Category Archives: Work

management, web development, university life, stuff like that

SharePoint vs File Server

Posted on 21 November 2007 | Leave a comment

OK – so it can’t directly replace a file server. Probably obvious, but this post neatly describes why. I’d summarise – if:

  • it’s not big
  • it’s not clever, and
  • it’s not a movie

then it’s probably Ok.

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Posted in sharepoint

Show all subsites in a webpart

Posted on 12 October 2007 | 21 Comments

I’ve been looking for a while to find a webpart that would show all the subsites of a particular sharepoint site. If you google this, there appear to be lots of people looking for the same thing.

Well, I’ve just found an old reference which, a slight update for MOSS 2007 seems to work at a basic level. The source is: Show Sub Sites in WSS Sites but you have to look out for the “Attachment launch now!” bit. I’m going to repeat the relevant bit here but updated for 2007 (apologies if this is done elsewhere…)

Show sub sites in MOSS sites

You can use SharePoint Designer to show a list of sub sites in a MOSS site.

An example of a sub site is a document workspace. An overview of all available sub sites provides an easy way for users to navigate to these workspaces.

1) Open your site in SharePoint Designer

2) Open the Data Source Library task pane

3) Connect to the XML Web Service that provides information about the sub sites.

4) Add the information to your home page

You can drag and drop the newly created data source to your home page. A list of sub sites will be shown.

5) Change the way the information is shown.

By default a plain list of the sub sites will be shown. You can change this list, and for instance make the URL’s clickable. As you hover over the title field, right click and select:

  • Data Field: Title
  • Format as: Hyperlink

6) Amend the rest of the layout to suit your design.

 

That’s it – I’m no coder so this comes with all usual warnings but it seems to work for me.

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Posted in sharepoint

Tagged , ,

My Sharepoint site templates are missing content in the wiki

Posted on 12 October 2007 | Leave a comment

(About time I started this again… beware though, you may notice a sharepoint theme developing.)

SharePoint allows you to create a site template by simply saving a site as a template. This is fine, but buggy and I’ve come across some holes recently.

The latest problem for me is that the site template I’m trying to create needs to have some content in it. Should be easy enough as the screen for saving a template has an option for this.

This works fine on my customised Project Tasks list, but unfortunately seems not to work on my Wiki which contains 4 pages. All pages appear to be in the list, named correctly, but only the first page retains it’s actual content.

Any help appreciated! I’ll post an answer if I find one.

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Posted in develop, sharepoint

Cost effective job advertising?

Posted on 8 June 2007 | Leave a comment

I was struck by this job advert technique…

Win a MacBook ProWin a MacBook Pro
Win this 15″ MacBook Pro

Refer a friend and it’s yours!

A new MacBook Pro costs £1300 – possibly the same as a single job advert in traditional print. But this way, SitePoint use a viral campaign technique which is well-targetted. I would imagine their job ad will reach far more suitable candidates this way.

What they don’t say is what the person who actually gets the job gets, but I guess it won’t be a PC ;-)

Oh, and if you get the job… remember who told you and let them know!

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Posted in manage

Transport Direct web snippet form

Posted on 16 May 2007 | Leave a comment

From: Transport Direct – tips and tools
This should get you directions to the Canterbury campus of U.o.K.

Transport Direct

Get directions by public transport and car with
Transport Direct.

Enter
your postcode

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Posted in content, develop

Duke's homepage: content is not King?

Posted on 21 April 2006 | Leave a comment

CMS Watch points to a Duke University homepage redesign – see before (left) and after (right) snapshots:

Duke University in 2005 Duke University in 2006

This is a change from content-focused design to search-focused design. As a user you might find the new search version quicker, but CMS Watch points out: only if the search engine works.

The content that was there hasn’t been removed. Instead it has been transferred to a Duke Today site. This looks and feels much more like a traditional university homepage.
Judging from their redesign blog this change was made with consideration and consultation. The blog previewed two homepage designs – the comments show an overwhelming preference for design mockup 2 over design mockup 1. So why did they decide to go live with design 1? This (from the blog) goes some way towards explaining the position…

Our approach to minimialist design isn’t to say “Less is more” but rather, as the designer Milton Glaser once said, “Just enough is more.” Through exhaustive research we determined that the current approach of posting news and services on one site was trying to do too many things for too many people and as a result not effective. We’re not getting rid of the content with this new design, we’re simply shifting much of it to DukeToday where it can be more effectively managed. Recent usability test results were quite favorable.

I’m not sure they’ve made the right choice. A university homepage has many competing claims on it’s supposedly valuable space. But by choosing to move the up-to-date information to a secondary page Duke are hiding the content that is alive and breathes. I think they’re left with a homepage that may score well in usability tests but doesn’t project the image of a vibrant and busy place.

