50 Tips to Improve Your Website
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50 Kari Koshiol // Knight Errant, MN // School Newspapers Online TIPS TO IMPROVE YOUR WEBSITE
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Regardless of your platform or theme, learn best practices to make your news website stand out with these 50 tips.
Transcript of 50 Tips to Improve Your Website
50Kari Koshiol // Knight Errant, MN // School Newspapers Online
TIPSTO IMPROVE YOUR WEBSITE
50TIPSORGANIZING THE HOME PAGE
50 TIPS TO IMPROVE
YOUR WEBSITE
Publish often.
Don’t be tied to print publication dates. The website should be used to communicate news immediately.
Go online first.
ORGANIZING THE HOME PAGE
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Consume online journalism.
Pay attention to how you read it, what works and what doesn’t. Figure out how to emulate the models you like.
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Consume online journalism.ORGANIZING THE HOME PAGE
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Consume online journalism.ORGANIZING THE HOME PAGE
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Consume online journalism.ORGANIZING THE HOME PAGE
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Plan for breaking news.
Have a plan so your staff is ready to report immediately and add to coverage as time allows.
ORGANIZING THE HOME PAGE
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Plan for breaking news. ORGANIZING THE HOME PAGE
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Kirkwood High School, Kirkwood, Mo. thekirkwoodcall.com
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Trim the categories.
Only include those categories in your navigation bar or on your homepage to which you publish regularly.
ORGANIZING THE HOME PAGE
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Trim the categories.ORGANIZING THE HOME PAGE
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One categoryper story.
Assign a story to just one category, either a parent or child. Stories should not show up in multiple places on the homepage.
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Include widgets that make sense.
Content categories, polls, most popular stories, video/photo streams.
Reconsider weather widgets — no one relies on your website for a weather report.
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Create a clear hierarchy on your homepage.
Help your reader know what’s important.
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Redesign your homepage for special events/reports.
Understand why the viewer is coming to your site that day.
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50 TIPS TO IMPROVE
YOUR WEBSITE
Redesign your homepage for special events/reports.
ORGANIZING THE HOME PAGE
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Benilde-St. Margaret’s School St. Louis Park, Minn. bsmknighterrant.com
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YOUR WEBSITE
Redesign your homepage for special events/reports.
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Wenatchee High School Wenatchee, WA whsappleleaf.com
50TIPSDISPLAYING CONTENT
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Tabs or indents are not necessary.
WordPress will insert space between paragraphs to indicate a break.
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50 TIPS TO IMPROVE
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Tabs or indents are not necessary.
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Link related stories together.
Use a related stories box, hyperlinks or chapters to provide backstory to the reader.
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Link related stories together. ORGANIZING & DISPLAYING CONTENT
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Use contextual linking within your stories.
Direct the reader to explanatory pages, source documents or more information.
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Use relative paths for all links within your site.
This means just the part after the domain name and slash (start with the slash) www.yourdomain.com/news/majorstory
/news/majorstory
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50 TIPS TO IMPROVE
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Use short links, not URLs. Even better, use relative short links.
This makes it easy to find stories even if the headline or category change. www.yourdomain.com/?p=1234
/?p=1234
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50 TIPS TO IMPROVE
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Your main image should be set as your Featured Image.
This ensures an image will come up with the category widget and will be more likely to be seen on the homepage or category page.
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50 TIPS TO IMPROVE
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Separate the writer’s name into a custom field.
This helps with search and organizing the site because the byline won’t show up as the preview text.
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Use original images.
(or at least Creative Commons images with appropriate “share” qualities)
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Add captions (and credits) to all photos.
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Be an editor. Curate only the best images for a gallery or slideshow.
Don’t add dozens of photos just because you can. Avoid poor quality or repetitive images.
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Have a plan for tags, which allow readers to quickly search for related content.
Use tags for recurring people and topics, and to cross-categorize. Tag clouds don’t help much.
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Have a plan for tags, which allow readers to quickly search for related content.
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Humor and lighter content can bring readers to your site.
Once they are there, have more substantial content for them to discover.
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Embed Web elements for interactivity.
https://www.thinglink.com/
http://infogr.am/
http://prezi.com/
http://www.easel.ly/
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Embed Web elements for interactivity.
ORGANIZING & DISPLAYING CONTENT
21Grosse Pointe North HS Grosse Pointe Woods, Mich. mygpn.com
50 TIPS TO IMPROVE
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Embed Web elements for interactivity.
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Embed Web elements for interactivity.
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Use text as needed.
Videos and pictures can tell a full story.
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50TIPSUNPUBLISHED CONTENT
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Use Preview Changes button.
