Web Content
Widget Styles & Embeds
At the beginning of last year, the website looked great. However, some of the widgets were very disorganized, did not have borders, and did not have consistent pictures. Since August 2019, I have been working on the website, and I changed up the widgets to be consistent by color, style, and border.
This year, I changed all of the widgets to a better style (a change from SNO's widget style 5 to 2) and added in several embed codes that wove some other platforms into our site. This included Spotify music and podcast playlists, directly linking those aspects of our content creation to the site. I also added in several multimedia and social media menu items, including a page with a Juicer embed which displays our most recent Instagram posts and updates in a computer-friendly format.
Working with the website has taught me the importance of trial-and-error and the patience that must come with it, as it is a very tedious process. However, it was worth it because I learned how to change widgets and am continuing to work on how to make the website look as professional as possible. I consider this one of my biggest and longest-lasting impacts on the publication because I have spent many hours improving the site and this year has focused 100% of the attention on our site rather than our print issues.
Old
New
*Note* the left side is the old design of the website from August 2019 when I inherited the position of editor-in-chief. The format was saved and replaced the new format recently for a short time in order to get a picture of what the website used to look like, thus why all of the stories are the same.
Besides the addition of the Ross Riot Podcast embed and the podcast widget, I made every single one of these changes that you see between old and new. I believe that the improved design and maneuverability of the website has allowed our publication to gain in popularity and better display the amazing content that the staff produces—especially this year with everything online.
School Spirit Package
When I wrote my school spirit long form for the print issue, I felt great about its design, features, and pictures. however, when I posted it online, I noticed it was missing something. I then put the video embed from halftime of the football game vs LT to add a bit more of an appealing feature. I think that a video to go with the story allows the reader to immerse themselves within the story and gain their own point of view on the argument. I wish I had a video or picture from football games from years past to be able to compare, but I feel one video is better than none. Click here for the story.
Immersive Images
I discovered the long form container story format online last year when playing around with SNO. This format has an option for an immersive featured image rather than simply a featured image above or beside the story. I found that, as long as the picture is more horizontal than vertical, it works beautifully. I feel the immersive image feature makes our stories with good pictures far more appealing and professional, but doesn't work with, for example, shorter news stories.
Old Format (Featured Image Beside Story)
New Format (Immersive Image)
Online-Only Stories
In normal times like the last school year, online stories are generally the more time-sensitive ones or extended versions of print stories, so posting online is a useful tool to have. As an example, an artist named Kid Quill released an album that I noticed right after we sent to print for our October 2019 issue. As a result, I wrote a review and posted it online so that it would not be published a month later in the next issue. This year being nearly fully-remote for our school has forced our staff to publish every story online, meaning that every story I've written since August has been tailored strictly to a more digestible online format. Examples of this adaption are evident in some of my Board Corner articles, where I made use of SNO's slideshow and gallery media elements to display multiple informative photos and slides from the superintendent's presentations—something not possible in print.
Social Media
Last year, I led the creation of our new Omega Instagram account. The account has around 550 followers, which is up from about 180 from one year ago. We didn't have a specified social media editor last year and don't this year either, so my co-editors-in-chief, several other staff members and I lead the promotion and updating of our social media.
I have posted advertisements for our website, links to most of the stories we publish, videos by staff members, quick news updates, and entertaining posts over the last two years to enhance the Omega's publicity in print and online.
We also began to use our Twitter again this year, which has around 510 followers. We post mainly the same things as on Instagram, but we also add some small extra news bits. Instagram and Twitter are extremely useful tools to promote our website and we will definitely continue to use them in the future. During remote learning especially, they have functioned as the key promoters of our website and the strongest connection between our student body and the content we post.
It is difficult to promote the website in a way that doesn't involve social media, so our Instagram and Twitter have been crucial. We have gained many followers this year and this has been absolutely crucial to sustaining successful traffic flow to our website.
