Web Strategy and Development News

Markum, Forst, Deke and Lehnhoff Recognized as Student Employees of the Month

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Congratulations to Josh Markum, Carlynn Forst, Simon Deke and Ray Lehnhoff, four students from the Office of Web and New Media that were selected as University Relations Student Employees of the Month.

L to R: Josh Markum, Simon Deke, Ray Lehnhoff and Carlynn Forst
L to R: Josh Markum, Simon Deke, Ray Lehnhoff and Carlynn Forst

Josh Markum

Josh was recognized the leadership he has provided for the Web Help Desk over the past several months, as well as his re-design of the Web Press “how-to” page.  We appreciate his customer-service approach and positive attitude, even when faced with difficult situations and/or clients.

Carlynn Forst

Carlyn was recognized for her excellent video work completed over the summer.  By our count, this summer she shot, edited and produced about 50 videos for use with the Inside Missouri State and Virtual Tour sites, as well as other applications.  We appreciate her willingness to go “above and beyond” to create the kind of video library we need for a complete and attractive web site.

Simon Deke

Simon was recognized for his work with the Missouri State Foundation web site, the Campus Virtual Tour site, and the Hammons Hall site.  His customization of these sites and the interactivity he developed will serve as a model for future site work.  We appreciate his willingness to tackle these complicated high-profile projects and complete them on time with a high level of excellence.

Ray Lehnhoff

Ray was recognized for his work with the viewbook micro site for the Office of Admissions and the Our Promise site for the University’s comprehensive campaign.  His attention to detail and ability to bring these projects in on time was very appreciated.

Please help me congratulate all of these students on this much deserved recognition.

Re-purposing videos from Inside Missouri State

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This post will give you step-by-step instructions on how to embed the videos from Inside Missouri State on your University web site. There are five marketing message videos, one for each of the first five sections of the site, as well as testimonial/spotlight videos that correspond to each marketing message on the left of these sections. You are free to include any of these videos on your University website. Here’s how:

  1. The videos are hosted on Missouri State’s iTunes U site. You will need the URLs for these videos to embed them on your site. First ensure that the iTunes software is installed on your computer, and then visit http://itunesu.missouristate.edu and click on the button labeled ‘Open iTunes U: Public Access.’ This will open iTunes on your computer, and automatically navigate to Missouri State on iTunes U.
  2. Now that iTunes is open to Missouri State’s page, click on the section labeled ‘About Missouri State,’ which is in the first content area called ‘Welcome.’ You will see multiple tabs in the About Missouri State section. The tab labeled ‘Inside Missouri State’ houses the five marketing message videos from Inside Missouri State, and the tab labeled ‘Spotlights’ houses the testimonial videos from Inside Missouri State (they are the first six videos under this tab).
  3. Find the video you wish to use on your site, ensuring that the correct tab where it is located is selected and open in iTunes. At the top of the page is a ‘Subscribe’ button. Right-click on this button, and select ‘Copy Link.’
  4. Open your web browser, and paste the link you just copied from iTunes into the address bar and press Enter. You will now see the RSS Feed of the tab you had open in iTunes U. Find the video you wish to embed on your site, and copy the URL of that video. The video URLs should all end with ‘encolusure.mp4.’

Now that you have the URL to the video copied, you need to paste that URL into the video player. In Web Press, you will use a content class called ‘Video Player – MP4 or FLV.’ The instructions below will show you how to embed the video using this player in Web Press.

If you have a University site that does not use Web Press, the embed code can be provided to you. Please send an email request to bradmitchell@missouristate.edu if you would like to use the video player embed code on your site outside of Web Press.

To embed the video in your Web Press page:

  1. Open the Foundation Page of the web site that you want to edit.
  2. Scroll to the bottom of the page, and click Edit List of Content Pages. The Edit Link Element page opens.
  3. On the Edit Link Element page, click Create and Connect Page. The Content Class Groups page opens.
  4. In the top portion of the screen, click the General Pages group.
  5. In the bottom portion of the screen, click Video Player – MP4 or FLV.
  6. Type in a headline. This headline can not seen by users and is used for searching only.
  7. Open Edit Video Settings Via Form and paste the video URL you copied from iTunes.

