Presenting: Django appreciation week

I'm officially declaring next week Django appreciation week. And there is reason to celebrate -- all of the "big bugs" that derailed us the last time we tried to turn django into our primary content management system have now been fixed, tested, and are working.

We'll spend next week getting everyone -- reporters, copy editors, designers, photographers, graphic artists -- trained in the ways django. After that, the tech guys can start re-imaging the iMacs. A few notes about reimaging:

-- All of the iMacs will get more memory.

-- Reporter stations will not have Falcon on them.

-- Some of the iMacs will move back to the copy desk. This will allow all the copy editors to actually sit together and work together instead of being strung out all across the room on nightside.

-- Software will be updated, so we'll have all the latest browsers on all computers (including the ability to see Flash).

It's imperative that we all make some time to get trained in django next week. We've tried to set up the queue system so that it's similar to Falcon. Noah and TJ have done all they can to make it easy to use. So don't be afraid of the big, bad Django. It's better than it's ever been, which is to say it's really easy to use.

Here is the training schedule for next week. Please tell your students to get as many of them there as possible. I'll be putting up fliers as well.

Tuesday, Sept. 2 -- 5:30 p.m. in the conference room (308)
Wednesday -- 10 a.m. in the budget area
Thursday -- During the 11 a.m. budget meeting
Friday -- 10 a.m. in the budget area.

I'm also happy to schedule other training times if these times won't work.

Hope to see you all next week for django appreciation week!

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Django updates

Noah and TJ have made some good progress on the django front this week. Here is where we are:

-- Bullet lists now work in the WYSIWYG editor. Just highlight your lists and hit one of the two bullet options (the options are just to the right of where you bold text). One option allows for square bullets; the other will do an automatic numbers list.

-- Reversioning is now working as well. To access this function, go into the article, click history, and then select the previous version of the story you want to see. If you want to restore the story to a previous version, click save.

-- Searching, operating queues and spell checker all seem to be working well now.

-- The notes mode still has some buggy problems, but those should be resolved by tomorrow, I hope. If not, it's something we can work around.

Next step: Setting up django skills salons for next week. More details coming soon.

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Django update blog day 2: Working toward a new workflow

My hope is that the newsroom workflow can begin to go Web-first next week.

We have a few bug issues that need to be worked out before this can happen, but Noah is hopeful this can be done by the end of the week.

Speaking of which, Noah is on vacation next week, then he's scheduled to work on advertising issues when he gets back. If these issues are not resolved this week, we'll either have to wait to change workflow until mid-September or push back the advertising issues.

Here is what still needs to happen to switch up work flow:

Notes mode -- Right now, text can easily be put INTO notes mode. To pull it out of notes mode, you have to do it one paragraph at a time. We hope to get this buggy issue fixed ASAP.

Reversioning -- Noah hopes to have something to show for this Wednesday. This is the feature that would allow us to go back to an earlier version of a story.

Story search -- When searching for stories, if that story has been modified, all versions of that story show up in the search. Noah is working on this.

Everything else seems to be working well enough to switch around workflow. My recommendation is to begin filing and editing in django late next week or early the week after (Sept. 8). As we get closer to having the bugs worked out, we'll need to schedule a training time with editors.

Ideally, I'd like to:

Sept. 2 and 3 (Tuesday and Wednesday) -- train editors and reporters on how to post to django
Sept. 4 -- Have one beat begin posting in django. If all goes well ...
Sept. 5 -- Newsroom posting to django first. Begin reshuffling, reimaging newsroom computers.

Missourian sports department partnering with Jacked

The Missourian sports page is about to get Jacked.

Check it out here.

Jacked offers Web widgets that will give our readers the ability to follow Tigers football in a whole new way. While football games are in progress, readers will be able to follow all the action in real time. We'll be able to use the "Smack Talk" feature, will be much like iChat with a reporter blogging the action and readers able to interact with the blogger(s).

There are still some design tweaks to be done on the above link, but it's getting close. We hope to launch it this weekend for the Illini vs. Mizzou game.

A few tech notes from Tom

Excerpts from potpourri e-mail Tom sent around this morning. Everything techy is included here:

TECH -- THE NEWSROOM PRINTERS: Mike P updated me yesterday.
The Ricoh (copy desk): Mike was trying to get repair folk out to fix it
Monday. His efforts were complicated by disputes in the service agreement.
We agreed on the need to get someone even if we had to pay out-of-pocket
costs.
Long term, we hope to have a new copier there by mid-November.
The Canon (main newsroom), as best I know, only has the usual problems
but nothing, um, catastrophic.

TECH -- THE NEWSROOM HARDWARE
Mike will replace all dead computers in the production areas this week
by taking Adelante computers on a temporary basis.
When we switch reporters to django, we'll add some reporter computers to
the production area and dedicate some of the reporting areas as laptop only.
By the end of the semester, we should be able to reduce total newsroom
hardware from about 80 computers to 50 or fewer, with more reductions in the
following semester. I don't ever foresee killing all the reporter tubes,
though.
Mike also hopes to increase the memory on the computers we keep.
Finally, the satellite newsroom will stay with its current complement of
computers because they're too old to use upstairs.

TECH -- DJANGO
By end of last week Noah had fixed three of the four major issues --
spell check, story search, and story length. He's fixing a few bugs on notes
mode that Jake found in a first round of testing. By week's end we should
have a more firm idea of launch date(s) for converting as much as possible
away from our friendly Falcon.

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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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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Django update blog, day 1

Priority 1 tasks:

Story length -- working fine
Story search -- working fine
Notes mode -- Still buggy. Noah is troubleshooting. Words turn to notes fine, but they don't come out of notes without many, many clicks.
Spell check -- working fine
File lock (check-in, check-out): First round of testing went great.
Search by author -- ready for testing
Reversion -- still in the works

I'm shooting for Thursday to be ready to change work flow. Noah deserves high praise for cranking so many of those off the list today.

I'm going to put most of these through a final stress test tomorrow and check them off the list.