Project Update: Jan. 13 to 19, 2010

I should have thought of this a year ago. What is the best way to keep updates on anything? Twitter of course. And what is the best To-Do list out there? 37 Signals Ta-Da List. So thanks to Twitterfeed and Action Streams, I now have a daily log of what I have done, and what needs to be done. Also handy as a running tally to show the boss.

Since Twitter is not an archive, it is not a Wayback Machine, so I will be posting week-by-week accounts here to this blog. Highlights here and all the super-dry stuff after the jump.

We re-launched bgnews.com on January 12, this is what got done in the first week publishing our own daily newspaper after the long nights of getting everything done for a smooth launch. Here are the highlights.

Setup RSS 2.0 feed for MyBGSU (BlackBoard doesn't like Atom I guess)
Started talks with Andrew Spittle at CoPress about our CP5 archives
Added ability to embed photo galleries in articles
bgviews.com domain finally under our control
Categorized the issue indexes
Got my carousel picker plugin working thanks to Byrne
Met with MediaMate talking about national ads and online ads

19 Jan 2010

@ 14:55 Earlier today I submitted The BG News to become an official Google News source, and replied to their automated email as requested.
@ 14:54 Met with MediaMate and Bob, Cindy, Tonya to talk about advertising.
@ 11:12 To-Do: Added: archive lists are messed up in Safari AND IE7. Fun.
@ 05:00 To-Do: Added: update Blog Search widget to hide if on an ErrorDocument
@ 03:42 Worked on getting more Issuu shelves in our PDF Archive by Month page. But it is too late to do any more.
@ 03:08 Basically the widgets now work 100% on every site in the network except for bgnews.com because of that Monster inline code. Still looking...
@ 02:38 Too bad falconscreech.com is taken, I looked months ago when we started running them in the paper.
@ 02:37 Add the most recent Falcon Screech to the home page. This is automated, and will always show the most recent entry.
@ 02:35 Now the accordion loads on document.ready so it works right away. Oddly enough when page finish loading accordion collapses.

18 Jan 2010

@ 21:54 Accordion now works in IE7. Found an issue where it will not fully load if there is an external script like Monster, which we make money.
@ 04:23 Working on an accordion script for the right sidebar for most popular/most comments, etc. Close to complete, still having IE7 issue.

17 Jan 2010

@ 19:44 updated the letters to the editor form.
@ 18:30 To-Do: Added: add UTM tracking to Tweet This bit.ly script.
@ 18:30 To-Do: Added: add UTM tracking to all RSS feeds, starting with BG News
@ 18:30 To-Do: Added: update network search results template
@ 17:22 The monthly archives are now broken out by category, with the date listed next to them, too. http://bit.ly/7zAdJg
@ 15:31 Issue index is done and looks awesome. has headings per category and hides categories with zero count for that day http://bit.ly/4qpFI4
@ 10:41 blah wrong account.

16 Jan 2010

@ 23:06 Was able to break out the Issue index by category. Hope I can figure out how to hide categories that have zero posts in them.
@ 15:30 To-Do: Completed: re-configure google apps for domains once bgviews.com is transfered.
@ 14:24 since we now control bgviews.com, deleted the add-on domains and created the real subdomains for m.bgviews.com and others.
@ 13:52 Google Apps MX and CNAME records have been entered for bgviews.com, hopefully that will propagate soon, though their TTL sucks.
@ 11:11 bgviews.com is still resolving to CP servers on campus, it has not propagated yet. works at home (TWC).
@ 08:30 To-Do: Completed: get bgviews.com transfered from college publisher.
@ 08:14 bgviews.com now redirects to bgnews.com with a 301 redirect. it will do that until I get the apache aliases setup.
@ 01:38 setup bgviews.com on our dedicated box. will be caching with CP for a while now, they have a large CDN. need to setup CNAME and MX records.
@ 01:36 bgviews.com finally transfered into our godaddy account. they could have quickly accepted it; but waited the five days. lame.

15 Jan 2010

@ 11:50 fixed one of the CSS issues in IE7, the one where the asset-meta was getting squashed in the carousel. displays correctly now.
@ 04:47 opened a ticket with 6A support about importing/exporting custom field data. going to need to import cp5_image not sure how yet.

14 Jan 2010

@ 18:55 got the photo gallery setup for article pages. now just need to write the documentation on how to do it. http://bit.ly/7p2c5h
@ 15:08 making headway on getting the photo gallery widget added to the Entry screen in MT.
@ 15:03 spoke with Andrew Spittle for about an hour about moving our CP5 data into WP XML or even MT compatible format. I need to provide samples.
@ 14:48 changed the photo gallery on the bgnews.com home page to load most recent not feature photos
@ 00:15 To-Do: Added: add custom field and code to add a gallery to an entry.

13 Jan 2010

@ 21:41 added code to my plugin to show/hide the breaking and updates spotlight boxes. need to add it to the template now.
@ 19:15 To-Do: Added: move all inline css to external files
@ 15:24 The @bgviews feed is back in MyBGSU now, thanks to Dong Chen for his help.
@ 08:45 To-Do: Added: restruct use of byline name in MT code for profile view
@ 08:45 To-Do: Added: configure bgviews.com for apache aliases /mt and /errors once transfered
@ 08:45 To-Do: Added: once we get the database from college publisher, provide it to wordpress developer
@ 08:45 To-Do: Added: re-configure blogs.bgviews.com when bgviews.com is transfered
@ 08:45 To-Do: Added: re-configure m.bgviews.com when bgviews.com is transfered
@ 07:22 updated comment policy to reflect zero tolerance for spam posts and comments. added direct link in comments block in MT templates.
@ 06:24 after many attempts, cannot get mt:entryid to output correctly as a variable in my carousel plugin. emailed byrne.
@ 05:15 Added: fix broken carousel plugin i wrote.
@ 05:14 added documentation to internal site for creating entries in MT
@ 05:13 added falcon screech to profile view template. posts/comments/favorites now show up.
@ 04:57 added easy way for bob, others to keep updated on project development history with twitter and to-da list accounts. setup public web page.
@ 04:15 updated carousel plugin is now live. need to modify code in MT template to work with variables.
@ 04:14 forgot to mention, bgsu summer session ad is now live on the site.
@ 03:55 working on fixing the carousel picker plugin for the home page.
@ 03:45 created rss 2.0 feed for dong chen
@ 03:43 bgnews site went live in movable type tuesday jan 12 at about 4 am.