Documenting the expansion of The Dec Online

One of the major complaints that I have had - and I place most of the blame for it securely on my own shoulders - in my tenure as editor of The Dec Online is that it has not been well marketed to the Millikin community. I have always had great visions of what TDO could be, and unfortunately, I probably won’t get to see those through.

But I have been very fortunate to work with a new professor in our English department, Dr. Devon Fitzgerald, who specializes in new media and has had a number of great ideas for me. (Whoever takes over for me next semester will have a great person to help with making things work in much more useful ways. She’s a great technical advisor.)

When discussing the idea of getting the word out about TDO, she jumped to a medium that should have been obvious to me: Facebook. (I mean, really, college students use Facebook? Imagine.) So, at her very excellent suggestion, I started a page for The Dec Online on Facebook - if you’re an FB member, become a fan! We will hopefully be adding some more stuff over there and getting some discussions going about the functionality of the site and some possible ideas for how to make things better.

With any luck, this is a step toward getting the word out, and that, as they say, will make all the difference.

Those of you who look at the site regularly: You’ve probably noticed that there are a lot of broken pages. That problem should be rectified within the next few days.

Note to any programmers out there: As much as I value practice through experimentation, there is something to be said for finding out how to do things right before you put everything together.

Case in point - When putting links to vital PHP scripts for each page, I used static links. Yesterday, our lovely host had to move the site to another server as an emergency measure…thereby breaking every single static links for these vital bits of script that the pages are built with. I’ve fixed most of them, but it will undoubtedly take me days to find them all (and maybe not even then…).

And all this, simply because I was ignorant for the longest time of the simple PHP global variable $_SERVER[’DOCUMENT_ROOT‘], which would have prevented this whole thing in the first place by locating each file relative to the root directory of the site.

Sigh.

If you know of any pages that are broken, leave a comment or E-mail webmaster@thedeconline.com. Your help is greatly appreciated.

In November 2006, I was a first-semester student here at Millikin (although far from a first-year student in general - I’d been in college for about 4 years previously). I’d played around with web stuff for quite a while, having become a webmaster for another site the same year and developing personal knowledge on my own. As a publishing requirement for my major, I took web publishing that first semester with the ever-delightful Dr. Randy Brooks, which was a fun experience that helped expand my knowledge further.

Then at the end of the month, I received an E-mail from Dana Williams, the recently hired assistant adviser of the Decaturian saying she’d been given my name by Dr. Brooks as a possible candidate for the position of online editor. And the rest, while not quite history, happened from there.

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As one might guess from reading some of the things I’ve written in this blog, I’m not always entirely positive about Millikin IT (that even despite the fact that I have a friend in the department). I chalk that up to my frustration at wanting to do more with The Dec Online when we were still confined to university servers. Really, the people in Millikin IT are by and far good people.

And now they’ve given MU students a great resource: My Millikin.

There’s plenty to mention about this new page, but here are some highlights:

• A Google Homepage/NetVibes inspired layout with lots of pre-installed modules
• Handy links to campus notices and RSS feeds for dining (if you care to dine on-campus)
• A single-sign-on (SSO) approach to accessing certain MU sites

This last option is especially appealing to me as a commuter. Since I am only on campus for limited times, I have not been able in the past to take advantage of many of the resources available online in the library because they are limited to on-campus access. With the SSO, journals available through the Staley Library page are now accessible from anywhere. As an English major, that pleases me immensely: now I can access JSTOR at my leisure rather than planning my research around spare time on campus (which is not abundant in the least).

So kudos to you, Millikin IT, for making something functional and aesthetic and very useful for our community. I thank you sincerely.

Lots of new features going on, and all I’ve got to say is this: Javascript rules.

Seriously, I understand why AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript with XML, for those not familiar with the acronym) is part of the Web 2.0 standard: Javascript is incredibly versatile and functional.

Of course, The Dec Online has had Javascripts running to enhance functionality even in past incarnations. Past JS features included:

• Nifty Corners/Rounded Corners (one worked only on the Millikin hosting, the other was a replacement)
• Smooth Gallery (existing script for gallery)

The rounded corners are now a thing of the past (thankfully - what was I thinking?), but there have been lots of JS additions, including some custom scripting:

• Google Custom Search - a great AJAX search function provided by Google, even though it looks a little strange with the new design (at least in Firefox)
• Greybox - an AJAX-y overlay pop-up script that makes it possible to avoid the normal pop-up windows (although I may consider looking at Lightbox 2.0 as a future replacement)
• MySQL Calendar - an AJAX/MySQL calendar that will hopefully be further developed from a broader use than Dec issue dates and story meetings
• Most recent/most commented tab - a customized way of using the same space to display different information; not too tricky, but still sort of fun. Looks best in Firefox but functions in IE and Safari (although Safari looks the worst of the three).
• Image backend - the general public won’t see it, but my staff (ah, how I love to say that) will enjoy that this week. Eventually, I might make it possible for users to upload pictures…

And I’m not done with it yet. If anyone has an suggestion for Javascript- or PHP-related scripts that could be integrated, feel free to E-mail me or leave feedback.

Every so often, it’s time for a change.

And although I don’t like divulging secrets, let me just say this:

A change is coming, and it’s for the better.

Actually, the change is already happening, and you can see it on the site as of this post. (Hint: Click on the photo gallery.)

Stay tuned: More to come.

I have been the online editor for the Decaturian since December 2006. Many things have changed since then, including the ability for this very blog to exist. It just wasn’t possible when I was hired for this position, and now it is. That alone is a world of difference.

However, I have come to notice that even the world of difference is just a step in the right direction.

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One of the first features I envisioned when reconstructing The Dec Online in PHP/MySQL was the ability to comment on an article. For quite some time (at least since my tenure on the Dec staff, which only dates me to December 2006), there has been a “Comment on this article at www.millikin.edu/decaturian” tagline to each article in the print version, and it has not (in my tenure) been truly possible until now. (On the old system, even a broad comment form did not work because of a very funky [read: inefficient and inconvenient] form process.) So, with that goal, here’s what the comment feature consists of: Continue reading →

Greetings, readers of the Decaturian and The Dec Online! We here at the Decaturian greatly appreciate your reading and support, enough that we would spend countless hours writing and editing stories, designing layouts for print, and (in the case of myself and my assistant editor, Kerry) turning a biweekly newspaper into something that can be digested digitally for those too far to get a hold of our physical paper or too introverted to walk across Millikin’s campus to get one. (I know there’s got to be someone for whom that is true. This is college, after all.)

Many of you might have been perceptive enough to notice that we’re not in Kansas, er, on Millikin’s servers anymore. Good for you! Indeed, we no longer reside digitally on the Millikin campus; we have instead chosen a different path, one that is much more open (and green). And it is my honest opinion that it is the best move we have ever made with The Dec Online.

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