{"id":49,"date":"2010-05-13T14:40:01","date_gmt":"2010-05-13T18:40:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/nespa\/?p=49"},"modified":"2011-02-16T19:19:04","modified_gmt":"2011-02-16T23:19:04","slug":"how-a-student-newspaper-built-a-website","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/nespa\/2010\/05\/13\/how-a-student-newspaper-built-a-website\/","title":{"rendered":"How a student newspaper built a website"},"content":{"rendered":"

Realistic planning, simplicity work best, its creator says<\/em><\/p>\n

by Anna Zembo<\/p>\n

Building a website for a high school news publication takes careful planning,\u00a0 said Carissa Broadbent, the technical coordinator of The Villager at Westport High School in Westport, Mass.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first thing to think about is what you want your website to do,\u201d said Broadbent, a junior. \u201cYour website needs to be clear and easily navigable.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t get caught up in the bells and whistles,<\/strong> and don\u2019t let them be your priority. Simple is better\u2014at least to start.\u201d<\/p>\n

Broadbent gave a presentation Friday, April 30 at the New England Scholastic Press Association\u2019s 62nd <\/sup>annual conference at Boston University.<\/p>\n

She said that with many exciting programs available, it can be tempting to dive straight into the process.<\/p>\n

\u201cStay away from the computer at first and make a list of what you need,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen sketch your site design on paper. Keep away from drastic color schemes. You want it to be easy on the eyes because people are reading a large volume of text. The biggest thing is function over fashion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tools and programs can make building a website a little less daunting, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHTML and CSS put things on the screen and style them,\u201d she said. \u201cHTML is the most basic language of the Internet.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt puts text, images, containers on the screen. It is also entirely manual. It doesn\u2019t do anything, just shows things.<\/p>\n

\u201cCSS is a way of stylizing<\/strong> web pages. It doesn\u2019t print things to the screen the way HTML does, but it styles HTML so you don\u2019t have to do it manually.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor example, in my CSS file I could say that I want my text to be white and my background to be black, and I could set the height of a certain container ID.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce I link the CSS file to the HTML file, I can apply those specifications to all the pages in my website, and if I decide to change my layout, all I have to do is change my CSS file.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I were just using HTML, I would have to specify each attribute in each webpage manually, and changing the look of the website would be hugely tedious.\u201d<\/p>\n

PHP is what makes a website tick<\/strong>, Broadbent said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAside from text, it can\u2019t put things on the screen, but it does put the engine on your website,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor example, it is what will take the stories you post and place them on the homepage in the correct order. If you had no PHP for your newspaper site, you would have to enter every story by hand into its own HTML document. There would be no automation and the website would simply be unmanageable.<\/p>\n

\u201cWordpress, a content management system<\/strong>, is the skeleton of the website. It is a fantastic platform for newspaper websites because it can handle and organize large quantities of stories\/posts, with lots of flexibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although creating a website takes time, Broadbent encouraged students not to be intimidated in the process of seeking answers to their questions.
\n\u201cA website is made out of boxes,\u201d Broadbent said. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty simple, but it is a whole lot more complicated than it ought to be because technology is irritating.<\/p>\n

\u201cKeep in mind that you have to use what\u2019s available to you. I chose to make my own theme to make it more individual. Google is your friend. Any problem you have you can find a solution to it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have spent hours on this,\u201d Broadbent said. \u201cIt\u2019s never the stuff you think will take forever that\u2019ll take you that long. Things like spacing things and aligning things can take you three or four hours.\u201d
\nIn terms of the transition for newspapers from print to the web, Broadbent said that the more content that goes into print, the easier the jump will be into cyberspace.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Villager is known as a print paper,\u201d<\/strong> Broadbent said. \u201cOnce we get this online it will be an easy transition because we\u2019re already going crazy to meet daily deadlines as it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

A question facing student online publications is whether to include reader feedback in the form of comments on the material posted.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not a fan of allowing comments because it\u2019s a lot of work to filter them,\u201d Broadbent said. \u201cWhen people get really casual, it can get out of hand in comments. I\u2019m thinking of having a sidebar with a form to link to e-mail comments. We can have a part that has student opinions that are more refined.\u201d<\/p>\n

Broadbent also reminded students that the job of creating website is never finished. She said it is important for the creators of a site to keep in mind the people who will be managing it after they are gone.
\n\u201cA website is always a work in progress,\u201d she said. \u201cThere are always things that need to be changed even once it\u2019s up.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou need to have it easily accessible for the next generation of reporters.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis website can\u2019t implode after I leave<\/strong>. It needs to go on after, so it needs to be straightforward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anna Zembo is a reporter for The Villager at Westport High School in Westport, Mass.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Building a website for a high school news publication takes careful planning, said Carissa Broadbent, the technical coordinator of The Villager at Westport High School in Westport, Mass.
\n\u201cThe first thing to think about is what you want your website to do,\u201d said Broadbent, a junior. \u201cYour website needs to be clear and easily navigable. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":706,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/nespa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/nespa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/nespa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/nespa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/706"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/nespa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/nespa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/nespa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions\/51"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/nespa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/nespa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/nespa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}