STA Blog

Welcome to the STA Blog

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Hi Adrian! 🙂 Welcome to the STA Blog! This the page where your blog posts will published.
Toward the end of your STA Orientation, you’ll design and upload a banner to go at the top of this page.

Upload a Blog Banner

Step One: Design Your Banner in Photoshop

Use these Photoshop specs when you’re making your banner:

  • Your banner should be 780 pixels wide (the height doesn’t matter)
    • Must include your name, your major, and your expected graduation year
    • Your banner should reflect who you are (your personality, interests or major)
    • Make sure to save your banner for the web (i.e. File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy))
    • If you save your banner as a JPG, make sure sure the quality is high (i.e. at least 60)

Step Two: Save Your Banner

  • There are two places you can save your completed projects: UT Box and the LAITS server. You’ll be given a personal folder in both locations. For now, you only have to save your banner to UT Box, but you may have to access the server at some point in the future.

Accessing UT Box

Accessing the LAITS server

  • Accessing the LAITS server from off-campus is slightly more complicated.
    • You’ll need to be registered with Duo if you aren’t already (you can register here).
    • Then you’ll need to connect to the UT VPN and the LAITS server. The videos below will walk you through how to do that:
    •  Then navigate to your STA volume folder and save
      • smb://file.laits.utexas.edu/sta/Adrian McKee
    • Save your banner both as an image and an unmerged PSD

Step Three: Upload Your Banner to the STA Blog

  • Log in the the STA Blog here.  You should’ve received an email confirming your new WordPress account with your username and assigned password. If didn’t get it or you can’t log in, ask Suloni or another STA.
  • You’ll be able to change your password anytime by going to Users > Your Profile > Account Management > New Password.

Uploading media and banners in WP

  • Read these links before you upload your banner.
  • They will walk you through how to upload media to your blog.

How to Upload a Homepage Banner

Adding New Posts and Media

Starting the school year

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Starting The School Year

Although classes start on Wednesday, this Monday marks the beginning of the fall semester!

 

Incoming tasks have been slow in comparison to the peak of summer. Thus I have been processing photo IDs and testing graphics in the studio. Last week I also met with Estella and Maddy to revise the website layout for Latinxopop Lab; the navigation bar and repository modal need more work. I also had some time to draft the rest of the website in Figma. I anticipate a meeting with Professor Aldama in the future as we seek clarification on the repository page.

 

ECO 304K: Studio Course Graphics

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ECO 304K: Studio Course Graphics

Hi blog! Long time no see… I had a brief hiatus last week, but I’m back and for the first time ever working in-person at the office. So that’s exciting! Anyway, let me talk about this project that I was working on before my vacation week.

 

So, ECO 304K is an Intro to Microeconomics at the College of Liberal Arts, and recently they requested some Canvas and Studio course graphics for this upcoming Fall semester. I can bore you with the details of all the stuff they asked for, but I really just want to talk about two of the requests, which were also some the ones I focused on before handing the project over to another STA. (I say some because I technically also worked on the buttons and desk skirt, but those aren’t as fun to talk about).

 

First, I worked on the stingers. Some of the ones they asked for were from our usual stinger supply. However there were four more custom stingers that they requested: a Kahoot stinger, a Demonstration stinger, an Alumni Interview stinger, and a Q&A stinger. I worked on a lot of different versions for these and thankfully got great feedback from a fellow STA. Here are their final results:

 

 

The other thing I mostly worked on was the digital backdrop. The challenge for this one was to, first off, find a free-for-use image (or one licensed by us) that depicted a Rube Goldberg Machine, and then add a piggy bank to it, whilst also editing it to fit the chosen color scheme for the course… That being said, the following three are (first) the original image and (the following two) my best efforts to edit the image:

 

 

This is the final design by the STA that followed up with this project. I think they did a great job! So, shout out to Poonum (we will miss you)!

 

Hello!

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Hello everyone!

I hope ya’ll enjoyed your summer.

I am excited to start my first semester as an STA. I hope to improve on my web dev skills and to learn about design in this job.

You can visit my personal website to find out more about my past and current projects here: iridazzle.monster

I wish everyone a good semester.

Ayo

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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: