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Group Information
Q: Who has two thumbs and had about a week and a half to bring this site to production?
A: This guy.
Organization:Knoxville Mercury
• Local altweekly newspaper formed after Knoxille’s Metro Pulse was shut down without warning by its parent company, KNS Media Group, 10/15/2014
• Editorial staff composed of core Metro Pulse editorial team members; many writers from Metro Pulse joined Knoxville Mercury as well
• Local, regional, and national award-winning writers and designers
Purpose and Goals: knoxmercury.com
• Deliver Knoxville Mercury content in digital form• Short-form (~700 words) and long-form
(2000+ words) journalistic articles• Multimedia content: image galleries,
streaming A/V content, podcasts• Deliver content on platforms that readers
want: Desktop, mobile, tablet
Target Audience
• Young, urban, liberal*, local
* At least, liberal in the mid-sized Southern American city context. Your mileage may vary.
Client Needs & Design Goals
• “As natural an extension of the print edition as possible”• Design must match stylistic cues from print edition
• Robust, simple CMS, equipped to handle text and multimedia content• User-friendly• Scalable to large amounts of content over years of service
• Responsive Web design• One site, one URL, automatically scaling to browser
window size and adapting on the fly via CMS and CSS wizardry
Data Collection
• Institutional knowledge• Metro Pulse editorial staff (now Knoxville
Mercury editorial staff) have decades of experience running a profitable(!) altweekly in the Knoxville area
• Professional/academic resources• Altweekly community• UTK JEM school community
User Groups
• Readers• Read-only access (user comments
notwithstanding)
• Editors• Write access: Article creation
• Designer (that’d be me)• Full access: build, read, write, edit, add users,
add categories, create, destroy
Content Inventory
• Static pages: basic informational pages with little to no dynamic content• Home, About, Contact, Advertise, Donate
• Dynamic pages: categories, subcategories, articles, built against database content, organized by PHP templates• Category: main top-level categories (e.g. News,
Features, Arts & Entertainment, etc.)• Subcategory: second level categories that group
articles together (e.g. columnists, performing arts, restaurant guides)
• Article: single story
SitemapHomeAbout UsContact UsAdvertiseDonate News
Feature StoriesWords With…
ColumnistsPatrice ColeGeorge DoddsDonna JohnsonJack NeelyStephanie PiperJoe SullivanEleanor ScottKim TrevathanChris WohlwendEditor’s Notes
Arts & EntertainmentArtClassical MusicMovie ReviewsMusic ReviewsMusic StoriesPerforming ArtsProgram NotesShelf LifeInside the Vault
FoodHome PalateQuick GuidesRestaurant NewsDirt to ForkSips and Shots
CalendarSubmit an Event
Databases
• Article database: stores article data and relevant metadata
• Event database: stores event listing data and relevant metadata
Server/Environment Requirements
• Web hosting• Offsite, managed hosting• Dedicated technology staff would be cost-prohibitive
• Content Management System• WordPress: open source, easy to use, highly
customizable and extensible, handles multimedia content well, high adoption rate in small- to mid-sized media environments
• Database/PHP compatibility: Web host must play well with WordPress’ MySQL/PHP requirements
• Web storage: Lots. High priority
Constructive Process
• Site programmer (again, me)• Install CMS, build user accounts, harden site• Build static pages, create framework and hierarchy for categories and
subcategories, create menus• Build homepage, set “selected stories” fields to populate from correct categories• Integrate Events Calendar software into site• Train users
• Site Writers• Static page content• Pre-launch article content (“Vol. 1, Issue 1” content)• Post-launch article content• Events Calendar content
• Graphic Designer• Text design: fonts, font sizes, font weights, line spacing, capitalization use• Visual design: Color palettes• Logo and art design: All original line art and logo design• Image design: Design and optimization for Web of images from photographers
Site Build Schedule Targets
• Test environment ready for testing: 2 days
• Static pages ready on test environment: 4 days
• Events Calendar integration testing: 1 week
• Test environment graphic design elements in place: 1.5 weeks
• Article content ready for testing: 2 weeks
• Testing with article content in place complete: 2.5 weeks
• Post-test changes and bugfixes: 3 weeks
• Final rounds of testing, tweaking, bugfixes: 3.5 weeks
• SITE LIVE IN PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT: 4 weeks• NOTE: These are “perfect world” estimates – actual start-to-finish
on v1.0 of site was ~2 weeks