Anna Jenner is a Student Recruitment Officer in the Student Recruitment Team.
She is the web editor for the Information for Schools and Colleges website, which went through the Go Mobile process last summer.
Anna attended our first Web Editor Community Event (held on 3 February 2016). Here’s what she thought of the session.
I was invited to attend the Web Editor Community Event, the first of a series of events offered by the Corporate Web Team. Its aim was to build and empower the community of web editors across the University and allow us to keep in touch, ask questions and share advice.
I loved the sound of this immediately as I thought it would be a great chance to pick my colleagues’ brains about their websites and learn from their experiences of the Go Mobile process.
Cake and networking
There was also the promise of cake so I signed myself up eagerly (having sacked off my New Year’s Resolution of no cake on the 4 January when I came back to work!). My high expectations were met when I walked through the door and saw a pile of proper size cake (none of these tiny portions!) and lots of tea and coffee.
There was a lovely relaxed atmosphere from the start with ample opportunity to have a chat with colleagues from across the University. Many mirrored my own thoughts and spoke highly of the level of support they had received throughout their Go Mobile experience and celebrated the greater functionality, responsiveness and design of our sites leading to improved audience engagement.
Go mobile: the story so far
After the refreshments and networking opportunities we had a short update on the overall story so far with regard to Go Mobile. You can’t argue with Google Analytics and it is clear to see the positive effect that the Go Mobile process is having on traffic to the University webpages.
This was uplifting to all of us who have worked hard to improve the content and update the assets on our websites, whilst also getting to grips with a new content management system (T4), and made it seem even more worthwhile by seeing the bigger picture.
T4 show and tell
I found the next part of the event particularly useful, where members of the Web Team shared some useful hints and tips about the different features of T4 including:
- how to use box types to create grid layouts on different pages
- using the ‘Gallery’ to rotate three or four images on a page
- different ways to move large amounts of content quickly from one part of your site to another
We got to see how these content types were created in T4 and then shown how they would look on the webpages. This information was very timely for many of us at the event as after the initial setup of our websites, we were now looking to add new features.
I have really enjoyed getting to grips with this CMS and find the functionality and navigation to be so much better to any I have used previously. It took me a while to get my head round but the training offered by the Corporate Web Team was comprehensive and easy to follow. Nevertheless, having the opportunity to get some further hints and tips was very welcome!
Question and answer session
We then got the opportunity to ask any questions about working in T4 and writing for the web. The questions that were asked were very useful and explored topics that I hadn’t thought about in detail, such as how to archive events correctly.
We finished off the event by discussing ways in which we can develop the community of web editors and share content, ask quick questions of each other (rather than constantly bothering our Web Managers – apologies to Emma Cragg, who is quite often harassed by me!) and extend our knowledge through our peers.
This event was informative, clear, concise and a great start to what will I hope become a thriving network of web editors. I am very much looking forward to the next one!
