New.Journalism.Review

I’ve co-authored the Top 50 Blog Techniques feature which appears in Issue 171 of Web Designer magazine (available now in all good newsagents in the UK  and in other countries). It contains 50 (count ‘em!) tried and tested tips to help you use: WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal and Squarespace.

Joomla! isn’t the most intuitive CMS, so many of my tips are to do with speeding up the process of adding content, locating module positions and creating sections / categories. etc. Four authors wrote the feature and each are experts in the individual CMSs, so it’s a really strong feature.  We didn’t get our bylines on it, which was slightly annoying. Apparently this is being corrected when the feature eventually appears online.

I just wouldn’t recommend this particular feature for absolute CMS beginners. To get the most out of it you’ll need to know the basics of how they work. If you want a quick intro to setting up a Joomla! site, order yourself a copy of Issue 165 instead. You’ll find  a feature that I wrote which takes you through setting up a reasonably decent-looking Joomla! based news site from scratch  and at almost zero cost – it’s so easy once you know how!

Review: Whittaker, J, (2009), Producing for Web 2.0: A Student Guide, Routledge
Whittaker, J (2009) Producing for Web 2.0 (Media Skills)

I’m on the hunt for a core textbook that I can recommend to students who take my Web Production units. The ideal book would provide an overview of the key skills in the creation, editing and production of interactive multimedia content. It would also discuss content management, design theory, usability, social media, online business strategy and legal and ethical issues. Is this too much to ask for?

I used to recommend Foust, J, (2005) Online Journalism: Principles And Practices Of News For The Web. It covers the key areas of what is online journalism?, HTML, writing for online, and opportunities and challenges. The book is well designed and the students find it easy to navigate.

But five years is a long time in dog (and web) years. Of course , Foust makes no mention of social media. Any advice regarding audio/video content is dispensed in just a few pages. It also slightly falls into the trap of assuming that online journalists would be doing their web authoring in Dreamweaver.

Quinn, S Filak, V (2005), Convergent Journalism: A Introduction and Quinn (2005) Convergent Journalism: The Fundamentals of Multimedia Reporting make a useful double act – the former is a practical guide and the latter looks at theory.

But whilst Quinn & Filak’s text has much to recommend it, they look like they were written at a time of massive change. The discussion of blogs and online writing is particularly weak and falls into the classic trap of confusing the ‘medium with the message’. It fails to understand the importance of such issues as audience talkback and interactivity.

If you’re going to write a book that covers this kind of area you need to know what to call it – ‘online journalism’ just doesn’t really cut it. I am also not that happy with that phrase – ‘convergence’. I’m not entirely convinced that the industry is using this anymore. Number one rule – give your book a title that people will find on Amazon! I’ve thought about this quite a bit and it isn’t easy.

So a gap in the market exists for a textbook about modern web production methods and Whittaker’s book seems to have learned from and addressed the mistakes made by others. Unlike the other texts, it takes into account the importance of social media for marketing and community building.

Its general structure is pretty straightforward: pre-production, production/design and post-production. It also provides the best balance of editorial and technical skills of any of the texts. It looks at MySQL, PHP, CSS and Javascript, but only in just enough depth. Whittaker knows his audience and it is not computer science students.

Modern production outputs are well-covered – social media, wikis and mashups. Content management is discussed using Joomla! as the example. There is a huge amount of software out there and it does a good job in informing tutors about the best technology to teach. The good news is that most of the software is open source and free (or very cheap) to deploy.

It sometimes feels (normally on a cold Monday morning!) that as tutors we’re simply training students to be ‘widget cutters’. Whittaker could improve the book by highlighting the transferable nature of the skills taught. The textbooks biggest let down is its weird two column layout and tiny font size – it just doesn’t work.

But Whittaker’s book has appeared at precisely the right time and fills an important hole in the market. Where it particularly succeeds is its near-perfect balance of ‘technical’ and ‘editorial skills’.

Whittaker, J (2009) Producing for Web 2.0 (Media Skills)

This month’s Web Designer magazine includes a tutorial on How to Build a News Site in Joomla! written by me (Steve Hill). By following the 24 steps, readers should end up with a decent looking news site. Well, that’s the general idea.

The tutorial will be particularly useful for charities or schools who are seeking to create a website quickly (I reckon it can be done in 2 to 3 hours!). But it’s well worth a read by anyone looking to create a decent site for (almost) zero cost.

If you read the tutorial and it worked for you, then I would love to hear about it. And if it didn’t work for you – I’m sorry! Let me know, and I’ll try to help out.

Web Designer (Issue 165 – Cleaner Code) is available now from all good newsagents in the UK.

Also, the issue has a wonderful feature lamenting the sad demise of GeoCities. Alongside Tripod, it was the site that got many of us interested in web design in the mid-90s. We’ll miss you GeoCities!

INTRODUCTION – WHAT IS JOOMLA!?

Joomla! is an open source content management system (CMS). It's open source like the Linux OS, so that means it's free to use and people give up their spare time to develop it.

OPEN SOURCE IS GOOD NEWS

Open Source is generally good news for individuals, non-profit organisations and those companies on a budget. You can spend a lot of money on a commercial CMS, but there
are solid reasons for going open source. To start with, your web site
won't be in the hands of a software company that can go bust at any
moment andyou won't be paying expensive maintenance contracts to idiots.  

Static HTML or DYNAMIC site? Take your pick.

a) What is a good news site?

Put simply:

• It has a 'front-end' (home page)  that changes frequently
• A template design that will appeal to the audience and is easy to navigate 
• It also has 'back-end' database that is stacked full of brilliant
  content generated by a team of journalists (or perhaps just you!). 

