Niall Doherty

A beginner’s guide to Twitter

July 22, 2009 by Niall Doherty

You’ve surely heard of Twitter by now. It’s the microblogging service that has hooked everyone from actors to sports stars to Iranians. The concept of Twitter is simple, but its multitude of uses may make it seem confusing. Here we present an introduction to Twitter to help you get started.

What is Twitter?

Twitter describes itself like so:

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

That definition has become a little simplistic as Twitter has evolved and its audience expanded. I would liken Twitter to text messaging (SMS), except each message is broadcast to the world (a very important distinction, as noted by David Zemmels). Other users can “follow” you to make sure they receive those messages.

You can post and read messages on Twitter via your computer or cell phone. Even non-smart phones can receive SMS updates.

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Niall Doherty

Managing your slideshow with SlideShowPro Director

March 19, 2009 by Niall Doherty

SlideShowPro Director allows you to manage photos for a slideshow the Web Team has set up for you. You will have received a username and password so you can access ssp.loyno.edu. When you first log in to SSP Director, you can change your password by clicking your e-mail address at the top right of the page.

When you are logged in and ready to manage your slideshow, follow these steps:

Step 1: Find your album

Click the Albums tab at the top of the page, then find your album in the list. If the list is quite long, use the search box at the top to locate your album. Once you’ve found it, click the title.

You should now be on a page that looks like this:

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Niall Doherty

Blogging on Mass Comments

February 19, 2009 by Niall Doherty

Mass Comments is the blog of Loyola’s School of Mass Communication, featuring the writings of selected faculty. Below are some instructions for submitting and editing posts on Mass Comments. If you have any additional questions, please contact the Web Team via webteam@loyno.edu.

Log In

Permitted bloggers can log in with their user name and password at the following URL:
http://blogs.loyno.edu/mass-comm/wp-admin/

Once logged in, you will see your dashboard. This gives you a quick summary of your activity on Mass Comments.

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Niall Doherty

Building the new loyno.edu

February 13, 2009 by Niall Doherty

Earlier this week I, along with Loyola’s Director of Web Communications Jacee Brown, gave a presentation to David Zemmels’ Web Design class in the School of Mass Communications. The title of the presentation was Building the new loyno.edu, and it focused on the planning, design and build of the new Loyola website, the homepage in particular.

The presentation can be viewed in QuickTime format online here. Click on each slide to advance. Be advised that it will probably take several minutes to load fully. If you wish to download the presentation, you can do so via this link. Just right click and choose save target as (PC) or save link as (Mac).

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Niall Doherty

Banner styling on loyno.edu

February 4, 2009 by Niall Doherty

Some changes have been made to the banner styling on loyno.edu. There are now three different ways to style a banner. See below for an explanation of each.

Default banner

For the default banner to appear, banner.css must be called from the head of the page, and the HTML constructed like so:


<div>
<h1><a href="/" title="Click here to return to the homepage">Loyola University New Orleans</a></h1>
</div>

Note: If an anchor is present within the h1 (as in the above code sample), the “Loyola University New Orleans” text in the banner becomes clickable.

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Niall Doherty

Styling text and positioning images in Drupal

January 30, 2009 by Niall Doherty

This post will show you how to style text and images on loyno.edu using Drupal. Note that this only applies to text and images which you can change via Drupal’s rich text editor, as shown below:

Styling text

Beyond the basic functions (e.g. bolding and italicizing), you can also style text in the following ways:

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Niall Doherty

Tables in Drupal

January 30, 2009 by Niall Doherty

This post will show you how to create and style tables on loyno.edu using Drupal.

Create a table

Click the Insert/Edit Table button on the toolbar, as shown in the screenshot above (1). Doing so pops open the Table Properties window. In here you can toggle a few settings for your table. The only ones you need be concerned with are Rows/Columns (2) and Width (3). The other settings will not take effect no matter what you choose.

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Niall Doherty

Loyno.edu form style guide

January 21, 2009 by Niall Doherty

Forms on loyno.edu must be constructed in a certain way so appropriate styling is applied. There are a number of CSS classes which can be used to achieve a desired form layout. This blog post will explain these classes and show examples of use.

Sample forms

To see a variety of sample forms, visit our demo page.

Basic requirements

  1. The majority of styling applied to these forms is contained in the file forms-v2.css (uncompressed version: forms-v2.src.css), so that file must be called in the head of the HTML page. There are also some minor dependencies on other stylesheets, such as reset.css.
  2. Each form tag must be given a class of default.

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Jacee Brown

Loyola’s HTML E-mailer system: how to use it

January 7, 2009 by Jacee Brown

Selected deans and vice presidents have been authorized to use the HTML E-mailer system. Please review the university’s policy on mass e-mails to learn more.

To begin, go to the following web address:
http://admin.loyno.edu/emails/

A login will be provided to each college and division based on who is selected to manage that college or division’s html e-mailer system. That individual will be sent an e-mail providing them with a username and a password.

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Niall Doherty

Adding photos to Pack Snaps

November 14, 2008 by Niall Doherty

Pack Snaps is the new Loyola photo blog where we post the best photos we find in our archives. Below we outline the steps for submitting photos to the blog.

1. Log In

You can log in from the following URL:
http://blogs.loyno.edu/photos/wp-admin/

If you do not already have a user name and password, please contact the Web Team (webteam@loyno.edu). Be advised that only certain Loyola staff members will be permitted to post photos to the blog.

Once logged in, make sure you are on the Pack Snaps admin. The appropriate tab should be highlighted at the top left of the page.

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