When I announced that the Temple News was moving to WPMU, I promised to keep the world updated. So consider this a progress report of sorts.

Overall, the site has given us the freedom and flexibility we thought it would. There is no limit to the kind of content we want to deliver. If I had to do it again, I would in a heartbeat. We are getting more daily content, more multimedia, and we are on the cusp of launching an advertising program.

However, WordPress was not meant to handle a newspaper Web site without tweaks. At The Temple News we took many steps to bend the Content Management System to our needs. As expected, there are a few things I am having trouble with. I provide this list to provide an inside look at the problems with the move, as well as asking if anybody else can see a way to fix these problems.

1. RSS is not a good way to deliver a weekly email edition. Let me state for the record: Feedblitz is an awful, awful, awful service. They don’t respond to customer service emails, and their phone number just tells you to email them. When I set up our newsletter I scheduled the Temple News email to only go out weekly. It went out daily. And on top of that, you can’t have the feed display more than 10 items. I am searching for an alternative RSS to email service that does weekly delivery and have come up short. I’ve been exploring Yahoo! Pipes, so hopefully I can patch this up shortly.
2. Access domains are the devil. I initially set up the Temple News on an access domain and then moved it. Bad idea. For some godforsaken reason, it made some of the javascript not work in certain browsers. The is somewhere in the WordPress instillation that still points to our access domain, and I can’t find it. Ive searched the database and ever php file.

   In fact, after giving my presentation in New York, someone asked me what I would do differently if I had to do it again. My answer was that I wouldn’t use an access domain, I would just shut down the main site for a day and make the switch.

3. Our comments broke. I suspect this is linked to the above, but users could fill out a comment form, and it would go in our database, but it would never appear under the article. Or worse it appeared under the wrong article. I don’t know how that is even possible, and neither does anyone on the WPMU forums. I switched themes, even messed with the comments.php file to no avail.
4. Doubling breaks. As most of you know, in newspapers there is no line break after a paragraph. However, on the Web, there is. College Publisher had a hand-dandy “double breaks” button that would automatically insert this break for you. I know this was Javascript, and currently trying to find a solution for WordPress, pay a freelancer to code a TinyMCE plugin for us, or (gulp) code one myself…
5. Photo cutlines. Currently we have no cutlines on our photos. This is because there is no Flickr plugin that handles this function. We may have to resort to hosting all of our own photos to fix this.
6. One day is only 24 hours long.

The solution to a few of these problems is to reinstall the entire site which I plan on doing soon as Temple wins the National Championship and the news slows down. This is a tricky endevour, and something I have never done. The WordPress export file to our site is so large the import doesn’t work unless you cut it up into smaller sections, so I need to treat this adventure with care.

The other problems, such as the RSS problem can be fixed with due time and diligence. However, there is a problem when you don’t know XML, PHP, or Javascript. But I would take having our destiny in our hands over having to call a support team any day. It’s very humbling to have things go wrong, but it is also very empowering. We have a few more steps to get the site out of the unofficial “beta” phase, and it all has to be done before May.

Game on.

Every college has their famous alumni.  For Temple, an incomplete rundown would include Bill Cosby, Bob Saget, Jill Scott, and Hall and Oates.

Well, after months of pestering by fellow editor Christopher Wink, The Temple News scored an exclusive interview with both John Oates and Daryl Hall.  Their publicist informed us that it was the only the third time both were quoted in a story in the past 10 years, with the other two publications being Entertainment Weekly and the Chicago Tribune.  We decided that this would be a good chance to flex our new found online muscle and do the first “complete” multimedia package.  That is, a slideshow, video, and audio.

While it could be argued that soundslides, Flash, and more original video should be included, I think we covered our bases well.

So with the help of Hot Recorder and Skype we recorded Wink’s conversation with Oates, and using Flickr and YouTube we added some video and a slideshow.  Wink also wrote two articles as well.  The result is the first in our series of alumni profiles.

The hardest part of this was getting it all up under deadline.  After I was provided with the YouTube link, photos, audio, and text, we sketched out a design, and it was coded and up in a little under three hours (not counting me driving home for a bit).  While nothing revolutionary was done, it was a good test of him and I as we had to convert his Skype conversation into mp3′s, create a banner image, create a slideshow, and make a custom WordPress template page.

Check it out!

Many thanks to Mindy McAdams for her awesome 1 Pixel out tutorial, and to IRIS design for the snazzy button.

I have to say I am eternally grateful for all of the kind words and support about our switch to WPMU.  I also found out a lot of things from just the feedback. For instance The Nevada Sagebrush beat us to the title of being the first College Newspaper to run on WPMU.

Nuts.

But all is not bad news. In the first two days of being live our page views were 400% higher the first day and 300% the second. This is without yet sending out a “weekly email edition” that used to be the source of almost all of our traffic. The email audience is largely alumni who could probably care less what the site looks like. The real test of the new site is see if we can get students to actively engage the content. Of course to do that, we must have frequent updates and build a community. Things that are all in the works.

But in the comment thread of my last post, Kelly Sutton asked why we choose MU. The reasons:

1. Pure selfishness. I have used Drupal, Xoops, and WordPress as CMS’s before, and I have had the most positive experience with WordPress. This is not me saying one is “better” than another, just with my skill set WordPress came easiest.
2. Many blogs, one roof. WPMU allows the owner to have an infinite number of blogs all under one domain. While at the moment The Temple News only has three online properties (the main site, our soon to be released alumni blog, and Broad and Cecil) I wanted who ever is coming after me to have as much flexibility as possible. Which brings me to…
3. Turnover. The worst enemy of college newspapers (and college sports) is the high degree of turnover. On average staff members are employed for two years, so any broad changes need to be heavily documented and made so that someone with absolutely no knowledge could come in and run the site. Using Drupal or Xoops I always felt like the learning curve was very steep. However WordPress seems fairly direct, and although I am not quite finished in writing our site’s “handbook”, I feel like if I got hit by a SEPTA bus tomorrow the Temple News would be just fine.
4. Flexibility.  As I was making the site, several staffers came up to me and asked if we could do X.  99% of the time, there was a plugin for what they were asking.   This allows our CMS to grow and evolve as the technologies and needs change.  It also doesn’t hurt that WPMU is open source.  My only fear is that WPMU is shut down to devote more time to WordPress.
5. The support.  This goes for Drupal as well, but I feel like the WordPress community goes above and beyond the call of duty.  And if instant answers are needed, there are several paid services.

I hope that answered any questions!

PS.  In my last post I briefly mentioned that my car was broken into.  Well as I was figuring out what to do, The Philadelphia Parking Authority had no sympathy and ticketed it.  So if you ever watch the show “Parking Wars“, the hatred city residents have for this organization is true to life.