CMS rollout - 18 months in

Almost exactly 18 months ago the University Library was the first Web CMS-managed site to go live. We’ve come a long way since then, so here’s a quick list of the sites currently powered by Site Manager:

• University Library and Archives (February 2009)
• Communications (April 2009)
• News and events (April 2009)
• Department of Chemistry (May 2009)
• Alcuin College (May 2009)
• Goodricke College (September 2009)
• Department of Physics (September 2009)
• Student Support pages, including housing and money and support, welfare and health (October 2009)
• York Concerts (October 2009)
• The York Management School (November 2009)
• Department of Computer Science (December 2009)
• Centre for Medieval Studies (January 2010)
• Information for staff about supporting students (February 2010)
• York Environmental Sustainability Institute (February 2010)
• Department of Archaeology (February 2010)
• Wentworth College (April 2010)
• Research and Enterprise sites (public research pages, staff research information and Working with the University pages) (May 2010)
• About the University pages, including new Governance and Management information (May 2010)
• Department of Health Sciences (May 2010)
• Department of Psychology (May 2010)
• Halifax College (May 2010)
• Vanbrugh College (May 2010)
• School of Politics, Economics and Philosophy (June 2010)
• Department of History (June 2010)
• Stockholm Environment Institute at York (June 2010)
• Environment Department (July 2010)
• Centre for Health Economics (July 2010)
• James College (July 2010)
• Derwent College (July 2010)
• IT Services (July 2010)
• Langwith College (August 2010)
• Department of Educational Studies (August 2010)
• Department of Economics and Related Studies (August 2010)

And of course there are many more to come...

Exhibition knives and homepages

During my recent attendance at the IWMW conference in Sheffield, we paid a visit to the Kelham Island Industrial Museum and I spotted the Exhibition Knife pictured below.

As Paul noted when he posted the now infamous XKCD homepage strip, we’re currently planning some homepage changes. I thought the 365-blade knife was a nice metaphor for what a homepage would turn into if everybody with an opinion had their way: a blade for every possible user and every possible task, but all rendered useless by the sheer volume of surrounding alternatives. We’ll try to avoid that trap as we design our new page :)

(Click the image to see a larger version and to appreciate the detail. It’s an impressive piece of craftsmanship, created to showcase the talent and expertise in Sheffield’s manufacturing heyday. Also on display were other Exhibition Year creations, including a yard long saw and an oversized, intricately decorated file).

Zen coding for rapid HTML authoring

Writing HTML is fiddly. All those angle brackets, quotation marks, slashes and the rest have always tested my keyboard dexterity. Dreamweaver and other editors try to help, but none compare to a brilliant new(-ish) multi-editor plugin called Zen Coding.

Instead of writing HTML syntax, Zen Coding lets you write CSS selector-style abbreviations and hit a button to expand them to HTML. It’s lightening quick and lets you write HTML snippets in seconds. Simple additions to the CSS syntax allow for output of multiple tags (eg. li*2 becomes <li></li><li></li>
) and automatic numbering (eg. link-1, link-2). It’ll do even more clever stuff than that too, but I’m still a novice!

A really quick example:

blockquote#boxout>h2+p+ul>li*3>a[href="/link/"]

expands instantly to

<blockquote id="boxout">
<h2></h2>
<p></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="/link/"></a></li>
<li><a href="/link/"></a></li>
<li><a href="/link/"></a></li>
</ul>
</blockquote>

Filling the empty code with content is easy too because there’s a handy ‘next sensible spot’ keyboard shortcut to skip from the H2 to the P to the LI to the HREF etc.

The one gap for me is that I have to use a text editor to use the Zen Coding expansions. Most of my coding is done in Firebug or within our CMS so I can’t use the expansions directly where the code needs to be. I’ve always got a text editor open so it’s not a big deal, but a Firefox/Chrome extension or integration with a generic text expansion utility (as Paul blogged about previously) would be even more brilliant.

There’s a full tutorial on Smashing Magazine, including the rapid-fire demo video embedded below which shows just how fast it can be and what it’s capable of.

Educational Studies goes live

The Department of Educational Studies has gone live in the Web CMS.

The move was part of a strategic review of the Department's marketing and positioning, and there are further changes to come.

Langwith College now live

The new Langwith College website is now live.

The site uses the College colours of yellow and black, and includes photos of the yellow and black window foils along the Langwith-Derwent corridor. These were specially designed for the College and show aspects of College life and special features of Langwith. The College shield has been redrawn and simplified to make it easier to see online.

Langwith is the eighth and final College to go into the Web CMS.