The Request for Information (RFI) for the Content Management System is out to a host of vendors and should be completed at the end of this week. Hopefully, this will provide us the information that we need to move forward with assigning a budget and launching an Request for Proposal (RFP) in January.
Looking at the long term value of the WordPress server, we are investing time into the theme. With the possibility of looking at a new look and feel to the Web domain becoming more likely in the spring, this won’t be the final version of the theme, but I believe it is a good intermediate theme.
Let me know what your thoughts are on the theme. We will likely be releasing a version with a left navigation bar soon as well.
An update for where we are at. I am working on two things at the moment.
Very exciting!
Between support calls and various other projects and fires for the day, I have come close to what I feel is going to be a very useful 404 page. Borrowing the right wording from Xavier and a similar layout - it just feels elegant. It will do until the Web Advisory Committee has a chance to review it.
I am very happy with the look and functionality of the page. One issue remains with the page, and this may be just when it is being called through an .htaccess file:
ErrorDocument 404 /404.php
Oh, the plans I have for this page. Oh, the plans.
Interestingly, the above code works very well. But the below code doesn’t. And I am sure there is a good reason though it escapes me at this time.
ErrorDocument 404 http://www.yourdomain.edu/404.php
Have you seen the Dr. Gary Strobel image on the home page? If not, you might be blind or you haven’t been going to the home page recently. Check out his research if you haven’t already. It is very exciting for MSU, Montana, and the world. Dr. Strobel deserves an incredible amount of praise.
Dr. Strobel’s announcement was just the first of a new phase of a changes in the MSU home page. We plan to feature more large profiles of faculty/staff, students, events and incredible news that happens so frequently in our microcosm of Montana State University. Upcoming features that will be featured are Ag Appreciation Weekend and the Cat/Griz football game. This really is just one of the small steps to making our home page much more versatile and a more effective communications tool. Also, we will be featuring new photography on the home page as well!
One issue I am beginning to look at is developing a custom 404 error page for the montana.edu Web domain. Right now, we have:
Look at those bells and whistles of a default 404 page.
While it was always on the back of my mind to improve this document - it has never reached the top of the “to-do” list, until now. I am looking at some great improvements, mostly brought on by the talk given by Xavier University at HighEdWeb2008. Xavier has very useful 404 error page, both for the end user and the Webmaster alike.
I encourage you to follow the link above to see it beyond my 390px screen shot.
I am going to use their page as a model for MSU, implementing some of our own tools like a job ticketing system to report broken links that currently does not exist. Know of a student that needs an internship?
In combination with their already excellent model, I will be integrating some of the Google Webmaster tool code, and possibly some recommendations from A List Apart and 4 Guys from Rolla. If you are interested in following this or have recommendations please let me know. Always check out A List Apart and 4 Guys from Rolla (more of an asp programming resource), two fantastic Web resources.
