I'm trying out a GIF animation maker for the banner slot on the ColumbiaMissourian.com home page.

Tips for reporting Web site problems

This is probably good advice for any organization.

Here's the scenario: You're checking out your site and you notice something major is wrong. You're not the person on duty, or maybe working on the Web isn't your job. Either way, you have to alert someone of the problem. So you fire off an e-mail and wait for results.

Now, what was in that e-mail? Did you include, say, a link to what's broken? Did you explain what's broken, or did you send something vague like "Web site not working. Not sure why."

Now, I get that people don't always know why a Web site is down. But for those of us who fix mistakes on the Web site, it sure is helpful to have specific information. Especially for news Web sites, where pages number in the tens of thousands.

I can't tell you how much time out of my day is spent going on treasure hunts to fix problems that can be done much more quickly if people would just paste a link in their e-mail.

Bottom line: The more information you can provide, the better.

From the department of redundency department

A good example of why headlines and excerpts should be different:

Does anyone care about the Web site?

This is how the editor's column looks on our Web site as of Friday morning at 9:19 a.m. vs. how a column is supposed to look:



The lesson here: Look at the page after you published it. Does it look right? Does the boss's head really need to be that big?

Honestly, we make such a big deal in editing about proofing the page; why doesn't this translate to the Web?

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Frequently Asked Questions -- First day of school edition

What do we need to do to change our workflow to django first?

As of right now, the following problems need to be stress tested and shown to work in order for workflow to change:

Notes mode
Spell check
File lock (check-in, check-out)
Reversion -- still in the works
Moving stories around in queues

Once these problems are solved, we'll commence with some training.

When will computers be moved, repaired, re-imaged?
Once we're onto a django-first system, the computers will be re-imaged to allow for long-needed updates (like Flash). Reporting stations will not have Falcon; only the desk will have it.

What's up with the intranet?
All reporters, copy editors and designers should have access to it. I'll be working with Nina to populate and update it this semester. If you have any ideas or documents you want to see there, e-mail me at shelrockj@missouri.edu.

What's next for django?
Find out at the developmental spreadsheet.

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Don't mess with Texas, or with django ID field

Apparently we've had some folks who have been messing with the django ID fields, which has spurred some e-mail traffic from our tech guys. Rob says it better than I can, so here is his e-mail:

We’ve been getting a rash of Web site errors over the past couple of weeks that stem from two places: duplicate slugs and bad Django IDs. Here’s a quick reminder of why those happen, and how to prevent them.

First off: You must put a date (preferred) or some other unique identifier into the “slug” field when you create a new article. The reason for this is that the slug is how Django saves files internally. Two slugs = confusion for the site. (Think of it like saving a file with the same filename as another file on your computer.)

Please also remind reporters of this problem -- “my awesome council story” isn’t a good slug. Nor is “Boone Life” or any other slug that will repeat. If you don’t know exactly when it will run, put the expected run date in the slug. You can always edit it later (as long as it’s not duplicative of an existing slug).

AP stories are particularly susceptible to the error above, as they tend to use the same slugs repeatedly. Dating them is a simple way to avoid confusion. Our preferred way to handle writethroughs is to add them to the existing story, but you could also generate a new story (again, with a unique slug) to use with those.

Second off: You may not edit the Django ID. Just don’t mess with it. It’s generated automatically from the initial title of the story, so put something other than “Headline goes here” if you can.

Questions? Confusion? Let me know.

Thanks, Rob


--
Rob Weir
Director of digital development
The Columbia Missourian
Missouri School of Journalism
207 Lee Hills Hall
Columbia, MO 65211
(573) 882-5057

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Django updates, just in time for election coverage

Some recent django news you can use, listed by slug to help the scanability:

UPDATE: DELETE KEY: The delete key (aka backspace key) will no longer take you back to the previous Web page you visited. This should help save us from losing edits by mistake.

UPDATE: HOT TOPICS: TJ recommends that we limit these to 18 active at a time, to save on load times with the home page. Maggie and I cleaned several of them out a few days ago. Noah also reset the count on all of them to 10. Now, just like with articles, if the priority numbers are the same on two hot topics, the newer one will come up first.

UPDATE: AUTHOR FIELDS: These are now showing up on landing pages, where before just the byline field would.

TIP: HOW TO PLAY TWO PHOTOS IN THE LEAD POSITION ON AN ARTICLE PAGE: Load both photos in the lead media field, then switch the template to Photo. It's the same way we make photo gallery pages.

NEW FEATURE: LANDING PAGES FOR PACKAGES: Want to read all the news from the Election 08 Preview we're currently in the midst of running? Click here. Noah has made it so that packages now have their own landing pages. To get there, go under Packages, select the package you want, and click View on Site. This is a great feature for Hot Topics and blog posts.

TIP: DON'T BREAK THE WEB SITE: When we write slugs, they need to be unique to each file in django. When identical slugs happen, you're likely to get an internal server error. Noah is working on a safeguard for this, but in the meantime, let's make sure we're using unique slugs by always putting at least a four-digit or six-digit date.

This problem is an exact mirror of the headline/django ID problem, which you can read more about here.

More updates hopefully coming soon.

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