Unlimited Flexibility with WordPress Multisite
Divine Proportion and Golden Ratio in Web Design
Since leaving the corporate web world, the University of South Florida provided me the opportunity and support to provide the institution with a full-fledged redesign for the USF Library system.
Previous web-related projects were expected to have very little planning involved, limited resources, and not a lot of time for innovation. I was provided a very healthy timeline of expectations with dedicated staff members that would serve as our web committee to help with usability testing, general feedback, and a resource to help educate me on the services provided by USF libraries to students, faculty/staff, alumni, and community users.
Given a good three months of prep time, I was finally able to take the time to break the redesign process into a few stages: wireframing, interface design mockups, and HTML prototype templating.
During these major stages, I would also be required to benchmark our ‘competition’, investigate a proper design for housing the content, index the massive breadth of current content, and suggest ways to reorganize the information provided to patrons based on a tighter, more intuitive hierarchy of info to display. Believe it or not, there IS some degree of math involved when trying to proportionately design a website. Using the Golden Ratio method, I went with using a 960 (pixel) grid system to assist with various options for layout.
Since the USF Libraries didn’t have a dedicated webmaster to control and publish content, they relied heavily on another content management system, Springshare’s LibGuides, to allow members of the library system to publish content on the fly. This became a breeding ground for lots of duplicate content with no central organized flow of information. While LibGuides is a great product used by librarians to quickly publish their course and subject guides, it wasn’t a good way to bring attention to the front-facing services we needed to promote across campus. A chief concern with the previous site was that users would have a hard time finding resources they were looking for, often taking 4+ clicks to get to their destination and then having to constantly remind themselves how to get to that same resource next time they came to visit the site. Our goal was the site easy to use with a consistent framework and universal dropdown menu system.
Having some past experience with WordPress framework and templating, I decided to pick this open source CMS to house our content. Going a step further, I decided to manage our content in a multi-site network configuration. WPMU sites are a great way to expand the flexibility of siloing directories for search engine optimization, utilizing widgets and plugins allowing for 3rd party integration (social media, embedded media, etc.), as well as setting up complex sub menu hierarchies. As of today we’re currently at 30 separate directories, each with 10-30 pages each: that’s a lot of varied content!
More information on WordPress Multi Site Network Configurations »
Other Applications
Since WordPress templates are highly dynamic, there are a lot of rich 3rd party applications we decided to include within our new site. On our homepage, we utilize the robust SlideShow Pro Director module for our main news channel: highlighting important events, calling attention to new library initiatives, and announcing changes or updates to USF library products and services. This sleek application functions as a CMS for images, video, and includes nice (non-Flash) options for anyone on a mobile device.
For form management, we’re utilizing the services of Wufoo to help maintain our many online signup forms for library services or, to report problems. Wufoo ties in nicely with our email subscription service and even comes with a WordPress plugin of its own!
We’re also employing Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools to help analyze and track our traffic and monitor our website statistics.
