Blanca Jackson
Communications Specialist
Texas A&M University Agricultural Communications

BACKGROUND

In 1994, the News and Public Affairs team joined the unit in creating an online presence for Agricultural Communications. We uploaded our products and made them available to the media of Texas. We still depended on the fax machine and email as the main methods of news delivery, however. Through communication with reporters, we realized the industry was moving towards web-based technology. We investigated what it would take to meet the online needs of Texas reporters, and concluded that a new webserver was needed. AgNews, a Linux webserver, was launched in November 1996. The next few months were spent designing a "media-friendly" site.

This paper details some of the developments and truths learned along the way.

METHODOLOGY: How we created a media-friendly website

The Big Two: Content and Speed

Ongoing dialogue with Texas reporters has revealed that content is the most important feature for a news website. A reporter may visit AgNews, but if they can't find what they're looking for, they'll leave quickly and probably not return. This is in line with the national habits of web users, according to surveys such as Georgia Institute of Technology's GVU web surveys1. Content and navigation are two sides of the same coin. A site with plenty of information but no formal arrangement is the same as a city without street signs. The destination exists, but you can't find the way there.

In response to demands for content, our first priority was two-fold: to build an archive of existing products and to deliver breaking news. We created an index which would be available on the homepage and sublevel pages. A sub-index for the stories and graphics pages was built around disciplines and recognizable consumer topics. Within this sub-index, we created an online archive dating back to 1993.

We still needed to serve breaking news or the site would remain simply an archive. The webserver then housing our site would not allow instantaneous updates, so we launched the Linux-based AgNews webserver. We now could manually update the server to deliver breaking news on a daily basis. This was a time-consuming process, however, so automation became our next focus. Our student technician created CGI-scripts to automatically perform daily updates and archiving.

We had one more piece in the puzzle to complete the content issue. Reporters indicated that a search engine is the quickest way to get to the information they need. Thus, a search tool became a necessity for our site. The AgNews server uses SWISH2 software which indexes the site and then allows you to search that index. The student technician developed an interface which mimics the most popular search engines and did some programming to speed up the searching process. The result is that we have a lightning-fast, comprehensive search utility that is easy to use.

The number two concern for reporters visiting a website is download time. Text downloads quickly, so this is a graphics issue. While huge, spectacular images and animation may impress a viewer, they also may chase off a reporter in search of information. Texas media indicate that speed is more critical than the look of a site. What this told the news team is that design is important, in so far as it enhances organization and communication. We decided that AgNews would be a text-heavy site, with graphics used mainly for identification and navigation.

Image Management

The web environment changes execution but not the principals of good design. Design is design, no matter what the medium. New challenges exist for professionals with a print background, but by learning the limitations a designer can achieve outstanding results. Three areas web designers should always consider while preparing graphics are color palettes, gamma settings and image compression.

Color Palettes

There is more to choosing a color palette for web pages than simply pulling out a swatch book. Different computers have different color support, anywhere from 16 colors to millions of colors. PC monitors tend to look darker than Mac monitors. What this means is that I may choose a color which looks like "Aggie Maroon" on my monitor, but "University of Texas Orange" on someone else's monitor.

The web industry has adopted a browser-safe palette3 for creating web graphics. According to surveys such as the GVU web user survey, most users have at least 8-bit color support--or 256 colors. Windows and various programs reserve some of those colors for system use, which leaves 216 colors for the browser-safe palette. These 216 colors have the best chance of looking true across platforms and on different monitors and browsers.

With the millions of colors available in most graphics program, cutting back to only 216 can be a challenge. However, if you want to exercise some control over how the world sees your website, work within the framework of the browser-safe palette.

Gamma Settings

Default gamma settings (the degree of contrast between the mid-level gray values of an image) are different on Mac and PC platforms. Macs have a default of 1.8; PCs have a default of 2.2. What this means is that the image you create will look different on each platform. Mac-created images will look too dark on a PC; PC images will look too light on a Mac. The best solution is to try different light levels within your photo-manipulation software until you find the best compromise for both gamma settings.

