50 tips to improve your website
DESCRIPTION
Regardless of your platform or theme, learn best practices to make your news website stand out with these 50 tips.TRANSCRIPT
50Logan Aimone, MJE // School Newspapers Online
TIPSTO IMPROVE YOUR WEBSITE
Tuesday, March 18, 14
50TIPSORGANIZING THE HOME PAGE
Tuesday, March 18, 14
50 TIPSTO IMPROVE
YOUR WEBSITE
Publish often.
Don’t be tied to print publication dates. The website should be used to communicate news immediately.
Go online first.
ORGANIZING THE HOME PAGE
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Consume online journalism.
Pay attention to how you read it, what works and what doesn’t. Figure out how to emulate the models you like.
ORGANIZING THE HOME PAGE
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Consume online journalism.ORGANIZING THE HOME PAGE
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Consume online journalism.ORGANIZING THE HOME PAGE
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Plan for breaking news.
Have a plan so your staff is ready to report immediately and add to coverage as time allows.
ORGANIZING THE HOME PAGE
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Plan for breaking news.ORGANIZING THE HOME PAGE
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Kirkwood High School, Kirkwood, Mo.thekirkwoodcall.com
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Trim the categories.
Only include those categories in your navigation bar or on your homepage to which you publish regularly.
ORGANIZING THE HOME PAGE
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Trim the categories.ORGANIZING THE HOME PAGE
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One categoryper story.
Assign a story to just one category, either a parent or child. Stories should not show up in multiple places on the homepage.
ORGANIZING THE HOME PAGE
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Include widgets that make sense.
Content categories, polls, most popular stories, video/photo streams.
Reconsider weather widgets — no one relies on your website for a weather report.
ORGANIZING THE HOME PAGE
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YOUR WEBSITE
Create a clear hierarchy on your homepage.
Help your reader know what’s important.
ORGANIZING THE HOME PAGE
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Redesign your homepage for special events/reports.
Understand why the viewer is coming to your site that day.
ORGANIZING THE HOME PAGE
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50 TIPSTO IMPROVE
YOUR WEBSITE
Redesign your homepage for special events/reports.
ORGANIZING THE HOME PAGE
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Benilde-St. Margaret’s SchoolSt. Louis Park, Minn.bsmknighterrant.com
Tuesday, March 18, 14
50TIPSDISPLAYING CONTENT
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50 TIPSTO IMPROVE
YOUR WEBSITE
Tabs or indents are not necessary.
WordPress will insert space between paragraphs to indicate a break.
ORGANIZING & DISPLAYING CONTENT
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YOUR WEBSITE
Link related stories together.
Use a related stories box, hyperlinks or chapters to provide backstory to the reader.
ORGANIZING & DISPLAYING CONTENT
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50 TIPSTO IMPROVE
YOUR WEBSITE
Use contextual linking within your stories.
Direct the reader to explanatory pages, source documents or more information.
ORGANIZING & DISPLAYING CONTENT
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Use relative paths for all links within your site.
This means just the part after the domain name and slash (start with the slash)www.yourdomain.com/news/majorstory
/news/majorstory
ORGANIZING & DISPLAYING CONTENT
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YOUR WEBSITE
Use short links, not URLs. Even better, use relative short links.
This makes it easy to find stories even if the headline or category change.www.yourdomain.com/?p=1234
/?p=1234
ORGANIZING & DISPLAYING CONTENT
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YOUR WEBSITE
Your main image should be set as your Featured Image.
This ensures an image will come up with the category widget and will be more likely to be seen on the homepage or category page.
ORGANIZING & DISPLAYING CONTENT
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Separate the writer’s name into a custom field.
This helps with search and organizing the site because the byline won’t show up as the preview text.
ORGANIZING & DISPLAYING CONTENT
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Use original images.
(or at least Creative Commons images with appropriate “share” qualities)
ORGANIZING & DISPLAYING CONTENT
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Add captions (and credits) to all photos.
ORGANIZING & DISPLAYING CONTENT
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Be an editor. Curate only the best images for a gallery or slideshow.
Don’t add dozens of photos just because you can. Avoid poor quality or repetitive images.
ORGANIZING & DISPLAYING CONTENT
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Have a plan for tags, which allow readers to quickly search for related content.
Use tags for recurring people and topics, and to cross-categorize. Tag clouds don’t help much.
ORGANIZING & DISPLAYING CONTENT
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YOUR WEBSITE
Have a plan for tags, which allow readers to quickly search for related content.
ORGANIZING & DISPLAYING CONTENT
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YOUR WEBSITE
Humor and lighter content can bring readers to your site.
Once they are there, have more substantial content for them to discover.
ORGANIZING & DISPLAYING CONTENT
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Embed Web elements for interactivity.
https://www.thinglink.com/
http://infogr.am/
http://prezi.com/
http://www.easel.ly/
ORGANIZING & DISPLAYING CONTENT
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YOUR WEBSITE
Embed Web elements for interactivity.
ORGANIZING & DISPLAYING CONTENT
21Grosse Pointe North HSGrosse Pointe Woods, Mich.mygpn.com
Tuesday, March 18, 14
50 TIPSTO IMPROVE
YOUR WEBSITE
Embed Web elements for interactivity.
ORGANIZING & DISPLAYING CONTENT
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YOUR WEBSITE
Embed Web elements for interactivity.
ORGANIZING & DISPLAYING CONTENT
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Use text as needed.
Videos and pictures can tell a full story.
