The launching of a web site is a stressful one, but the re-launching of one can be enough to kill you. Lucky for me things went smoothly in the wee hours of January 12 (and I am not typing this from the grave).
I would like to say the transition away from College Publisher has been a smooth one, but it in fact has not. Just today the domain name was finally transferred into our account, and it is still not resolving all over the Internets yet. And we do not have our database of past archives, last I talked to CP it looked like I would have them by Friday.
So if you are just tuning in, the entire BG Views Network of sites is running under Movable Type, including The BG News, which was previously partnered with College Publisher. We are by far not the first school to leave College Publisher in recent months, and no doubt won't be the last.
But this post is not about College Publisher, it is about Movable Type, and how we are using it to produce a daily newspaper online.
I would like to say the transition away from College Publisher has been a smooth one, but it in fact has not. Just today the domain name was finally transferred into our account, and it is still not resolving all over the Internets yet. And we do not have our database of past archives, last I talked to CP it looked like I would have them by Friday.
So if you are just tuning in, the entire BG Views Network of sites is running under Movable Type, including The BG News, which was previously partnered with College Publisher. We are by far not the first school to leave College Publisher in recent months, and no doubt won't be the last.
But this post is not about College Publisher, it is about Movable Type, and how we are using it to produce a daily newspaper online.
The remainder of this post is going to seem a bit technical for some. Sorry, but you get no refund.
BG Views Network uses Movable Type Pro running under FastCGI, the actual BG News web site is made up of a number of "blogs." Movable Type Pro was required more for the Custom Fields than the community features, but those are a nice bonus. Here is the short list of MT plugins we use and rely on a daily basis. Some we could do without, some we could have gotten by with the "Lite" version, but in the end my goal in this re-launch was to not just match the feature set of our previous site, but exceed it - and we did that.
The Photo Galleries is built using Byrne Reese's Photo Gallery plugin, in a separate MT install that is not running under FastCGI. His template set switches menus and admin pages and because of how FastCGI caches the application, it just doesn't play nice. I hated to split Photo Galleries out like that, but it had to be done.
As with working with the Motion template set, it was much easier to port my existing BG Views design to Mid-Century (than incorporate it into my design), the theme the Photo Gallery plugin is built using. Using a secondary category archive and a Custom Field in the main BG News blog, I am easily able to embed a gallery within an Entry, such as here.
MT4 Custom Fields offer a lot, but I needed more, and as luck would have it, More Custom Fields by Dan Wolfgang offers just that. MCF is used a lot more in the Housing Guide, but the "Related Articles" you see here are one type of field the plugin provides. We actually use a lot of Dan's plugins; Better File Uploader is essential to sizing, thumbnailing, and lightboxing (in one fell swoop) photos for our Entry pages; Share is used for the "email to a friend" feature; and Poll Position is used for running polls in our blogs and in Entries.
The last "essential" plugin we use, and likely most important, is Byrne's Config Assistant plugin. Without it, updating things like the home page carousel, section pages, or breaking stories would take much more work for our news staff, and if I have one goal, it is to automate as much stuff as humanly possible. Config Assistant lets me do that, in spades. I need to do more with it, I just have not had the time.
There are plugins out there that will embed a Share This toolbar, but I felt it was much better to write my own, including using the bit.ly API for URL shortening.
The other plugin we rely on daily is Visitor Stats Pro, it provides our "Most Read" lists, and stats, referers, and search strings for our articles.
We use many more utility plugins from developers like Byrne and Mark Carey, too, they just makes my life so much easier.
The BG News has been online since 1998 and we have come a long way from hosting it ourselves in West Hall and doing the majority of the work in BBEdit. It is great to be publishing our site again, and Movable Type makes that a breeze.
BG Views Network uses Movable Type Pro running under FastCGI, the actual BG News web site is made up of a number of "blogs." Movable Type Pro was required more for the Custom Fields than the community features, but those are a nice bonus. Here is the short list of MT plugins we use and rely on a daily basis. Some we could do without, some we could have gotten by with the "Lite" version, but in the end my goal in this re-launch was to not just match the feature set of our previous site, but exceed it - and we did that.
The Photo Galleries is built using Byrne Reese's Photo Gallery plugin, in a separate MT install that is not running under FastCGI. His template set switches menus and admin pages and because of how FastCGI caches the application, it just doesn't play nice. I hated to split Photo Galleries out like that, but it had to be done.
As with working with the Motion template set, it was much easier to port my existing BG Views design to Mid-Century (than incorporate it into my design), the theme the Photo Gallery plugin is built using. Using a secondary category archive and a Custom Field in the main BG News blog, I am easily able to embed a gallery within an Entry, such as here.
MT4 Custom Fields offer a lot, but I needed more, and as luck would have it, More Custom Fields by Dan Wolfgang offers just that. MCF is used a lot more in the Housing Guide, but the "Related Articles" you see here are one type of field the plugin provides. We actually use a lot of Dan's plugins; Better File Uploader is essential to sizing, thumbnailing, and lightboxing (in one fell swoop) photos for our Entry pages; Share is used for the "email to a friend" feature; and Poll Position is used for running polls in our blogs and in Entries.
There are plugins out there that will embed a Share This toolbar, but I felt it was much better to write my own, including using the bit.ly API for URL shortening.
The other plugin we rely on daily is Visitor Stats Pro, it provides our "Most Read" lists, and stats, referers, and search strings for our articles.
We use many more utility plugins from developers like Byrne and Mark Carey, too, they just makes my life so much easier.
The BG News has been online since 1998 and we have come a long way from hosting it ourselves in West Hall and doing the majority of the work in BBEdit. It is great to be publishing our site again, and Movable Type makes that a breeze.
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