Image Compression

Since reporters' number two concern is download time, speed considerations dictate graphics usage on our website. Every image created for AgNews is put through a series of questions. Is this graphic justified? Can it be shaved in physical size? Can it work with fewer colors? Always keep in mind that spectacular images do not compensate for poor content or organization. Images are not a crutch; they are a tool to be used wisely. Minimal graphics allow AgNews to load quickly but still maintain a unique identity.

AgNews graphics are created or imported into Photoshop because of the color control in that software. Images with flat colors are saved at GIF files; photos are saved as JPEGs. GIF files are saved to the browser-safe palette while JPEGs are saved at a quality level of 3 or 4. All images are stripped of Mac specific data such as icons and resource forks4. Once images pass through this process, they are ready for web delivery.

Site Statistics

Web servers maintain log files of all activity on a website. Good statistics software enables the analysis of data to find trends among visitors. Some software will display daily activity while others will show numbers over time. AgNews uses both. We use AccessWatch5 for daily stats because it breaks down activity by hour of the day, domains, hosts and by requests. It also shows the path each viewer takes through the AgNews site. For example, we can see where Aggie Extra viewers tend to go after leaving the top page, and how often they choose each category of links. A daily glance at such activity over time presents a good picture of what draws viewers to our site and where they go from there.

Analog6 software displays comprehensive data by month, week and days, which reveals what sites garner the most activity over time. It also allows you to retrieve stats on a single page or directory, and within a given time frame if so desired. Perhaps one of the best uses of this software is data for referring pages, or urls of websites which supply links to AgNews. By seeing who is linked to specific pages, we can determine who finds it useful and even promote our other sites to them. We also can see which search engines direct visitors to our site.

Statistics software has enabled us to determine where our time is best spent. If we create a site which generates a great deal of activity, we study that site and try to determine what makes it so popular. We'll continue to invest time in expanding and updating that site and even pattern other sites after it. Webpages which generate little attention are rethought and updated only minimally to free time for other endeavors.

Promotion to Texas media

The best promotion is one-on-one communication with news professionals. This is a time-consuming process, but the dividends are ongoing. Media queries are the best opportunity for educating reporters about our website. When reporters call for leads and source materials, we point them to our website when appropriate. Often, a reporter is familiar with the AGNMORE7 listserv, but has not discovered our website, or has never ventured there. By guiding a reporter through the site, they become familiar with our online products and return on their own.

While printed notices about our website go out with the printed monthly packet, we can't insure that the URL reaches the desk of every reporter at a paper. As a result, the team decided to take AgNews to reporters. Writers from the news team have traveled around the state giving workshops for the major dailies of Texas, including the Houston Chronicle and Dallas Morning News. During these workshops on the internet and computer-assisted reporting, the writers use AgNews as their launching point. This is a perfect opportunity to promote the site to reporters across the state, as well as build relationships with the media.

Another tool for enhancing media awareness about AgNews is by creating "inserts" for online newspapers. We developed Aggie Extra as an insert for The Houston Chronicle. The site features a top story and graphic, as well as categorized links of interest to the general public. The site has generated new visitors to AgNews, as well as a partnership with professionals at the Chronicle. This site will be promoted to other dailies over the next year.

Promotion to the world

Search engines are one of the most popular tools for finding webpages, so submitting a site to at least the major engines is a good strategy. Every search engine or directory has a method for submitting a website. Some want simply the url; others ask for a set number of keywords and even site descriptions. To facilitate the submission process, we compiled a toolkit with enough variables to meet most submission requirements. These include the site url, title, descriptions in various word counts, key words in various numbers and complete contact information. This information is kept in a text file that can be opened and copied as often as needed during the submission process. As well, a log of site submissions is kept in print format for easy reference and follow-up.

Something else to include in html documents are META tags, which help some search engines index your site. Websites exist which will generate META tags8 automatically, based on information supplied in an online form.

One of the easiest ways to help visitors return to a website is to use a logical title within the html text. This is especially useful when people bookmark a site (or include it in their list of favorites). When looking through a long list of bookmarks, "AgNews: The Texas A&M University Agriculture Program" is infinitely more useful than "index.html."

