Feature stories on the university's main home page

[Rachel Reuben]

Quick poll for those of you who have feature stories on your university's primary home page:

1) How often are the stories updated?
2) Who is responsible for writing the stories?
3) How many people in total are involved in the process from writing to designing to Web production to get these stories up/changed?

Can you include your URL in your response?

Thanks! :)

* Follow-up question: Can you describe your technical implementation of this feature?

[Aaron Knight, Web Developer]

http://www.esf.edu

1) Every couple of weeks, sometimes more frequently. Depends on what's happening.
2) Stories are generally generated out of the Office of Communications staff (which includes our web staff)
3) Usually 1 or 2 writers, 1 to proof, and there are 2 on web staff... so upper limit of 5ish? Depends if there's art/photography involved.

Aaron Knight (@farktal) at SUNY-ESF

[Aaron Knight, Web Developer]

To answer the follow-up question: we have an in-house generated news and events management system, which allows news to be distributed. Our web developers still manually select the news that hits the home page since it takes a different form, though the whole system is subscribable via RSS or other means.

[Shelley Keith]

1.) up to a couple of times a week, much less frequently during the summer.
2.) the University editor
3.) I built her a Wordpress site and pull the rss feed into the homepage. Anything she wants on the homepages gets categorized as featured. She posts the stories and photos.

[Michael Fienen]

1 - depends on the time of year, but I'd say at least a story a day, give or take, sometimes several. Slower during the summer.
2 - PR
3 - I think just one mainly, though several people do have the capacity, but I believe one person handles a given story start to finish. 2 if you count the photog taking a picture for them once in a while. The CMS automates everything else.

Note that this is very much PR copy though, it's not necessarily "written for the web."

[Shelley Keith]

[Note that this is very much PR copy though, it's not necessarily "written for the web."] - same here, these are essentially press releases that are stuck out on the web. We rarely even have links to relevant sites or registration forms as part of the copy.

[Whitney Shaw]

1) This isn't very consistent, we could have nothing for a couple weeks, and then get hit with 3-4 stories in a week. We typically try to update at least once a week.

2) We have a Marketing/Communications Department that is in charge of writing all the stories that appear on our homepage.

3) I would say about 4 people (not counting anyone being interviewed who may need to sign off). We have a writer, marketing director, communications director, and then myself to post.

http://www.mcnallysmith.edu

Thanks!

[Patrick Burt]

1. We have news stories in the center column on http://www.ucf.edu and in the side bars on some of the interior pages of the site, http://www.ucf.edu/academics/.

2. The stories are pulled from our Newsroom site (http://news.ucf.edu) which is the News and Information office's web site. They have a team of writers.

3. The process at this point is pretty automated as UCF.edu and news.ucf.edu use the same software for CMS. It is essentially a check box to post on UCF.edu. We are also looking at adding a RSS feed pick-up on UCF.edu for another community based news site called http://today.ucf.edu. The idea is that we could pipe in RSS to keep stories updated and current as they posted to other sites.

[Nick DeNardis]

1. Daily
2. The stories come from various sources. Central PR, a school, college or department.
3. Numerous people are involved with writing the stories but we have one central Web Content Administrator for the homepage and they make the ultimate decision what goes up and for how long. They also consult the rest of the web services staff for feedback before posting a story to the homepage.

[Tim Nekritz]

1) Depends on time of year. I look to rotate front-page stories at least once a week (maybe more in these busy months) while classes are on, but in slow news times (summer, winter break) perhaps less often.

2) Our director of public affairs and I (the utility infielder) write the stories.

3) I'm usually the one updating what stories go where, with (as noted above) the director and I creating content. Since our template has been around for years, saying any Web developers are currently involved would be a stretch.

Good luck with the information gathering.

[Brenden Sparks]

1) Daily
2) Public Affairs staff
3) An editor in Public Affairs selects previously written stories to be run on the home page and provides myself and my immediate supervisor with a list for the following week's "banner schedule." My supervisor usually composes the banner graphics and uploads the files each morning. If he is unavailable, I make the modifications and/or uploads.

URL) http://www.fullerton.edu

Currently our campus doesn't have any CMS in place, so everything is done manually, from uploading news stories, archiving pages, and cross-promoting links.

[Kirpaul Babar]

1) Depends on how important a press release/news item is. Once a week usually.
2) Media Relations
3) Only the Media Relations person at this point. She uploads the story to the web and indicates that it should be displayed on the hompage. At one point, the programmer/designer created the utility for them to do this.

Can you include your URL in your response?

http://www.cobleskill.edu

-Kirpaul (@Kirpaul)

[Jessica]

http://www.suffolk.edu

1) Daily

2) Writing - all major areas of the university as content providers via CMS, promotion to the homepage is determined by Public Affairs

3) Anywhere from 20-40, content provided varies over time from different departments