocking I know. But, every cloud has a silver lining. The web-hosting is there for us to take advantage of, and the opportunity this unit offers in allowing us to work on a group site could enable us to do just that. If we could set up something worthwhile, then I would quite happily help keep it up and running until I leave Uni. I see the site as having even more potential than the paper, but we can go into that another time.
So this begs the question – what should a student newspaper website be like?
It was suggested in class to look at the regional’s sites and take note of the way they do things. I guess it’s a good place to start, but in reality we all know we will never be able to achieve what they can. Nevertheless, I think we should aim more Guardian, than Daily Star, in the sense of design and layout. The white space, the simplicity of the text headlines on the left hand side, the more graphical link bar on the right are all elements I like. It’s all achievable too, just a watered-down version.
I’ll be back for a closer look at some actual student websites. Just got to grab some lunch. Hold tight.
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Tags: Online Journalism, Student Journalism
New Year – New Blog
Goodbye Blogger, hello WordPress! Pancake Day has been and gone, and the New Year is not so ‘new’ any longer. Yet a new semester has bought fresh challenges, in both the print and online elements of my Journalism degree course. Now halfway through my degree, I thought it was time to ditch the old online class blog that I created in Blogger back in 2006, and move to WordPress, in an attempt to revitalise my dying blog.
I hope to post on this blog a lot more than I did previously, covering a range of issues that arise from the media, my course, my career and my interests. I have to make up for a lot of lost time, but for now I’m off to Tescos. Oh joy!
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Tags: General