(More information on using the MP4/FLV Video Player in Web Press can be found at http://webpress.missouristate.edu/VideoPlayerMp4Flv.htm)

Also note that you can use the above instructions to embed any video that is hosted on Missouri State’s iTunes U site. Simply find the video you wish to embed on your site, and then follow the above instructions.

Inside Missouri State Microsite Launched

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Earlier this month, the University launched a microsite,  Inside Missouri State, that correlates with the Undergraduate Admissions Guide. This was a collaborative project between the Offices of Admissions, Web and New Media and Publications.

Inside Missouri State HomepageInside Advantage Section

A few highlights:

  • This new site is meant to be a standalone, self-contained microsite. It’s like a advertisement about Missouri State. We link out to several standard Missouri State web pages, but the design used on this microsite will not be reused elsewhere.
  • The content within the microsite was repurposed from the printed Undergraduate Admissions Guide. This allowed us to reuse a lot of excellent content that Admissions and Publications had already produced and coordinated.
  • There are five marketing message videos, one for each of the first five sections of the site. There are also videos for the spotlights on the left of these sections. The video work was done by Brad Mitchell and student Carlynn Forst, with script help from Michelle Rose.
  • The design was done by Lindsay Winchester, in coordination with Veronica Adinegara’s printed Viewbook designs. Additional support was provided by student Dustin Jacobs.
  • The coding of the site was done by student Ray Lehnhoff, with oversight by Chad Killingsworth and Sara Clark.
  • The main route into this microsite is from the Admissions homepage, which has a new Flash element that links into the microsite.
  • Many of the features of this microsite can be reused in other sites, such as the spotlight videos which are in iTunesU and can be used within Web Press.

University departments are welcome to point their future undergraduate students to the Inside Missouri State microsite.

Introduction to RQL

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Since I’ve already had requests, I thought I’d post a summary of my workshop from HighEdWeb 08 along with the materials for those who couldn’t be there. From the packed house and all the followup questions, it’s pretty clear that there is a high degree of interest in this subject.

About RQL

RQL is an XML based language. Queries are submitted to the server and are answered with an RQL response (similar to HTTP requests). IODATA is always the root tag. Tag names are always uppercase while attribute names are always lowercase.

Moving around the project tree is one of the most fundemental activities in RQL. When moving through the tree, you must always keep in mind that you alternate between pages and links. While we are all pretty familiar with a page, a link inculdes dynamic anchors, lists, containers, hdllists, etc.

Using RQL in SmartEdit

While Pre-Execute blocks may at first seem the logical place to use RQL in SmartEdit, they contain no session information. This means that RQL Queries inside a pre-execute block must log in and log out in addition to running the desired queries.

Using an iframe or ajax will preserve session information and make debugging substantially easier, but can inadvertendly cause security risks.

Using RQL from an External Application

If you’ve ever wanted to perform an action starting at a tree node and all following pages, this is the place to look. Moving around the tree can be dangerous. You must make sure that you properly account for references, multiple connections, recursive connections, containers as well as other issues.

The C# project contained in the handout provides both an RQL Function Library as well as the framework for safely traversing the tree from a console application.

Related Materials

Introduction to RQL Handout

Here’s a short listing and description of what’s included:

  • Presentation
  • RQL Admin Website: an ASP.Net 2.0 web application. Designed to be published on the CMS web server it allows users to test RQL Queries.
  • RQLAutomation Project: a ASP.Net 2.0 C# Console application. The application will prompt for login credentials, a project, and then perform the specified action on the specified page and all following pages. (In class we submitted and released the page).
  • Other Goodies: A collection of various SmartEdit/SmartTree RQL Plugins and associated files (including a basic RQLFunctions.asp include file).