We are happy to announce that People.ua.edu is now open to all UA graduate students.
Students need an online resource to collect and showcase their research, publications, academic and work experience. Having a website is a great way to begin building a professional reputation. We call it a "personal academic website". Just what IS a personal academic website? I'm glad you asked! Call it a website, call it an e-portfolio, either way it’s your online presence and it matters to your professional reputation. It is your face to the online world. It’s your virtual identity. What do you want it to look like? An academic website is the online version of your CV. It should include your research and teaching interests, list of publications, and any courses you’ve taught. It should also include an appropriate picture of you and contact information, like e-mail and mailing address. Why have a personal academic website? The real question is: Why NOT have an academic website? When a collaborator, search committee member, potential employer, or postdoc supervisor searches your name on a search engine, your website should be among the first hits that appear. You want to be well represented for your academic work. Your other name-associated sites, like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and Google Scholar will also be on the first page, so take the time to make them professional, or set them to private so they won’t show up. How much does the website costs? While you are a student here at UA, the site will not cost a thing! Zero. Zelch. Na-da. When you graduate or leave the University, we will provide a zip file that contains all the content of your website. You may then recreate your site within a purchased or free account through Weebly or using another website provider. Ready to get started with YOUR personal academic website? Visit the Getting Started page or give us a call. We'll be happy to answer any questions. Something wonderful happened today! Weebly, our vendor for all things People.ua.edu, released three enhancements to the site editor. They removed the "column" element, removed the "text + image" element, and added a "spacer" element. I could explain it but I think they demonstrated the changes well in this short video! And further written explanation is found on their zendesk. As always, I'm here if you have any questions. Karen We recently had a request from one of our science faculty members to include a couple of new social media icons to his site. So we did! LabRoots.com – a Science Network & ResearchGate.net – for Scientists. The icons can be added to your site just like the Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or many other social media icons. If you would like the icon added, just let us know, along with your specific page link, and our team will get it added for you! Enjoy the summer! Karen Late last week we ran into a strange issue with two of the people.ua.edu websites. Both professors were able to log in, but were not able to edit their sites. They received the message below: Since both professors were the site owners, this message was odd. I contacted our support team at Weebly, the host service, and they were able to troubleshoot and quickly correct the problem. Thanks, Sara and team, for excellent customer service!
Any time you are working in your site and receive an error message or the site is not behaving as well as it should, please do not hesitate to reach out to our office. Each site is very important and we want to do our best to ensure it is fully operational and accessible. A sidebar is a space to the side of a web page that includes additional content - often links to other pages within the site. Sidebars are helpful navigational tools that can let readers know about pages that they might not have otherwise seen, allowing them to make better use of your website. If you are viewing this blog on a desktop computer, you can see an example of a sidebar on the right side of the page. The mobile version of this site places the sidebar at the bottom, below the main content of the page. In general, it is better practice to place your sidebar on the left side of the page, so that mobile users can access it without having to scroll all the way down. Adding a sidebar to your site is quite simple: just start with the Columns element. Set it to 2 columns if it isn't already, and drag the divider in the middle over to the left. The exact proportions are up to you, but a good rule of thumb is to have the right column (which will contain the main content of your page) at least twice as wide as the sidebar column. Next, you'll want to put something into your sidebar. Most people.ua.edu users employ a sidebar to group together sets of "nested" pages that don't appear in the main navigation bar at the top of the site. This allows visitors who use accessibility tools like screen readers to navigate more easily. To provide additional accessibility, use the Title tool instead of the Text tool to create your links - screen readers will give this kind of text higher priority. Once your sidebar has been created, you can copy it to other pages as needed by hovering over the columns element and clicking the arrow that appears in the upper left corner. Choose "COPY" and then select the page(s) to which you would like to add the sidebar. (Doing this instead of recreating the sidebar from scratch each time ensures a uniform width, design, etc.)
Then, simply place the main content of your page into the right column, and you're finished! The creator of a great website doesn't just focus on the content - delivery is important, too. When building your site, focus on the what as well as the how. This blog post will cover the latter: how to display your content in a way that is visually appealing to visitors. Here are three ways to make your site look its best.