RESULTS

Media have come to regard AgNews as a reliable, timely news resource. Professionals from Texas daily newspapers such as the Houston Chronicle and Dallas Morning News have given AgNews positive reviews. Weekly papers use our website for story and image retrieval. Response from a global audience has been encouraging, as well. Queries run the spectrum from an eighth grader in Missouri to a television station in West virginia to snake venom specialists in Africa. The website has expanded our hours of operation to 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

CONCLUSIONS

AgNews developed as a client-driven website. Breaking news and a searchable archive deliver the content reporters demand. Minimal graphics and good organization ensure a speedy, intuitive web presence. The site will continue to evolve based on media feedback.

NOTES

[1] Georgia Institute of Technology's Graphic, Visualization, & Usability Center (GVU) conducts online surveys in October and April. The eighth WWW User Survey had more than 10,000 respondents. (http://www.gvu.gatech.edu/user_surveys/survey-1997-10/)

[2] SWISH stands for Simple Web Indexing System for Humans. SWISH indexes directories of files so they can be searched. (http://www.eit.com/software/swish/swish.html)

[3] The browser safe color palette was coined by Lynda Weinmann, author of "Designing Web Graphics." A downloadable CLUT (color look-up table) for Photoshop is available from her website. (http://www.lynda.com/) Another useful site is the browser-safe color tool page (http://www.cc.ukans.edu/~syd/netscape-216/)

[4] Image Flattener is a free utility that strips out Mac-specific data so that the resulting size file is smaller. (http://ftp.wustl.edu/systems/mac/amug/files/art/)

[5] AccessWatch is a UNIX web utility that delivers detailed information for individual accesses. It is free for academic users. (http://accesswatch.com/)

[6] Analog is a free logfile analysis program available for most platforms. Analog outputs results in fourteen languages. (http://www.statslab.cam.ac.uk/~sret1/analog/)

[7] AGNMORE, a listserv that focuses on news and feature articles about research and educational programs in Texas A&M University's Agriculture Program. (http://agnews.tamu.edu/agnmore.htm)

[8] META tags are lines of text placed between the "header" tags in an html file. Some search engines read these lines of text to index a website. Keywords and site descriptions usually fill meta tags. The META Tag Builder webpage will generate meta tags for you. (META Tag Builder http://vancouver-webpages.com/VWbot/mk-metas.html)

APPENDIX 1 -- TOOLS

Browser-safe color tool -- A website that displays the browser safe color palette online and allows you to view a color's HEX (html code) and RGB (Photo software code) values. (http://www.cc.ukans.edu/~syd/netscape-216/)

GammaToggleFKEY -- a utility that allows you to toggle back and forth between default Mac and PC gammas with a key command. This is useful for setting levels for an image. (http://www.acts.org/roland/thanks/)

Image Flattener -- a utility that strips an image of all Mac-specific data, thereby reducing a files size. (http://ftp.wustl.edu/systems/mac/amug/files/art/)

Major search engines
Northern Lights (http://www.nlsearch.com/)
AltaVista (http://www.altavista.digital.com)
Excite (http://www.excite.com)
Infoseek (http://www.infoseek.com)
Lycos (http://www.lycos.com)
MetaCrawler (http://www.metacrawler.com)
Search (http://www.search.com)
Web Crawler (http://www.webcrawler.com)
Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com)

META Tag Builder -- generates META tags for your website based on information you supply. (META Tag Builder http://vancouver-webpages.com/VWbot/mk-metas.html)

Optimizing Web Graphics -- a site which explains the color challenges presented by the web environment. (http://www.webreference.com/dev/graphics/)

Virtual Promote -- a comprehensive site which details all aspects of site promotion. (http://www.virtualpromote.com/)

Webmaster's Guide to Search Engines -- a comprehensive site of all things search engine related. (http://www.calafia.com/webmasters/)

Web Page Backwards Compatibility Viewer -- allows you to view a website through older browsers to see if design works or breaks down in those environments. (http://www.delorie.com/web/wpbcv.html)

Web Page Design for Designers -- a site that focuses on designers and details the many facets of web design, especially as it compares to print design. (http://www.wpdfd.com/wpdhome.htm)

