Improving findability with the new A-Z
In the 17 days since we unveiled the new A-Z web directory, we’ve had over 30,000 clicks to the many university websites listed in the directory. Shortly after the unveiling, we added in search tracking to track what keywords were drawing people to your sites. We’ve also added more helpful information to our knowledge base […]
VCU Mobile: Now there’s an app for that
The VCU Mobile application is now available for iPhone and iPod touch. With VCU Mobile, you can search the VCU directory, keep up to date with the VCU calendar of events, learn more about available courses, explore the VCU campus maps, read the latest top stories, and view photos and videos from around campus. VCU […]
New A-Z Web Directory
We unveiled our new A-Z web directory this morning. If you didn’t look closely, you might not have noticed much difference on the surface. Under the surface, however, the system is more powerful and more useful. It’s already a popular destination for finding websites at VCU. (It’s helped people visit over 600 websites in the […]
Web Users Group – Video from July 14
You can view the video from our July 14 Web Users Group meeting below. A written summary of the meeting is also available. You will need to have Flash Player and Javascript enabled to view the video. var so = new SWFObject(‘http://www.ts.vcu.edu/flash/player.swf’,’mpl’,’600′,’450′,’9′); so.addParam(‘allowscriptaccess’,’always’); so.addParam(‘allowfullscreen’,’true’); so.addParam(‘flashvars’,’&streamer=rtmp://video2.vcu.edu/vod&file=sdgrainer/wug-july14.flv&stretching=fill’); so.write(‘player’);
Confluence: New wiki application
Over the past few years, we’ve tested several options to run university wikis. We began with MediaWiki as the most well-known wiki engine. It worked well but was very difficult for non-technical users to grasp. When we began testing Confluence, we knew we’d found a winner – it was easy for new users to grasp […]
Urchin Upgraded to 6.602
On Tuesday, July 13, we upgraded Urchin (our University-wide web analytics application) to version 6.602 from version 6.4. This update adds several useful new features such as: LDAP authentication Adwords integration More user agents and operating systems (such as Android and Chrome, but not iOS or Mobile Safari) We will be testing the new features […]
Using VCU Keywords for Short URLs
Originally the VCU Keywords service was designed specifically with user-defined keywords in mind, so that for instance go.vcu.edu/biology would redirect to the Department of Biology’s homepage. This feature is useful for both print and email marketing campaigns because it gives a shorter, easier to remember URL for website addresses that may otherwise be long and […]
VCU FileDrop: Really Simple File Transport
VCU FileDrop is a simple service for sending large files (or large batches of files) to others via email. You can send files up to 1 GB in size to anyone with a valid email address (whether they have a VCU email address or not). Your files will be available for download to your selected […]
Web Users Group: July 14th Meeting Minutes
Thanks to those of you who were able to make it today. Rather than posting an extremely long summary of today’s meeting, I’ve decided to post about each item in a separate entry. I’ll link to each here as I add them. This way you can easily pick and choose the items that are most […]
A-Z Web Directory
Last fall we introduced the new combined VCU search page (example here) which combined the web search and people search results. Only a month or two later, we reworked it to add in search results from the A-Z system (another example). Even as we added the A-Z results, we wanted to make it easier for […]