Web and Social Media
STORY UPLOADS:
This was the very first thing that I uploaded as a web staffer. There were a lot of issues when this story was originally submitted to me. The writer did not attach all of the elements necessary for me to upload it. This happened twice. Once it was done correctly, I uploaded it on a zoom call with my editor, and she walked me through every step of uploading. I felt proud and accomplished. I had successfully uploaded my first story. It was very rewarding to see it all done on the website.
I decided to include this, as it was a very enjoyable team building activity. For halloween, we had a competition between the areas of The Muse. It was a very pleasant way to work as a team and try to win the pumpkin decorating contest. We all worked together to lead ourselves to victory (which we unfortunately did not achieve). However, it was overall a very nice experience that made us closer as a team.
This was the second story that I uploaded and was important for me to include as it was the most challenging one. All of the photos were HPEC files. When I tried to download them to upload them, an error kept occurring. I had to talk to my editor, and she instructed me that the photos must be JPEG files. I talked to the photographer and writer about this issue. We used an online converter to turn them into JPEG files, which took a while. Once we figured it out, I was able to successfully upload them.
This story was especially rewarding for me to upload, which is why I decided to include it. While in class, one of my classmates came up to me and asked if I could upload her finished story. She was super excited, as it was her first story on The Muse. Once I finished uploading it, she went to check it out and smiled ear to ear. It was an amazing feeling to know that I had made someone so happy, knowing how much work she put into the amazing story.
The website team started writing news briefs to post on the website. We cover mostly small, live events that need to be uploaded in a very timely manner. One of the briefs that I wrote was called “Bittersweet.” This was my favorite brief to write. It was about the senior dance concert. I enjoyed going to the event and interviewing a girl who had been dancing at Dreyfoos throughout high school. Seeing what dance and this concert meant to her was very interesting. Being able to convey her emotions (along with the other dance seniors’ emotions) in a short brief was challenging, but I love how the brief turned out.
The website team added a Photo of the Week section this year. This is important to me because it was one of the first things that I added to the website as this year's Website Editor. It has been a fun way to highlight the work of our photographers and events that have gone on at our school. This was added to the website as an attempt to increase interactivity on the website, as viewers enjoy seeing the new photo each week.
The website team added a custom sports page to the website this year. This is one of the only fully custom elements on the website. I chose to include this because of the challenges and amount of work behind maintaining it. Updating the sports rosters, game schedules, and scores has been challenging. There have also been challenges associated with how the sports page functions. However, one of these challenges helped our website company to discover a bug that they were facing.
The website team has been stressing the breaking news bar this year. We are becoming a source of news for the student body that is consistently updated. Our goal is for the student body to visit our website when they want to learn more about events going on in and out of school and frequent updates on events occurring. Constantly thinking about what updates need to be made to it can be a bit challenging, but being a reliable source for the student body is our goal.
This was one of the most difficult story uploads for me this year. I had to ask for help from our previous Website Editor. I realized that it is okay to ask for help even as an editor. Formatting the photos for this photo review story was definitely a challenge. Along the way, I learned that sometimes you will fail multiple times before succeeding. The foo gallery was not cooperating and I was having to play with the foo gallery settings. I learned a lot of valuable lessons as an editor during this upload.
This was a challenging story upload due to the plethora of photos and lack of text. Figuring out a way to format it that would not include large gaps between text was difficult. Text wrapping the photos was not possible, so I had to resort to putting the horizontal photos in the story and the vertical photos in a photo gallery. (5/10/23)
This year we decided to change "Breaking News" to "Happening Now" on our homescreen ticker. We wanted an area on our website to post the important upcoming Dreyfoos events without them being labeled under "Breaking News." Every Monday, these events get updated for the week. As an editor, I have learned that using training videos is okay. For elements that I do not know how to edit, such as changing the text on this ticker, I schedule a Sno Flow call for assistance.
