Noteworthy…
A new toy for our contributors: a (very poor) attempt at sticky notes for web and news pages. Still, apparently, it's the thought that counts… ;o)
Posted by Alex on Tue 12th February 2008
Too much to do, too little time (and no clue how to do it)…
Too much going on at the moment to get my head around, and even more I can't begin to work on because I just don't have time…
What's happening…
- Asking every student with a passing interest in media to get involved with writing and designing for the Union this year,
- Looking at ways of re-organising the media teams to make it easier for the Union's strong and diverse media content to make it into the student population's consciouness - better sharing of news, better communications between the various media groups, and encouraging more - and faster - communications between students and student groups, and the Union,
- Building up - with more than a little bit of help - a large amount of training materials and opportunities for students to get a lot more from being involved with UPSU Media. Ben Norman's been working hard on some journalistic training which made for strangely compelling reading over the weekend,
- Directory 2007 - Mike Cooter and Steve Baker have been working their arses off for this, and it's coming together nicely I think,
- Pompey Guide - Gamel Oki (Pugwash designer extraordinaire) has been cracking the whip to get me writing for the Pompey Guide 2007, so when you come across the really boring couple of pages, you can blame me,
- New newspaper - we now need to start thinking about a name, layouts, designs, content and presentation styles, and how much space we're going to have (or not) per issue. Don't worry - I'm confident we'll squeeze it all in nicely,
- Still setting up the iMacs for UPSU Media use - no sooner do I think it's all done and ready to be unleashed when someone thinks of another program to install,
- Loads of work on the UPSU Groups and NUS Registration systems,
- Building up a long list of UoP-related Facebook groups so we can get our news out to even more students than before,
- Sabbs DJing in Lux on the 28th September, around 9pm - yehay!
- New season of Heroes coming shortly - will it be any good?
- Poking fun at abusive freshers who don't have the nous to sign out of their accounts before posting abusive comments on the website ;o)
What's not happening…
- The blogs homepage being redesigned,
- The forums template being redesigned,
- Grad Ball videos being edited down (actually, that gives me an idea…),
- UPSU Groups being finished, with comments, forums, photo and document uploads and many other things, err, not being done,
- My to-do list getting much shorter.
Tomorrow we're off for some staff bondage while climbing trees on a hovercraft… Something like that…
/Al - Meeja Whore
Posted by Alex on Mon 17th September 2007
I wonder…
… if there's enough room on the UPSU.net homepage for “What is UPSU?” and “Take a tour of UPSU.net” links? There's certainly a good argument for both; how many students at the University of Portsmouth - or outside of it, for that matter - know that the Union is in fact two companies - UPSU and UPEL - and they do two very different jobs under the same roof, for largely the same target audience?
And also, while we're on the subject, how many people really know how huuuge a website UPSU.net is, and what it can offer students?
I think it might be time to reassess how well the Union promotes what it actually does: there's a helluva lot going on at the Union throughout the year, and pretty much every student - whether they're resident in Pompey or a distance learner - can benefit from at least something going on here.
In the meantime, I'm trying to figure out how we can a) streamline the galleries so they're as simple to use and update as, say, Flickrdotcom (or, for that matter, whether we should just invest in a Flickr account and put all our photos up there instead?) and b) really expand peoples' public profiles into something useful and interesting to wander around.
/al - reading standingonthebox.blogspot.com
Posted by Alex on Sat 26th May 2007
Tabs, tags and groups
(Health warning: this post is very boring…)
The last couple of weeks, and this weekend especially, have been a geeky code-pushing time for me as I try to cram in some much-needed site development.
I've finally turned on the tagging system, which lets you find blog entries, web pages, news articles and members by keywords, and I've been working for the last couple of days to tidy up the code that creates peoples' public profiles so I'm ready to start writing the tabs code (which lets you see all the content a member has created on UPSU.net). I've also just finished working my way through the 5,000-ish-lines of code that make up the UPSU Groups system, ready to incorporate group management into the site.
I'm going to ramble on a bit about each of these three features, because they're quite important to how UPSU.net is going to grow as a community site over the next 12 months. I hope…!