Web Page Monitor Tester -- An innovative site which offers pop-ups of default and popular window sizes for Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Explorer. Useful for determining if a design will work on different size monitors. (http://www.dot.net.au/younis/window.html)

Web Page Validators -- checks your html coding to see if there are any problems, such as missing tags and broken links. (http://www.ccs.org/validate/)

Yale C/AIM Web Style Guide -- a definitive guide to site design, including graphics creation. (http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/)

APPENDIX 2 -- GLOSSARY

Most of these definitions come from the CMP Technology Network Tech Encyclopedia website. (http://www.techweb.com/)

Browser (web) -- The program that serves as your front end to the World Wide Web on the Internet.

Browser-safe palette -- A suggested range of 216 colors that maintain a "safe" representation across platforms, browsers and monitors.

CGI (Common Gateway Interface) -- A programming interface used to link Web pages to databases and other programs. CGI programs are very small and are written in Perl or some other script or high-level language. They reside on the Web server and function as the glue between the HTML pages and the databases.

Download-- To receive a file transmitted over a network. In a communications session, download means receive, upload means transmit. Downloads depend on file size and network speed. Via a 28.8 modem, small Web pages take seconds when everything is running smoothly, but a 10MB video file takes at least an hour.

Flat color -- The equivalent of spot color for the printing process. Contains no graduated colors or "photo" like tendencies.

GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) -- A popular raster graphics file format developed by CompuServe. It supports 8-bit color (256 colors) and is widely used on the Web, because the files compress well. GIFs include a color table that includes the most representative 256 colors used. Macintosh users call GIF files "giff" files, while PC users call them "jiff" files.

Interface (user) -- The combination of menus, screen design, keyboard commands, command language and help screens, which create the way a user interacts with a computer.

Internet -- "The" Internet is made up of more than 100,000 interconnected networks in over 100 countries, comprised of commercial, academic and government networks. Originally developed for the military, the Internet became widely used for academic and commercial research. Users had access to unpublished data and journals on a huge variety of subjects. Today, the Internet has become commercialized into a worldwide information highway, providing information on every subject known to humankind.

JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) -- Pronounced "jay-peg." A standard for compressing still images that is becoming very popular due to its high compression capability. It depends on the image, but ratios of 10:1 to 20:1 may provide little noticeable loss. The more the loss can be tolerated, the more the image can be compressed. Compression is achieved by dividing the picture into tiny pixel blocks, which are halved over and over until the ratio is achieved.

Link -- On the World Wide Web, an address (URL) to another document on the same server or on any remote server.

Navigation -- The goal of a website is to define a well-planned course, or to "steer" a user through the site successfully. A good navigation system will let the user know where he is--and where else he can go--at any given moment.

Online -- Available for immediate use. If you use the Internet or an online service, such as AOL or Prodigy, you are online when you have made the connection via modem and logged on with your account number. When you log off, you are offline.

Referring page -- External websites which provide links to your site from within their site.

Search engine -- Software that searches for data based on some criterion. There are various Web sites that maintain directory databases of other Web sites. Yahoo! was the first to gain worldwide attention. Some sites search other sites. Most sites are free and are paid for by advertising, while others charge for the service.

Site (website) -- A server that contains Web pages and other files which is online to the Internet 24 hours a day.

URL (Uniform Resource Locator) -- The address that defines the route to a file on the Web or any other Internet facility. URLs are typed into the browser to access Web pages, and URLs are embedded within the pages themselves to provide the hypertext links to other pages.

Webserver -- A computer that provides World Wide Web services on the Internet. It includes the hardware, operating system, Web server TCP/IP protocols and the Web site content (Web pages). If the Web server is for internal use, it is known as an intranet server.

Website -- A server that contains Web pages and other files which is online to the Internet 24 hours a day.

World Wide Web -- An Internet facility that links documents locally and remotely. The Web document is called a Web page, and links in the page let users jump from page to page (hypertext) whether the pages are stored on the same server or on servers around the world. The pages are accessed and read via a Web browser such as Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer.

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