28 Feb, 2010
5 years of babbling about the Web: The Web Development Blog celebrates its quinquennial anniversary.
Posted by: neko In: Web Development
Note: I’m posting this early as I’ll be out of the office for the next
2 weeks, during which time I’ll only have limited Internet access. I’ll try
to approve/reply to your comments as soon as time allows.
The first post. It’s hard to believe I used to write such short entries. (Some of you probably wish I still did!)
Starting this blog was one of the smartest things I’ve done. To be honest
though, it’s not something I began on my own, nor did I anticipate how it would
evolve over time.
To celebrate the anniversary of this blog (which actually occurs on February
28th), I thought I’d share a bit of its history and reflect on how the blog
and I have adapted to changes in the Web and the interests of you, our readers.
A communications need—in search of a solution.
Five years ago Kevin Adams and
I were the Web team for the marketing and communications department of Case
Western Reserve University. In the second half of 2004 we’d
rolled out a new site design as part of a university-wide rebranding effort. Our mission was
to maintain the home page, build (and maintain) new sites within the campus
Web presence and work with departments across campus to help them do the same
with their own sites.
To this end we had periodic meetings with campus Web
folk, and answered many an e-mail question or phone call, but this wasn’t enough
to keep up with the demand for support. Our campus community included hundreds
of Web maintainers, of varying skill levels, who had questions ranging from
how to edit HTML to how to develop content that would best support their marketing
strategies. We needed a more efficient way to serve this audience.
As part of the new site roll-out we had created
a Web Toolkit where we shared
template files, and various reference materials, but as a static site it seemed
an unwieldy place to post announcements or other bits of advice. We needed
a system that would let us organize the information more effectively. Thankfully
such a system had just been created.
Case launches a campus-wide blogging initiative.
I used the Case blog system to develop a variety of sites ranging from the Community
Outreach site to the Case
News Center. In July, 2008, I presented Blogs,
The many voices of a university at EduWeb 2008 to demonstrate the ways
that Case (and other schools) were making use of blogs in the classroom and
beyond. You can get a sense of how Case continues to use blogs by visiting Planet
Case, a site that aggregates all the most recent posts from the system.
In November 2004, Case’s ITS group began alpha testing a campus-wide
blogging system using the Movable Type platform. In January 2005 they opened up the
system for campus-wide beta-testing, allowing any university students, staff,
faculty or alumni to create their own blog(s).
Having previously experimented with blogs on Blogger, I watched the project
with interest. Then one day Jeremy
Smith, who runs the blog system, called me
up to see if I might be able to create a new template design for one of the
senior staff. Soon thereafter I had a test account set-up where I could experiment
with creating this new theme.
Although I was a regular blog reader I’d not really spent much time thinking
about blog construction. As I played with my designs, I found they weren’t
quite living up to my expectations. I was trying to visually re-style an existing
blog structure, when I should have been rethinking the entire interface. Thus
the results (such as this example)
just didn’t feel quite right.
I
was learning that the blogs required a different way of thinking in regard
to the user experience and navigation system. So I set those first designs
aside and focused on learning more about blog structure and the code behind
it.
At some point in that process I realized that the blog system was just what
Kevin and I had been looking for.
The birth of the Web Development Blog
I don’t recall the exact conversation but one way or another Kevin and I agreed
to start blogging. Since I’d already been tinkering with the system, I took
one of our campus templates and rebuilt it as a blog theme. Once that was ready
I wrote our first post. You can view
a copy of that post as it appears here on this blog,
or the
original post on the Case system.
As you will notice the post was surprisingly short. I introduced the reason
for the blog, suggested users add contact information to their site footers
and listed the hexadecimal colors for the Case Web templates.
Over the next few months Kevin and I continued in that vein, offering basic
how-to tips such as setting up password authentication or redirecting pages
and posting announcements, book reviews or links to interesting blog posts.
As we added more content, the blog began to serve a customer service role.
While campus Web maintainers continued to call us, they could now also go to
the blog to find answers to many of their more common questions.
Broader mission and the birth of longer posts
When meeting with campus clients to talk about their new Web sites, I often
started the conversation by asking about their goals
and target audience, much
as I do today with current clients. Alas with over 300,000 pages in the Case
realm, and just me and Kevin to advise, we weren’t able to sit down and have
these conversations with everyone. As I was working with the department of
pharmacology on their new site it occurred to me that I could write about the
Web planning process and post it on the blog. This way users could walk
through it themselves if Kevin or I weren’t able to meet with them.
