The Brown University Spectator is Brown University’s monthly conservative publication. They needed a navigable site that looked good. The theme we developed for them (a heavily edited version of Mimbo 2.0) achieves exactly that. The site is easy to get around, content is indexed well by Google, and the site is easy to update.
Content Management
After evaluating the needs of The Brown University Spectator, we decided to go with Wordpress, a simple blogging platform that can do some pretty cool things if you know how to tweak it. Since the Spectator requires that lots of people load articles, we wanted to use the simplest, most powerful program we could find. Wordpress is that program. Simple to use but incredibly versatile.
Since The Brown University Spectator has a lot of people using the back end, we have made sure to implement features that allow some people to do everything, and others just some things. By restricting access to certain areas of the site we prevent those would-be Curious Georges from irreparably messing everything up for the man in the yellow hat.
sIFR Headlines
sIFR allows you to embed TTF and OTF fonts onto the website. We implemented sIFR on The Brown University Spectator’s Website, so that they can make their online publication look more like their print publication.
Custom Regions
We’ve added custom regions on the website that make it easy for editors to add cartoons and pullout quotes to each article.
Search Engine Optimization (Getting Google to Find You)
We made it really easy for Google to find The Brown University Spectator’s website. We generated an XML Sitemap, used Search Engine Friendly URLs, and implemented a few additional simple adjustments. Now, the site is easy to find on Google. In fact, 75% of The Brown University Spectator’s hits come from people finding them using search engines.
Statistics
We’ve implemented StatPress. It’s one of my favorite blogging statistics plugins. While it does put load on the server, it’s not significant, and it provides any user relevant, interesting information that will allow them to drive more traffic to their site.
W3C Compliance
I have just brought the Spectator’s template into W3C compliance, something I plan to do on every site (although my own site has yet to be brought into compliance). W3C is the internet’s standard for valid code, which is important if you want your website to display correctly forever and ever.
Advertising
There are three zones for advertisements on The Brown Spectator’s website. The most lucrative is the top zone right underneath the navigation panel.
