Website Notes and Announcements
Here are some things you should know about the new website . . .
If you are programmer and/or member of the station you can now post station news, meeting agendas and minutes, show announcements, play lists, or other program news on the website. AND it’s pretty damn easy. If you aren’t familiar with WordPress or blogging, even you should have very little problem. If you are now blogging on any kind of system, there is absolutely NO reason for you not to be taking advantage of this new resource.
To get started, first watch this video I created to demonstrate the registration process:
Then watch this video (that I didn’t create) on how to write a post:
When you watch these videos you will notice that our system looks different than what you see in the videos . . . it only LOOKS different; there was a major upgrade to WordPress in the last couple of weeks that hasn’t been reflected in the videos. There is little to no change in the nomenclature, just in the appearance and where you will find some of the things. If you have no experience with WordPress it should be no problem (old hacks like me have the problem!).
There are a couple of things you need to know about the VFR WordPress set-up.
First, for your post to appear in the correct places it must have some specific categories selected: Collectives, Collectives > Your Collective, AND Programmer’s Notes. If Programmer’s Notes is not chosen your post will not appear under Programmer’s Notes on the home page, natch. If you are currently a podcaster you must still additionally choose the Podcast category, in addition to the above. PLEASE, if you look at the bottom of the category list and find “vfr” selected, unselected it; it’s the default category and isn’t necessary.
Do not add more categories under any circumstances. For you to further categorize your posts use the Tags feature. You can find more info about Tagging in the video about posting and in this blog post: http://blogs.msdn.com/jmeier/archive/2008/03/10/tags-vs-categories.aspx
If you would like to podcast your program there are some other things we need to discuss and you should contact me directly.
The other thing to note about posting has to do with station news of a more official variety: meeting agendas, minutes, etc. This is stuff that you find under Station News on the home page. If you have such an announcement you also have to choose the right categories to make it appear in the right spots. If you have a meeting agenda you’d like to post you could possibly choose five different categories: Meetings, Meetings > Agenda, Committees, Committees > Programming [for example], and Latest Station News. “Latest Station News” is the kicker in this example; that’s the category that makes the post appear under Latest Station News on the home page.
Other website news . . .
You can now comment on posts and subscribe to have email notification when a post has been commented upon after you comment (there is also an rss feed for the post and comments). These comments are unmoderated at this time, though I have installed 3 different spam filters and turned off “trackbacks” (if you know what those are). I am working on installing a “notify the administrator about this comment” feature if we start to have problems.
When writing posts you can embed either YouTube or Google Videos into your posts; you’ll find the buttons when you start to write a post. BTW, for formating purposes, please keep the video near the bottom of your post (write some text first)
Anyone that begins to post will automatically have their own page on the site along with their own rss feed. If you click on the author name of a post you can find that page.
There is a new logo/header in the works; what you see on the website is not the finished product.
If you have any suggestions or comments please let me know. I’m sure I’ll have other news about the site in the coming weeks.
Tags: Collectives, Committees, Latest Station News, News, programmer, Web, youtube