On July 1, 2005, I posted So
you want to build a Web site, the first chapter of what turned out to
be my Planning
Your Web site Tutorial. Over the next few months I kept adding chapters
while Kevin kept posting smaller articles on various tips and tricks. Kevin
spends much of his spare time playing the trumpet in polka bands, while I’m
often compelled to write, so it came as no surprise when I turned out to
be the more verbose contributor to the blog.
As time went by I found that sharing the Web site tutorial with clients, before
we met in person, helped to save us time in the planning process and ensure
that we were all on the same page. I also found that people outside of Case,
both in academia and beyond, were beginning to read our posts.
As people commented and asked questions we started writing on a wider range
of topics. Instead of focusing strictly on issues pertaining to building sites,
I also started writing about related topics such as marketing and graphics.
In 2006 we both wrote a combination of how-to articles such as those on editing
images but also branched out into more general topics such as discussions on
writing styles. By 2007, I’d also begun covering topics related to what we
now call social media. In May of that year Kevin
left to work on the corporate
sector, so I continued the blog on my own.
Between building Web sites and advising
clients, we’d never had much time to blog during office hours so I wrote many
of these posts in the evening. Writing on my own time also allowed me the freedom
to experiment a bit more with what I wrote. By this point I knew my audience
extended beyond campus, so while much of my focus was on Web communications
as they pertained to higher education I also wanted to include information
that would be helpful to other audiences. And, instead of just writing things
to help people build better Web sites, I wanted to address related issues such
as promoting and marketing those
sites. Topics like search
engine optimization and social
media were a natural addition to this content mix.
Life after Case
Last year after working at Case for almost 10 years I left the university
to venture forth on my own. I knew the blog would continue to be an important
communications tool, so I brought it with me to this site, while leaving the
original files there for archival and reference purposes. I installed WordPress
in a directory on this domain, created a theme to match the rest of my site,
exported the blog entries from the old site then imported them here.
While
I still sometimes find an odd link that goes back to the old site, the process
worked surprisingly smoothly—considering that I was not only moving files
but changing from Movable Type to WordPress. For a few weeks during the transition
I cross-posted to both blogs then on February 23, 2009 I posted The
Web Development Blog is moving! as the last post on the old site and
began posting here full time.
Starting a new business takes time, so I’ve not blogged as often this past
year as I’d have liked, but for the most part the editorial policy for the
blog has remained similar to what it was at Case. Most of my clients are in
small or medium sized businesses so I’m writing a bit more with an eye to the
corporate sector. I’m still interested in the higher education and non-profit
worlds, so I also use examples from those sectors, and read posts from BlogHighEd to
keep up with what’s happening in academe.
The role of the blog
What began as a simple way to communicate with clients has turned into much
more. I think it worked out because Kevin and I started blogging to serve a
specific goal, we didn’t blog just to blog. As a result, The
Web Development Blog has served as a marketing tool, helped me to establish
my personal brand and given me the opportunity to connect with bloggers,
clients and others with an interest in Web related issues. And of course it
gives me a place to wax forth on whatever Web related ideas I may be pondering
in a given moment.
But as much as I like to write, none of this would matter
if you weren’t out there reading. So now, as I near the anniversary date
of the blog, I’d like to thank you all for reading, commenting, reTweeting,
etc.
And of course if you have any ideas on things I should cover in 2010, please
feel free to share them below.
Social Media Marketing Blog
I am now also a co-author of the Social
Media Marketing Blog with
Wayne
Smallman and Emily
Cagle. There we’ll be focusing on social
media marketing tips such as my first post, Listen,
learn and leverage your brand via LinkedIn Answers. That site is also home
to Wayne’s e-book, The Beginner’s Guide to Social Media.
Fan me on Facebook – Follow me on Twitter
We all know these blog posts don’t get written as frequently as I’d like.
But that doesn’t mean you need to go weeks without hearing me babble. Over
on http://www.facebook.com/heidicool,
I’m sharing one tip per day, usually as a short paragraph with a link to something
interesting I’ve found in the blogosphere.
At one tip per week day it won’t
clog your Facebook stream, but hopefully you’ll find something useful. And
for more links (and ramblings that may not always be related to the Web) I
usually Tweet and reTweet a few (or several) times per day at @hacool.
(I also have links to more accounts on My
Social Media Profiles page and am now also babbling
on Buzz.)
