W&M Web Team

What does that do? Does that blow your mind? That just happened!
- Ricky Bobby, Talladega Nights

Sorry, I couldn’t resist working in one of my favorite movie quotes. Now that you are sufficiently disturbed I need to ask the Cascade users… ever try to create a folder, page, or file and see this error?

An error occurred during creation: Write permissions are required on the destination folder to move an asset into that folder

This can happen if you forget to click on one of your folders in the left hand navigation tree before selecting from the “New” dropdown menu.

Ok, busted. I forgot to click the folder first… am I stuck?

Not at all. If you don’t want to simply cancel the action and start over, here’s what you can do:

1. Find the Parent Folder field of your new creation. This field is on the System sub-tab. For “New Folder” creations you are already on the System sub-tab. For “New Page” and “New File” creations you’ll need to click on the “System” sub-tab first to find Parent Folder.
2. Next to Parent Folder, select either the folder icon or the path inside square brackets.
3. In the popup window use the navigation tree to find and select one of your folders. Make sure it is highlighted in blue!
4. Click Submit in the popup window.
5. Notice the new path appears in the Parent Folder field.
6. Click Submit to create!

posted by Mark Windley

During a recent online speaker series on social media*, Robert Moore, tossed out some numbers.

We all knew the power of social media, but the numbers still made us say “whoa,” so I thought I’d share:

• 96% of Gen Y have joined a social network … by 2010 they’ll outnumber the baby boomers
• Social media is now ahead of email in internet usage
• Achieving critical mass:
  • Radio took 38 years to reach 50 million users
  • TV took 13 years for 50 million users
  • Internet took 4 years for 50 million users
  • Facebook reached 100 million users in 9 months
• if Facebook were a country, only China, India and the U.S. would be larger
  • More than 1.5 million pieces of content are shared there DAILY
• There are currently more than 200 million blogs
• YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world (100 million videos and counting)
• Wikipedia has over 13 million articles … and it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Brittanica

* Sponsored by the Office of Undergraduate Admission, CASE Speaker Series - Listen and Watch Closely: The Effective Use of Social Media for Student Recruitment, Panelist Robert Moore, Ph.D., Managing Partner Lipman Hearne, 10/27/09

- Jesse Windley

The College Communicators Association of Virginia and District of Columbia hosts two conferences each year. Today and tomorrow, their fall conference takes place on the W&M campus. W&M’s own Strategic Initiatives is hosting the events.

The primary purpose of the CCA is:

to provide professional development opportunities for practicing professionals within the field of college/university communications, in both Virginia and the District of Columbia, with an emphasis on programs and educational opportunities for those new to the field and for experienced professionals alike.

Tina Coleman and I will be attending - we’ll Twitter and blog about it a bit. Pssst…if you manage a W&M website, YOU are a college communicator.

- Susan T. Evans

For the W&M Cascade community, a couple of WYSIWYG editor “treats” for your pumpkin bucket…

Vertical Spacing
When you’re typing in the editor and want to start a new single-spaced line rather than a whole new paragraph, try “Shift+Enter” instead of just “Enter.”

Tables
For table options right-click inside an existing table.

Pasting from Word
When pasting content from Word, copy from Word, click on the “Clipboard+W” icon in the editor then paste in the window provided. It’s not always perfect but it helps removes most unnecessary formatting. If this doesn’t work you can always paste into a simple text editor like Notepad first, then select, copy and paste from Notepad into the WYSIWYG editor.

- Mark Windley

Keith Hampton was on campus for a presentation entitled, “New Technologies and the Structure of Community in Private, Public, and Parochial Spaces.”

The Flat Hat offers a nice summary of the talk.

- Susan T. Evans

Thanks to the support and commitment of Carl Strikwerda and Sue Peterson in the Arts & Sciences dean’s office, and tenacity and planning from Steve Otto and Kathy Larrieu, more than 80 Arts & Sciences websites have relaunched in the past 15 months.

We made it. Today, we launched the final Arts & Sciences site:

http://www.wm.edu/physics

Cheers,
- Susan T. Evans

Like it or not, wordiness on the web produces an impotent message.  Many web content experts advise reducing the word count of typical copy by about 50%.

If this seems a daunting task to you, take comfort in some advice recently proffered by the content editor of a Texas college website:

Don’t cut out half of your message.  Say it in half as many words.

– Justin Schoonmaker

Tom Linneman, associate professor and chair of sociology, tuned us in to this upcoming campus lecture:

This year’s Schmidt Lecture on Technology and Society will be given by Keith Hampton, a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.  His lecture is titled “New Technologies and the Structure of Community in Private, Public, and Parochial Spaces.”

To read more about Professor Hampton, go to www.mysocialnetwork.net.

Date: Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Time: 5:00PM

Place: Blow Hall 201

Might see you there,
Susan T. Evans

Last week, W&M’s Cascade administrator Mark Windley attended the two-day conference and reported back on a lot of great stuff.

The unveiling of the prototype for a new Recycle Bin by Hannon Hill COO David Klanac, caused a huge (and very audible) reaction from those present in the Cascade Server Roadmap session. No surprise, the addition of a Recycle Bin is the most requested item from users on Hannon Hill’s Cascade Server Idea Exchange.

For more conference highlights check out this Hannon Hill blog post.

- Susan T. Evans

W&M Dean of Admission Henry Broaddus pointed us to a piece in The New York Times about student blogs. It’s worth a read:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/02/education/02blogs.html

Managing Editor Tina Coleman and I love the fact that our volunteer students bloggers are featured on the W&M home page, front and center. That’s just how good our students are at conveying the ethos of William & Mary.

And, our blog implementation includes some dedicated faculty and staff bloggers writing about a range of topics - again, all volunteers. In our case, the writing from W&M bloggers (students and not) offers much more than “a powerful admission tool.” I consider our blogs as 1) an important way to support recruitment efforts in the Admission Office, and 2) a key communication tool for W&M’s relationship with other constituencies like parents, alumni, and prospective faculty and staff.

Where we fall short in my view is … comments. A blog, by definition, should allow them. What do you think? Are blogs with comments a potential win for W&M?

There are a couple of W&M initiatives that included “true blogs” as components of the communication plan:

• W&M Web Redesign

• W&M Mascot Search

Since we haven’t reported these in a while - here are some stats for web traffic to W&M Blogs for the period of July 31, 2008 - present:

• a total of 392,000 hits

• just over 49,500 unique visitors

• average time on site of 2:04 minutes

You might also be interested in bloggers at the Law School and bloggers in W&M Residence Life.

So, use the comments here to tell us your thoughts about putting comments there,

- Susan T. Evans