Tagging
The tagging system has been in development for over a year now, and it's more-or-less finished, bar a couple of bugs that mean some results don't show up when they should.
“Tagging” is a way of adding keywords to your content - blog entries, web pages, news articles, your profile, and photos, to let other people search for your content - and everyone's content - about a particular “thing”. For example, this blog entry is tagged with “development”, and you can find other blog entries by me about development by clicking the tag link at the top of this blog entry.
This also means you can search for other members of UPSU.net by their interests, and once the new profile pages have been finished, this should make a lot more sense.
The best thing about the tagging system, though, are tag clouds, which graphically represent the top 100, 200, or however many tags which are the most popular in a given area. You can see what I mean by taking a look at the tags homepage.
One other benefit of this is how the tagging system works with blogs: your blog's web address is something like “upsu.net/blogs/johnsmith”. If you tag a few blog entries with “football”, you can find a list of all these blog entries at “upsu.net/blogs/johnsmith/football”, and a miniature tag cloud - the top 15-or-so tags used in the blog you're viewing - is shown on the right of every blog page belonging to that author.
I've also tried to make it as easy as possible to tag blog entries - you simply have to type a new tag on each line in the “Tag this diary entry” box (when you write or edit your blog), and your tags can be more than one word, e.g. “top 40 chart tunes”.
Anyone who's a member of UPSU.net can start a blog - just sign-in and go to upsu.net/profile/content/blogs to find out more.
- More information on the tags homepage.
Member profiles
Everyone who's a member of UPSU.net has a member's profile. This lists as much - or as little - about you as you like, and also lists your UPSU.net content, including your forum posts, any comments you've made (but you can still leave anonymous comments if you'd rather simply by logging out when you want to post a comment), your blog entries, and - coming in the near future - your UPSU.net friends and group memberships.
Your profile also has a “contact me” page which lists your contact details - if you've specifically said you want them to be visible - and, for signed-in members, an “e-mail me” form which sends an e-mail to you without the sender finding out your e-mail address, as well as a “my picture” page if you've uploaded a photo of yourself.
If you're a contributor on UPSU.net, you can also create web pages and news articles, and upload photo galleries - these will also be shown on your public profile so you'll have an easy way to find all the work you've done on the site.
This is quite a lot of content so, to make it easier to sift through it all, I've begin splitting the profile pages up into “tabs” of content. At the moment you'll probably only see the three that are working - “about me”, “e-mail me” and “picture”; you can get a sneak preview of how things might look below:
Posted by Alex on Sun 20th May 2007
I don’t like to blow my own trumpet, buuuut….
… here's the new UPSU.net Media homepage:
As usual, send comments, suggestions, and reports of any factual errors to somebody else, 'cos I don't care (ok, I'm joking - contact me here if you need to :o).
I know it's no work of art, and it's hardly pushing things forward for web design, but it's a colourful template for us to build on over the next 12 months, so to that end I'm happy with the result. Of course, you might think otherwise - tell me how you'd change it in the comments box, below.
p.s. Sharp-eyed viewers among you might have spotted the Google AdSense box on the left, under the menu. It's still being trialled (i.e. no-one particularly wants it turned “on” yet), so it only appears on UPSU.net pages viewed through my account.
Posted by Alex on Sat 12th May 2007
Whoah whoah whoah whoah whoah - slow down a bit!
Do you ever have one of those days when everything's happening so fast it's impossible to take enough mental notes to remember something for later? I've been having one of those days weeks months, and things are showing little sign of slowing down any time in the near future.
This week, I have mainly been updating vast swathes of webpages on UPSU's democracy, get involved and media pages; trying to do some housework in the form of the mass mails, some code changes, and a couple of news articles; attending the UPSU AGM (where was everybody?); trying to convince a stack of people that they *really* need to be a bit more open and honest about a situation which might or might not be building into a bigger situation*; and hearing how another situation which might have become a *really* big situation has been peacefully resolved (until the next time it happens, of course).
Meanwhile, in pixel-land, my notes pages are rapidly filling up with “blog entries I must do” notes, and the UPSU bugs list seems to be getting longer at the same speed my ever-increasing to-do list does now thanks to an upgrade to our database, plus Mike Cooter and Fraggy have just about finished the last ever issue of Pugwash (for this year, of course).
In amongst all this I'm trying to find a flat for next year. I went to see a lovely place today which looks beeyoooteeful. It's a bit small, and my bedroom wouldn't be big enough to kiss a cat in, let alone swing one. There's also a table and chairs which look suspiciously like they've been “acquired” from the Union, but I'll deal with that if and when I move in.
Still, it's all good fun. I worked a total of 32 hours in the first two days of this week, and my arms didn't drop off, so at least what my mum always told me - something about hard work not killing me - wasn't a lie after all. Dread to think how much caffeine and nicotine I took in during that period, though…..
Hope you're all having fun out there, and don't have nightmares :o)
Posted by Alex on Fri 11th May 2007
Today, I have mainly been annoying everyone…
You know those days where you get comfy on the sofa and just, well, vegetate? I tend to do something similar at work - I just park up at the desk and start working through my Never Ending To Do List (TM). Ok, so it's not as relaxing, but I guess it helps to get things done.
Anyway, today started out with my first SAGA meeting. Not the over-50's holiday and insurance company, but the University's Students' Academic and General Affairs committee, which (according to the Uni website - I'm not claiming to know anything about anything here, naturally…) is the Board of Governors' main way of getting feedback on the matters that are affecting the students of Portsmouth, through the Union's Sabbatical officers.
SAGA also makes sure that the information fed back to them via. the Sabbs is properly listened to and actioned. To save me rambling even more than usual, you can find out more from this page on the interweb.
So why have I been annoying people then? Well, after coming back from SAGA with a long list of Really Important Things That I Must Do Right Now If Not Sooner, I had to go round trying to track down the various bits of information to complete these odd jobs.
Of course, pretty much everyone I asked was also up to their collective eyeballs in their own workloads, so I ended up feeling like I was going in circles and annoying people on the way, so my mantra for the next couple of days is going to have to be “stop being so bloody annoying”, otherwise I think I may lose my kneecaps…
Posted by Alex on Wed 9th May 2007
A constructive day, housekeeping, Fabric’s new compilation, and putting the cat out…
It's another late night, so it must be time for another rambling blog entry about “what I've dun lately”. If you read this, I can guarantee you'll be bored… ;o)
This is going to be a bumper blog entry of all the really really boring stuff I've done this week altogether, so you only have to “ignore” one thing instead of loads ;o)
Posted by Alex on Wed 28th February 2007
Coming soon - Pure:FM direct from UPSU.net
I've just had a quick chat with Carl, Pure:FM's resident web guru, and he's beginning work on a brilliant little pop-up Pure:FM player.
This will mean no more having to hunt around Purefmdotcom to find out how to listen to their shows; you'll just have to click a link on any UPSU page (in the “now and next” box - pic somewhere on the right there) and away you go.
Naturally there'll be some things that have to be tackled first; a lot of computers have either one type of media player progam - e.g. Windows Media Player - or the other - Real Player. Some don't have either, for example a number of the University PCs, so we need to make sure that the end result is able to work on the widest range of systems possible.
With a little bit of luck, and a not-inconsiderable amount of work on Carl's part, I'm confident we'll be able to get this up and running in time for the elections. Fingers x'd then!
Alex is the UPSU.net web monkey, and loves adding new toys to the site. He's also running in the UPSU Elections for Media & Publications officer, and trying to finish off his degree as well. He's also half Welsh, but please don't hold that against him…
Posted by Alex on Sat 24th February 2007
Videos for everyone - add YouTube vids to your blogs
UPSU.net has a new toy, which (I hope) will make it a lot easier to add a video to your blog, and easier for us pixel geeks to add videos to news and web pages.
Find out more here, and to see a really bad impression of Richard Hammond advertising a boot sale (… or something …).
/al
Posted by Alex on Sat 24th February 2007