All major news sites are built around a CMS. Some 'big beasts' include Tridion (used by Emap) and eScenic (used by Daily Telegraph, CNN, Informa  and The Independent) – but you obviously pay a lot for these solutions.

b) Would you benefit from a CMS or are you better using straightforward HTML?

You don't have to be a big media giant to benefit from using a CMS.

1. Do you update your site more than once a week?  
2. Do you have multiple contributors (e.g. writers) to the site?
3. Do you want to keep design separate from content?

If you answer 'yes' to any of the above – a CMS would definitely be worth a look.

JOOMLA! – FREE AND EASY TO UNDERSTAND

There is something about using a CMS that sounds:

A) Really complicated
B) Really expensive

You can certainly make expensive mistakes – particularly if you take the advice of Joe Blogs, the designer, who created a bespoke CMS back in 2005 and he still thinks it's REALLY great.

Or
even worse (!), you take the advice of the IT manager who was taken to a lap-dancing club by a sales rep from a posh software
developer called Contendium

So have a reason to reject open source solutions before looking to a commercial CMS.

There are a number of free CMS to consider, alongside Joomla!

• WordPress (yes, this 'blog' tool is increasingly being used for 'news' sites)
• Drupal see a video of some well-known sites that use it
• Xaraya see my post for more info.(this is used by sites like Handbag.com and Netdoctor.co.uk)

There are others worth looking at like:

• Movable Type

• Expression Engine,
  

• Radiant,
  

• TextPattern

• DotNetNuke.

Having been round a few magazine and newspaper newsrooms, it's amazing the number of editors that seem to 'apologise' for using free tools and want to keep it secret. I won't name them, but they have each had a good look around and have concluded that Joomla!, Xaraya, or WordPress actually fit the bill just fine. So say it loud and proud - I USE OPEN SOURCE!

NOTE: There are some security issues with Joomla, which people need to be aware of. Some say these are very severe problems, but these tend not to be a problem if you keep an eye on the upgrades.

WE WENT WITH JOOMLA!

As a journalism lecturer, I
wanted to teach my undergraduate students about content management.
Students need the skills to write and produce great copy, take images
and produce video for the web.

WARNING: JOOMLA! IS WEAK ON AUDIO/VIDEO INTEGRATION

Just a word of warning, when you download Joomla! all you get is really a basic shell of a CMS. All the exciting applications come via downloaded modules and extensions (and there are lots of them – many are free!) and you will need to install these.

Integration of some functions can be a bit weak compared to commercial providers (particularly audio or video content integration.

ALSO there seems to be no automatic way to 'strip' content from other packages (such as magazine pages made in InDesign).

LINKS:
Drupal and Joomla! CMS's Compared 

Joomla! or Drupal which is best to create a site for journalism students

Choose the best free CMS (.Net Magazine – December 2008) (A great intro guide, but they shouldn't have included Blogger in the feature).

A NEWS SITE USING PRiNZ  BranfordMagazine 2.51

I  created a news site for level journalism students using WordPress and  PRiNZ BranfordMagazine 2.51 template. From a user-perspective it looks pretty good, although it's less flexible than Joomla! at the back-end.

There are many other news-stye templates that you can tailor to meet your needs. (See Revolution 2 Theme and Bram.us has a good list of others). 

SUPPORT FOR THOSE USING THE TEMPLATE

1. The creator of the template runs a support forum (this does not take any new support requests, but the database is searchable).

2. Download the excellent e-book – Sites that Soar – great if you don't know much about WordPress and it uses BrandfordMagazine as its example.

KEY STAGES FOR CREATING A SITE USING BRANFORD

The stages I went through to get the site right are roughly:

1. Change the website header (Logo),
 You need to find the name of the existing header graphic in the template files (it is known as bg-branding.png) and it's exactly 625 pixels w x 100 pixels h.Then go into Photoshop and create your own version. Finally, upload your logo to the same folder that has bg-branding.png.

2. Navigation bars
There
is a primary navigation bar that appears horizontally beneath the
website header. To add sections to this you simply create a page (NOT A POST). This will  automatically be added to the navigation bar.

The secondary navigation runs vertically on the left of the page. It orders posts according to categories   It is not standard to have a nav bar on the left for a news site, so this is not great.

You need to understand that categories in WordPress have IDs.
To get categories to appear in the left navigation bar, you need to
type these numbers into the template code.  Annoyingly WordPress 2.5
hides IDs. That said, it's possible to get them to appear again, but
you will need to download a plugin which is appropriately called Reveal IDs for WP Admin

5. Joomla! has module positions. And Brandford based on WordPress has its own  positions
Now
is the time to write  some posts (i.e. create some news articles). You
will then categorise these and these categories will appear in various
positions on the front page.

The positions on the front page are:

• Lead Article (this is what appears beneath the tabbed section).
• Featured articles
• Right Column Articles

As with the left nav bar, you have to type in the ID numbers of the categories containing content that you want to appear in each position.

ADDING IMAGES TO THE FRONT PAGE

It's
easy to get an image to go with a post, but you will also want any
story that appears on the front page to have an image as well. Unlike in Joomla!, WordPress does simply not take
the image from the post and stick it on the front page.

Instead any images you want to appear on the front page must appear in the CustomFields section of the post.

This is a complicated process. There is no easy way to change the
order of what appears on the front page (to get a headline story, you
would need to change the date on the post to make it the newest). This gets frustrating with large sites.

Joomla! has front page manager which exists so you can order front page content.

CONCLUSION: 

WordPress is great for blogs and seems
to be getting better all the time. But you may well outgrow WordPress
quite quickly if you use it for a news site. Joomla! or Drupal could be
a better bet!