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Posted in design, manage, sites

How to get thumbnails of webpages automatically

Posted on 20 April 2006 | Leave a comment

simpleapiThis is a great little utility/tool/hack called SimpleAPI. It takes a snap of a webpage, creates a thumbnail and lets you embed it on your page. They provide all the html code so all you have to do is copy and paste it into your page/blog. Why is this important? Because a blog entry without an image looks boring.

It doesn’t seem to like taking a picture of itself so the thumbnail top right is taken using Pearl Crescent’s dandy Page Server extension in Firefox. However, here’s this blog as seen by the system:

Don’t you just love those rounded corners?

The SimpleAPI thumbnail generator only seems to be able do 5 thumbnails on a page – which is probably a good limit for their bandwidth and servers. The site’s Japanese so I apologise but I have not read the manual!

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Posted in content, develop, manage

How will (some of the) Web 2.0 make money?

Posted on 19 April 2006 | 2 Comments
suprglu logo

Have you noticed? There’s quite a buzz about on the web at the moment. For me it started a while back with Gmail, went on to the things 37signals were doing, fell into Ajax, bounced into Web 2.0 and has now just exploded.

New websites/webservices are launching every day. Here’s my list of personal discoveries for just for the last two days:

I haven’t checked, but you can guarantee sure as holes is holes that each site will have an RSS feed. And if you sign up you can probably get a personalized RSS feed. But now that you have all those feeds what can you do with them? Look no further for I have the solution…

This is currently concatenating content (9/10 for alliteration) from my blog, my bookmarks, my wife’s photos, and a list of blogs with comments I was following. It’s nice. With those feeds it shows a snapshot of me on the web.

But it might also be useful for a team to join up all their blogs and images together. Alternatively it might be used by a team to stay in touch with a range of external sites that refelct their shared interests. For a large website that has many feeds available this could provide a snapshot of activity on the site. Someone on the forum points out it might help fight censorship in China. There are quite a few possibilities…

But, one question – and a question that keeps cropping up for me: what is the business model? Remember hearing this question before? Yup – that’s right, it was during the last dotcom bubble.

So, how do suprglu plan to make money?

The answer may be Google ads. To be fair to suprglu they’ve not said that this will be the case and their site shows that they’re trying to avoid it, but they will need some form of income to keep it going.
Which prompts the next question: how can every new startup gain enough ‘land’ in terms of users/viewers that they can make enough money from PPC advertising?
The answer for many of the services is the ‘give away a bit for free, but then charge for the full service’ model. This is good – but doesn’t fit all. How will this ‘a bit free’ model work for suprglu? I guess at the moment it’s just an interesting environment where plenty of people are trying plenty of things, and some will make money whereas others will be bought by Google!

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Posted in manage

What do you need to run an institution's website?

Posted on 12 April 2006 | 2 Comments

Three Tenths Of A Second . . .
Originally uploaded by evilgreg3000.
This photo is licensed Some rights reserved.

Well, a good team is a good start…

My list of things involved in looking after an institution’s website.

  • Feedback form – every page has a link which captures URL and user info and sends via a form.
  • Issues tracker – I think that email should be kept clear of day-to-day site issues and update requests. So, a web-based issue tracker which automatically receives the feedback and other system notifications (such as additions to database-generated pages) would be a good idea.
  • Project management software – web based tasks etc. Sharepoint was good for this. A basic but easy to use system that allows lightwieght project management.
  • Weekly Work-in-Progress meetings.
  • Structure page – very useful for internal people to see the departmental structure.
  • PageBuilder – this is a (bespoke) utility that builds pages – fast template rollout and prototyping is crucial
  • Menu system – standardise by giving the webauthors an easy to use system that makes their job easier
  • Web stats – got to be able to see what’s happening
  • SEO stats – WebCEO is good idea, but seems flaky in execution.
  • Tools: All the usuals (macromedia/adobe suites, even Frontpage!) and Xenu link checker. Firefox plus extensions.
  • Hardware: Colour laser printer, blutack, whiteboards, two screens.
  • Test bench – old PCs and macs with appropriate browsers

…more to come I’m sure.

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Posted in manage

a workshop idea – make a better page

Posted on 5 April 2006 | Leave a comment

How about running a workshop for web authors to help them make a better page. Don’t try to teach them lots of rules, but instead get them to bring along a page they’ve already done, and then work on improving it.

Start the workshop by providing a pile of Lorem Ipsum text and some stock photographs (allow for some images of people, some building shots, some clipart, and perhaps some nature). Then show how these can be re-arranged on the page to make a good website – clear headings, chunked content, pleasing use of imagery. Show how image choice can make a difference, show the effect of cropping images too. Show also how bullets, subheadings and the like can make text more legible. Add some inline links too and perhaps an image caption and a box out section of text.

Then, let them loose on their own pages and help them on a one-to-one basis to make similar changes to the page they brought along.

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Posted in manage