Institute of Technology: Driven to Discover Blog
The IT D2D Blog is a central repository for all Driven to Discover-related content produced by the Institute of Technology. It is a tool departments and centers can use to promote their faculty, their units, and the college.
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/itcomm/discover/
Overview | Features and Benefits | RSS Mockups | Technical Notes
Overview
The University of Minnesota's Driven to Discover campaign has been a very popular and successful tool for promoting the University and the great and important work that happens here. Faculty and staff from across the University have been contributing to the campaign by answering questions submitted by the public and posting them on the Driven to Discover Web site (http://discover.umn.edu).
The
departments and centers within the Institute of Technology have expressed a desire to feature content that highlights their faculty on their respective Web sites, but have had difficulty linking directly to the articles in the Driven to Discover site. They have asked for a tool that would make it easier to find and post relevant stories about their faculty directly to their Web sites.
To solve this problem, the IT Communications team has created the IT D2D blog. Relevant content is gathered from various sources, including the Driven to Discover Web site, sidewalk clings, and college and department sites, and copied into the blog where it is categorized by date and department. Once there, it can be delivered automatically back to the department sites through RSS content syndication (news feeds).
Features and Benefits
- Gathering the content into a single site strengthens the brand of the Institute of Technology and its departments.
- Incorporating Driven to Discover language, branding, and links leverage and support the University's branding efforts.
- The University Libraries' blogging software is an easy-to-use and cost-effective content management tool that automatically supports RSS syndication and podcasting.
- The blog format supports rich graphics and functionality including Flash video.
- Through RSS syndication, content can be automatically displayed and updated on department pages.
RSS Mockups
Here are some examples of how the IT D2D RSS feed might appear on department pages. The RSS can be customized for width, alignment, logo color, and text formatting. Note how the feeds on the following pages only display department-specific content, while the feed to the right features site-wide content.
Technical Notes
- The RSS examples on this site use Magpie RSS parser version 0.62 which requires that PHP be installed on the Web server and that the page extension end in ".php"
- Your department is welcome to use a different RSS parser, however please coordinate with IT Communications to ensure the visual consistency of the feed.
- The layout of the feed is formatted using tableless CSS, which needs to be included in the <head> tag of the page.
- For help installing and setting up the RSS feed, or for any questions or comments regarding the IT D2D Blog, please contact:
Peter Riemenschneider
Electronic Communications Manager
Institute of Technology
priemen@umn.edu
612-624-2929
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