ORGANIZING & DISPLAYING CONTENT
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50TIPSUNPUBLISHED CONTENT
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Use the Paste as Plain Text tool.
Avoid awkward characters and formatting.
MANAGING UNPUBLISHED CONTENT
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Use the Paste as Plain Text tool.
Avoid awkward characters and formatting.
MANAGING UNPUBLISHED CONTENT
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Resize your photos before uploading and use Photoshop’s Save for Web option.
This guarantees faster load times because only the essential information is stored.
MANAGING UNPUBLISHED CONTENT
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50TIPSDESIGN PRACTICES
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YOUR WEBSITE
Select a color scheme that evokes your school but doesn’t necessarily match it.
Colors for sports uniforms don’t always look good online.
DESIGN PRACTICES
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Select a good color scheme.DESIGN PRACTICES
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Community HS, Ann Arbor, Mich.www.chscommunicator.com
Peninsula HS, Gig Harbor, Wash.www.phsoutlook.com
Tuesday, March 18, 14
50 TIPSTO IMPROVE
YOUR WEBSITE
Select a good color scheme.DESIGN PRACTICES
25
Lewisville (Texas) HSwww.farhar.net
Manchester (Ct.) HSwww.mhsredline.com
Tuesday, March 18, 14
50 TIPSTO IMPROVE
YOUR WEBSITE
The Web has all colors.Don’t use black and white photos.
DESIGN PRACTICES
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Use horizontal photos.
Vertical images are not as Web-friendly as horizontal images in most themes.
Vertical or square images might be awkwardly cropped.
DESIGN PRACTICES
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Use horizontal photos.DESIGN PRACTICES
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Use horizontal photos.DESIGN PRACTICES
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Lots of empty space from an irregular
photo size.
Tuesday, March 18, 14
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YOUR WEBSITE
Use horizontal photos.DESIGN PRACTICES
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Face is cropped from photo.
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Design applies to the home page and the story page. Consider “the look” of each story.
Don’t just use the default template.
DESIGN PRACTICES
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Use other material (B-roll, pics, pull quotes, ads, related links) to keep the reader’s attention on the story page.
DESIGN PRACTICES
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Design a favicon.
Find instructions online to create a 16x16 pixel icon to insert into your header code.
DESIGN PRACTICES
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Go wild! Design a bullet point image.
You can add code to use an image or character.
DESIGN PRACTICES
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50TIPSTECHNICAL TIPS
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Don’t use FTP for file sharing or storage.
A site like Dropbox or Google Drive/Docs is made for these purposes.
TECHNICAL TIPS
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Prevent your site from being hacked by performing updates to WordPress, theme and plugins.
TECHNICAL TIPS
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Use plugins sparingly because they slow the speed at which the site loads.
TECHNICAL TIPS
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Use the iframe embed code, not plugins, for YouTube, Vimeo, Issuu.
If the plugin is deactivated, the rest of your site will not be affected.
TECHNICAL TIPS
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Use responsive design because a site will be viewed on multiple devices.
TECHNICAL TIPS
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50TIPSSTAFF & CLASS MANAGEMENT
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YOUR WEBSITE
Have a key student responsible for the website with a title and position equivalent to managing editor or editor in chief.
There are multiple configurations, but the website should not be an afterthought or a clerical position.
STAFF & CLASS MANAGEMENT
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Develop a social media editor position.
Have that person be an expert in social media. Teach the other staff members. Develop and implement policies.
STAFF & CLASS MANAGEMENT
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YOUR WEBSITE
Use Google Analytics to learn about your audience.
Who’s visiting?When? What did they look at? For how long?
STAFF & CLASS MANAGEMENT
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Use Google Analytics to learn about your audience.
STAFF & CLASS MANAGEMENT
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Infrequent posting then content dump.
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Use Google Analytics to learn about your audience.
STAFF & CLASS MANAGEMENT
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Steady weekday traffic
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Develop and implement a comments policy.
STAFF & CLASS MANAGEMENT
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Push your staff. Write more. Gain followers. Try new things.
Set goals based on analytics results.
STAFF & CLASS MANAGEMENT
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Accept local advertisements to create revenue.
Combine with print for a package.
Use analytics to pitch to certain advertisers.
STAFF & CLASS MANAGEMENT
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Install an AdSense widget on your site to create revenue.
This will serve ads to users based on their browser history, and you can limit to broad categories.
STAFF & CLASS MANAGEMENT
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50TIPSPROMOTIONS
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Use the same social media as your audience. Follow all students, teachers and coaches.
Use as a source for promotion via sharing.
Use as a source for potential news and story ideas.
PROMOTIONS
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Use your Twitter feed to tease to your website.
You don’t need your feed on the site unless it is sharing news that is not on your site.
PROMOTIONS
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Consider having more than one Twitter feed that brings new news to the site.
A sports account for live tweets at sporting events helps for those who might be interested (while not annoying those who aren’t).
PROMOTIONS
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QR codes can link print material to the Web — and drive traffic.
PROMOTIONS
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Post your links on Google Plus to increase prominence of your stories in the search results.
PROMOTIONS
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Send original Tweets and Facebook posts to create traffic.
Have a personality, not an auto-feed.
PROMOTIONS
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Broaden your audience beyond students and parents.
Use Reddit or other social media to share and discuss articles.
PROMOTIONS
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Logan Aimone, MJE // School Newspapers [email protected] schoolnewspapersonline.com
QUESTIONS?FIRE AWAY.
Tuesday, March 18, 14