First, consider how the elements of your site are arranged. The most attractive way to align items is on a grid, so check to see if your content is all lined up. If you have several pictures in a row (or one above the other), make sure the edges line up. Having some stick out farther than others looks unprofessional. Avoid centering paragraphs of text (titles can be centered, on occasion) - choose to align them to the right or (most likely) the left. Don't feel as though you need to fill every inch of your pages with content. The empty space around or between elements, often called "white space" (regardless of whether it is actually white!), is a very useful design element too. It allows your content some breathing room and doesn't overwhelm the reader. Making use of the empty space on your pages can create a very visually commanding look. Read more about white space in web design. And finally, keep your mobile users in mind. More and more people, especially students and young professionals, do most of their web browsing on mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets. The site editor allows you to see what the mobile version of your site looks like by clicking the smart phone icon in the upper right corner near the PUBLISH button. Check out all of your pages in this mobile viewer to make sure they show up the way you want them to, and fix them if they don't. By employing these methods, you should be well on your way to creating a visually compelling website that will make visitors want to read your content. Have you ever wanted to add characters to your site that are not available on the standard keyboard? (Looking at you, math department.) This is easy enough to do in word processors with an "Insert Character" button or something similar, but it's also easy to do on your people.ua.edu site!
Most special characters are added through a combination of keystrokes - usually holding down the Alt key while typing a series of numbers on the number pad on the right side of the keyboard. Washington State University and Penn State have some great resources. Make sure you are looking at the information for Windows or Mac, as appropriate! What kinds of characters can you add? Just about anything! Greek letters (π Ω ø ∆ ∂), foreign characters (œ æ £), mathematical symbols (∞ ≈ ≥ ÷ ∫), physical units (㎨ ㎲ ㎒) and plenty of other characters. It is not recommended that you copy and paste special characters onto your site from another program. The published results may not be accurate. In this blog post, the font size of the special characters has been increased to make them easier to read, since they often appear rather small as compared to the main body of text. Enjoy the added functionality that these special characters afford you! We are very excited to welcome Emily Schmidt, our new student assistant. Emily is a sophomore physics and education major with a background in computer science. She hails from Pelham, AL, where she lives with her mother, sister, brother, five dachshunds, two cats, and a guinea pig. When she isn't working or studying, Emily often works political campaigns, competes in trivia competitions, and reads everything from cosmological theories to romance novels. Over the past couple of weeks, Emily has been busy learning the ins and outs of People.ua.edu and is finding out just how much fun it is to build a website! She is excited to work with faculty to help them create a memorable online presence. We are excited to announce the addition of seven new themes! Each design offers a bit of uniqueness, while still keeping the same look and feel that says... "I represent The University of Alabama." We've included some UA images that can be kept and used on your site, if desired. Instead of only two page headers, each new theme offers four page designs. For those who have already built a site but want to change to a new template, let me know which one, and I'll be glad to apply it for you. All your content will carry over to the new design with one exception: the images used in the header, either as a single image or as a slideshow, will NOT carry over. They will need to be uploaded again. If you do not currently have a People.ua.edu website and would like one, submit your request on the Request a Site tab and I'll get you set up right away! You will find the new themes on the Theme tab of this site. We have also opened up the Settings tab. Within the tab, you can now help promote your site through Google and other search engines by providing the most accurate site description, tags, and meta keywords using the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) feature. Another important function within the Settings Tab is the ability to create a backup of your site! It's a very easy process with just the click of a button. We are offering three workshops to demonstrate the new templates and settings tab features. The dates are as follows:
Feel free to leave a comment and let us know what you think of the new themes! As Twitter becomes used in the classroom more and more, why not add your twitter feed to your faculty website?
People.ua.edu has a couple of options. You can use the Social media icons which allows your visitors to begin following you on Twitter… or… you can add a feed of all your tweets directly on your site. Using the feed is a great way to stir up interest and, hopefully, gain more followers. This link tells you how to add a feed - https://www.weebly.com/app/help/us/en/topics/add-a-twitter-feed-badge. If you are not aware of Flickr, now is a great time to check it out. Flickr gives you one free terabyte of space! Share photos in full resolution. Flickr is nothing more than a place to share and store photos. I've used it in the past, but not regularly. I typically resort to storing photos on a flash drive, which is not always convenient when I want to show them to someone. With one terabyte of space, it's a no brainer! I'm going to start using Flickr a lot! If you don't have an account, set it up at www.flickr.com. While you are there, check out their Commons area. It's a really nice public photo collection. Happy Designing! |
Archives
November 2021
Categories
All
Follow us! Right-click and copy the link below. Create an RSS feed right in your Outlook or other feed reader application.
|