COLA Web Refresh

Over the past week, I worked on updates to the CMSTA shift spreadsheet as well as the tasks spreadsheet. I worked with Adrian to set up more CMSTA interviews. I also dropped in on Lindsay’s orientation and worked a little bit with her to get comfortable with everything.

I also worked on a number of pages and sent a status update for Academic Enrichment to the relevant contacts. No response yet, so fingers crossed.

 

Photo ID Training Refresh

Project: Photo ID KB Training
Client /Prof: internal to LAITS Design STA team
completion status: started on 9/23
staff guidance: Suloni
STA team members: Abriella, Angie, Megan, Cristina
description/plans: Working to create new client comm templates and guidelines for unique photo ID situations. Also created PPT (eventually to be converted to pdf) w/ Megan to guide STAs on basic photo edits.
To be completed: Maybe within next 2 weeks??

 

COLA Web Refresh Project STA Prior Design Experience Questionnaire

Project: Design Survey for CMSTAs
Client /Prof: CMSTA team
completion status: sent out on 10/1
staff guidance: Suloni
STA team members: Angie
description/plans: With Angie, created list of basic skills CMSTAs might need for editing existing COLA photos during the web refresh project and/or graphic creation (possibly). Once we get responses from all 3 current CMSTAs we’re going to use it to plan and create documentation for this purpose

Photo IDs

If you know, you know.

Git + Github Training Review

No more progress yet, with return this either today or Wednesday (Thuy is online Thursdays.)

Pirate

My roommate’s dad reinforced and “Pirate-proofed” our apartment balcony, so have a quick glimpse of her enjoying the great outdoors

COLA Web Refresh

Things have been slowly but surely speeding up for this project. I’m going to help a new CM STA onboard Wednesday morning, and in the meantime I have been going over existing Pages tasks and making sure everything is in order as well as helping Adrian and Rahul with any questions. (I’ve also been making some edits to the spreadsheet since the workflow is still a bit wonky.) We’ve been making sure to add alt text for image components as well as double and triple check that links aren’t dead. Pretty soon, I will start drafting and reviewing client communication emails to be sent out to the relevant contacts, detailing what’s been done and any outstanding issues or suggestions (updating links, removing arcane info, refreshing graphics) we may have.

On a related note, Suloni reached out to Angie and I on making some guidelines for photo editing for CM STAs, who have varying degrees of proficiency in PS. The graphics question is becoming a big one, especially for the Dean’s sites that we’re migrating now; many of them haven’t been touched in years, far less than department or center sites, and so several images and graphics are suboptimal (low res, out of date, wrong size, ugly). For CM STAs who are more web dev-y, the guidelines will be a basic guide to using adjustment layers in Photoshop as well as guidelines on resizing / cropping photos (and when not to). There is also the possibility of more complex graphic refreshes, which may either be completed within the CM STA team or by a design STA.

Photo IDs

I’ve been continuing to complete photo IDs, as well as contribute to a collaborative updated photo ID guideline doc w/ Angie, Megan, Abriella, and Suloni to detail procedures for trickier photo ID situations + client communication.

HIS 315K PPTs

I’ve been working on reformatting powerpoints whenever they come in for Zamora’s HIS 315K class (usually a day or two in advance).

Misc

• I’ve been looking at web dev documentation from Estella and Thuy and copyediting / trying them out myself :~)
• More low priority, but I’ve been editing the animation script to include a list of characters, styles, bgs in each scene

Hi, blog it’s been a minute~ it’s me, your favorite photo ID goblin

These past couple weeks have been pretty busy. I’ve been working on lots of COLA Web Refresh-related tasks. Migration first and foremost, but I’ve also been assisting with the interview process for prospective Web Refresh Project STAs and helping coordination feedback processes for the project. We have our first ~weekly check-in~ meeting next Wednesday, which I hope will help answer some STA questions and make the workflow a bit neater.

Besides that? I wrote some WP Publisher-related documentation for the KB, and helped review/copy-edit Estella’s MAMP and Grav KBs.

And of course, photo IDs. So many IDs.

Miscellany: helping Marian more with the BIES site via email and helping Sarah from the Department of Government edit the Cascade as well as coordinate an ID issue with the department head.

But what’s Pirate been up to? Lots. Here’s a picture of her hard at work. In other news, my mom sent a large package of toys to “Captain Pirate McCloud” in the mail.

Project: COLA Website Refresher
Client /Prof: N/A (College of Liberal Arts)
completion status: started on August 25, 2021
staff guidance: Michelle Vanhoose, Chris Rankin
STA team members: Rahul, Adrian
description/plans: Begin to grow comfortable with Pages and create a practice page, start to transfer content from Cascade beginning with content from the Office of the Dean.
To be completed: TBD (long-term)

So — worked on IDs, Cascade feedback, and really got the ball rolling on the web refresher project! Below are some screenshots from my work on my practice site, which I made entirely about calicos, snowballing from a love for Pirate.

I also continued to part 2 of the Pages training, by drafting and sending an email to Michelle, Chris, and Crystal describing my work, what went well & what didn’t, and any suggestions I have. I’m including it below (also in BC) because why not, let’s let this blog post be a big boy.

 

Hello,

I am writing to let you all know of my current progress on the COLA web refresh project. As of now, I have created a parent page for myself under “Undergraduate Students” (with my name as the title). The home/landing page simply contains a hero image. There are two personal pages contained therein. I chose to construct my pages’ content around my cat roommate, Pirate, and educating the audience about calicos in general. The first subpage includes two images of Pirate in the card component format. Next, I included a FAQ centered around calicos, this time as an accordion component. The last component of this page is a callout, featuring a highly publicized calico-related news event. The second subpage included some more information about calicos, starting with some featured famous calico-loving artists, rendered as image buttons. Next, I included some more calico information, represented as tabs, covering what differentiates calicos from torties and torticos. Lastly, I embedded a short video with some quick facts about calicos. Across all pages, I demarcated different section of information by using the header text formatting. 

Overall, I thought this activity went well. I was able to attain some familiarity with different Pages components and how they work in practice. The preview option (much easier to use than Cascade) was also a great resource to check my page as I went along with my edits. The drag and drop functionality was also pretty useful, as well as being able to view different Pages components as layers. As someone who often works in Photoshop, this was a really great and familiar tool. 

As for things that did not go quite as smoothly, there were a few barriers. First of all, as far as I could see, there was no way to resize pictures within this platform. I ended up cropping some of the image assets I used in Photoshop before so that they would show up proportionally. Let me know if there is an easier way to do this. Moreover, the CMS’ canvas being small was a bit of a challenge, especially working on the large Mac monitor here in the office. 

Lastly, I had a couple of possible improvements or functionalities I’d like to suggest. As I have very limited web development experience or insight into the workload of those on that team, I understand if they’re unrealistic requests, but they are features I wished I had while creating my page. First of all, perhaps some kind of table of contents kind of component could be useful. This component, already present in the HTML of some present COLA Cascade pages, would link certain topics or questions to relevant sections of the page. One last suggestion I have is that maybe there could be a way, in the case of image components, to toggle a basic color overlay from one of the branding colors like the blue/orange/dark/light text box options in the card components. This could maybe create a little bit of cohesiveness across pages, but I also realize this could be too much.

I hope you are all doing well. Let me know if there’s anything I should add or change, or if you need any clarification!

Sincerely,
Ingrid Alberding

https://sta.laits.utexas.edu/blog/2021/08/30/40536-2/

Hello again, it’s me. The semester is starting tomorrow and I am not ready… but also happy to be in the office and amongst people again! Maybe I’ll stop having one-sided conversations with cats…

This week I kind of bopped around, working on photo IDs and finishing the animation project script. Excited to see where the animation project goes! It’s definitely been slow-going, as we’ve all just been working on it in our downtime, but we’re definitely starting to make some significant progress.

Also, I’ll include a couple IDs here for reference

 

I also worked a bit on web support and updating the STA blog as well as reviewing the documentation for the COLA web refresher project, which me and a couple other STAs will start helping with beginning tomorrow. I am storing my current questions here.

Also I have an important announcement. After careful consideration, Pirate has decided she is not open to photographs at this time.

This week, I met with Marian to help with the BIES site and make some updates on her behalf.

I also did some internal work, adding Michelle to various to-dos and the STAs to the new COLA web refresher slack channel. I also added STAs to the blog and updated the home page. Next week we’re starting on the COLA web refresher project, so excited for that!

In the meantime, here is Pirate: