What's New & Good

• Welcome Elaena Hoekstra! Elaena is our web content fellow this year. Elaena worked with us for two years as a student, primarily supporting VPA. In her current role, she will manage student workers, conduct Reason training, and support various content projects. 
• New Students website: Working with an interdepartmental project team, we launched a New Students 2017 website to provide an excellent online experience for incoming students. It includes a checklist that keeps track of tasks to be completed before students arrive on campus.  
• Academic landing pages: We are wrapping up the Academic landing pages project. Most academic department sites have been converted to the new model. We're excited to report that several of the new "Why Study <subject>?" pages are ranking on the first page in Google search results.
• Accessibility: We continue to work to ensure that our website is accessible to all users. You can help by adding good descriptions to images and writing clear and concise content.
• Session Timeout: The Reason session timeout, which used to be around thirty minutes, is now extended to last up to two weeks. This means that you won't be experiencing lost work due to your session timing out! Of course, it is still best practice to save intermittently as you work in Reason. 

Important Reminders/Tips

Help us keep our website in tiptop shape! 

• This is a great time to review your website(s) to make sure that all content is relevant and accurate. Remember that the menu is not the place for temporary content. We can help you brainstorm other ways to highlight specific pieces of information.
• Make sure to delete old content that you don't plan to use again. This includes images, features, assets, media files/works, pages, text blurbs, and forms. If you're deleting a page, make sure to deselect images, assets, etc. associated with the page. This will help us keep the Reason CMS admin interface neat and clean.
• Recycle your pages! If you want to move a page to a different location, don't delete and recreate it. Rather, simply move it to the new location. If you need to move the page to a different site, let us know. This way, we avoid "page not found" errors.
• Do not populate the keyword field on pages. Search engines no longer use this field, and some may penalize a page for keyword stuffing. Do populate the description, which is the ad for your page when it shows up in search results—this text also shows up on "show children" pages.
• If you're adding assets and don't want the description to show up when you add it to the page, put the title in the description field (not spaces, periods, etc.). 
• URL best practices:
  • Use all lowercase letters (e.g. /work-study vs. Work-Study)
  • Do not abbreviate (e.g. /communication-studies vs. /coms)
  • You don't need to include stop words (e.g. faculty-staff vs. faculty-and-staff)
  • URL should be easy to read
  • NOTE: If you change a URL in Reason, it will automatically redirect from the old URL.

luther.edu Roadmap

Here's what the software team is working on and what's coming up:

• Adding a blog post author entity, which will allow us to display posts by author (in progress)
• Upgrading to Reason 4.7 (in progress)
• Adding energy production and consumption graphs on the Center for Sustainable Communities website
• Updating homepage with new content and moving some components around based on heat map and scroll map tracking and other feedback
• Adding an affordability web page to the Admissions website
• Enhancements to New Students/ROAD functionality

Reason CMS Training 

This fall, we are offering two different Reason classes:

• Reason 101: For folks who have never received Reason training or feel like they are starting over after being gone for a whole summer.
• Reason 201: For those of you who have mastered the basics of Reason, but would like a reminder about specific guidelines.

Returning Students: If you manage Reason in your work-study role, you are required to attend one of the 201 sessions.

Here are the upcoming training opportunities:
Click the link to view training details. 

• Reason 101: Aug. 31 at 4:00 p.m.
• Reason 201: Sept. 5 at 4:00 p.m.
• Reason 101: Sept. 7 at 9:45 a.m. 
• Reason 201: Sept. 12 at 9:45 a.m.
• Reason 101: Sept. 14 at 9:45 a.m.
• Reason 201: Sept. 14 at 4:00 p.m.

Web Resources

• Web Style Guide: https://www.luther.edu/style-guide/
• Reason Video Tutorials: https://www.luther.edu/web-content/resources/reason/
• Web Guidelines: https://www.luther.edu/web-content/resources/guidelines/

We are here to assist you with all web-related matters. Feel free to call with questions or enter a helpdesk ticket (instructions here). 

Thanks for helping us keep our website accurate and timely!

Peace,
Tabita