Our 300th News Post!
Amazing but true: Web Services has published 300 posts to its website on all kinds of topics from Women in IT to our award-winning ways in the past decade. On average we have produced one new story every 7 working days since we started down this road. As it is summer and summer is re-runs season, we have trawled the seamlessly-incorporated archives (thank you WordPress!) on our site to find some of the classic articles we have published in the past decades.
Keep your site fresh with News Posts – 2009
Almost exactly 10 years ago to the day, we were telling you to make your site even more attractive by creating frequent news stories and posting them to your homepage. We truly ate our own dog food because, as I said, we have constantly brought you the latest news as it happens (in the world of Carleton Web anyway.) This news story outlines why we believed this back then (and still do!)
5 Questions Google Analytics Can Answer – 2016
Technically, although we add Google Analytics to all your websites, Web Services does not support Google Analytics. What we have consistently done over the years however is bring you whatever we have learned along the way as we analyse the visitor numbers and trends and read. From our first ventures to our workshops to the post we are linking to here, we have kept pace with the latest developments from Google Analytics (which are frustratingly frequent) and in search engine optimisation, and tried to write about them. In fact nearly a third of our news posts are about this.
My Name is URL: Creating SEO-Friendly URLs – 2010
While I am willing to bet that we wrote this article just so we could use a funny pun, what the story said 9 years ago is just as relevant today as it was then. You can change the address of your page to make it shorter – useful for æsthetics and for SEO.
Introducing Coffee Break with Web Services – 2010
Has it really been 9 years since we introduced the idea of our Coffee Break. Prior to this, much of what ITS does for the university was kept under the hood. We decided it would be great for our clients to know what we had planned for the future of the web, what our challenges and failures were, even how we made decisions about what to change and remove from CCMS and other templates. Nine years later we still throw the doors open and invite all our clients to come and hear what we have planned – and to drink coffee/eat cookies. Many other areas of the university have copied our lead – You’re welcome!
To Tag or Not to Tag: Adding Categories and Tags to Posts – 2010
This news post illustrates how the basic DNA of WordPress – and therefore the CCMS – has remained the same. The advice in this piece holds true still: categories broadly group your posts, events and pages; tags are more granular and contain pieces of info that might go further in helping your SEO. In fact, the only thing that dates this post is the examples of “South Africa” and “Vevezela” we use – pretty sure this post came out in the first week of the 2010 World Cup Finals! (Bonus feature: a comment from our former manager, Danny Brown.)
Using Slide Me’s for what Slide Me’s were intended – 2011
My Pulitzer nominated article on the joy – and the curse – of Slide Me’s. If you use Slide Me’s you need to read this.
The Power of Social Media: WordCamp San Francisco 2011
How one casual Tweet landed Andrew from Web Services on a stage in San Francisco, telling hundreds of people about Carleton and the CCMS.
How to Write for the Web – 2012
Everything we do is about communication. The way you write on your site helps with so many things: from communication of information to accessibility, readability, SEO, and even student enrollment (no pressure though!) Being at the forefront of training in ITS, we created a series of videos just on writing for the web. At six years old they are still as relevant as the day they hit YouTube. But for the authentic experience, you can also sign up for a workshop on the topic, being held on 27th June.
4 things you can do to make your web content more accessible – 2013
One of our great interests in Web Services is in accessibility – allowing people to reach our information and vice versa. We have learned a lot along the way and are always keen to share new approaches in what is one of the university’s priorities.
Where to Place Keywords to Improve your SEO – 2019
Finally: our most recent (299th!) post returns to SEO and how to use keywords in all the right places. Like writing for the web this is something in which we also offer workshops – watch this space for an announcement about our next one soon!
We hope you have enjoyed this look down memory lane and click on some links to revisit these posts. If you haven’t already, also subscribe to our newsletter in order to receive a bundle of similar stories at the end of every month.