Avoid awkward characters and formatting.
MANAGING UNPUBLISHED CONTENT
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Resize your photos before uploading and use Photoshop’s Save for Web option.
This guarantees faster load times because only the essential information is stored.
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50TIPSDESIGN PRACTICES
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Select a color scheme that evokes your school but doesn’t necessarily match it.
Colors for sports uniforms don’t always look good online.
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Select a good color scheme.DESIGN PRACTICES
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Community HS, Ann Arbor, Mich. www.chscommunicator.com
Peninsula HS, Gig Harbor, Wash. www.phsoutlook.com
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Select a good color scheme.DESIGN PRACTICES
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Lewisville (Texas) HS www.farhar.net
Manchester (Ct.) HS www.mhsredline.com
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Keep photos in color.
The Web has all colors, so don’t use black and white photos.
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Use horizontal photos.
Vertical images are not as Web-friendly as horizontal images in most themes.
Vertical or square images might be awkwardly cropped.
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Use horizontal photos. DESIGN PRACTICES
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50 TIPS TO IMPROVE
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Use horizontal photos. DESIGN PRACTICES
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Lots of empty space from an irregular
photo size.
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Use horizontal photos. DESIGN PRACTICES
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Face is cropped from photo.
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Design applies to the home page and the story page.
Consider “the look” of each story.
Don’t just use the default template.
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Use other material
B-roll, pics, pull quotes, ads, related links can help keep the reader’s attention on the story page.
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Design a favicon.
Find instructions online to create a 16x16 pixel icon to insert into your header code.
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Go wild! Design a bullet point image.
You can add code to use an image or character.
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50TIPSTECHNICAL TIPS
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Prevent your site from being hacked by performing updates to WordPress, theme and plugins.
TECHNICAL TIPS
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Use plugins sparingly
Plugins can slow the speed at which the site loads.
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Use the iframe embed code (not plugins) for YouTube, Vimeo, Issuu.
If the plugin is deactivated, the rest of your site will not be affected.
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Use responsive design
Sites will be viewed on multiple devices.
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Use responsive design. TECHNICAL TIPS
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50TIPSSTAFF & CLASS MANAGEMENT
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Break up the workload.
Have staff reporters initiate story in draft status with text, headline, pulled quote, links.
STAFF & CLASS MANAGEMENT
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Have a key student responsible for the website with a title and position equivalent to managing editor or editor in chief.
There are multiple configurations, but the website should not be an afterthought or a clerical position.
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Develop a social media editor position.
Have that person be an expert in social media. Teach the other staff members. Develop and implement policies.
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Use Google Analytics to learn about your audience.
Who’s visiting? When? What did they look at? For how long?
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Use Google Analytics to learn about your audience.
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Infrequent posting then content dump.
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Use Google Analytics to learn about your audience.
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Steady weekday traffic
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Develop and implement a comments policy.
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Sample Comments Policy
{insert publication name} intends for this area to be used to foster healthy, thought-provoking discussion. Comments are expected to adhere to our standards and to be respectful and constructive. As such, we do not permit the use of profanity, foul language, personal attacks, or the use of language that might be interpreted as libelous. Comments are reviewed and must be approved by a moderator to ensure that they meet these standards. {insert publication name} does not allow anonymous comments, and {insert publication name} requires a valid email address. The email address will not be displayed but will be used to confirm your comments.
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Push your staff. Write more. Gain followers. Try new things.
Set goals based on analytics.
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Accept local advertisements to create revenue.
Combine with print for a package.
Use analytics to pitch to certain advertisers.
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Install an AdSense widget on your site to create revenue.
This will serve ads to users based on their browser history, and you can limit to broad categories.
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50TIPSPROMOTIONS
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Use the same social media as your audience. Follow all students, teachers and coaches.
Use as a source for promotion via sharing.
Use as a source for potential news and story ideas.
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Use your Twitter feed to tease to your website.
You don’t need your feed on the site unless it is sharing news that is not on your site.
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Consider having more than one Twitter feed that brings new news to the site.
A sports account for live tweets at sporting events helps for those who might be interested (while not annoying those who aren’t).
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QR codes and apps like Aurasma can link print material to the Web — and drive traffic.
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Post your links on Google Plus to increase prominence of your stories in the search results.
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Send original Tweets and Facebook posts to create traffic.
Have a personality, not an auto-feed.
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Broaden your audience beyond students and parents.
Use Reddit or other social media to share and discuss articles.
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Kari Koshiol [email protected] http://www.slideshare.net/snosites/50-tips-to-improve-your-website
QUESTIONS?FIRE AWAY.
