WIP – Pubmedia Test Site

SV Digital

SoundVision’s digital presence should strive to give visitors the best content, in a way that’s easy to navigate, and is easy (and inexpensive) for web admin/producers to maintain and enhance. Goals:

Deep, authoritative site content.
Engaging multimedia/interactive features.
Good user experience for site’s visitors.
Simple yet flexible content-entry.
Interconnections between programs.
Interconnections between SV site and its program sites.

Research Other Networks

Start by examining other distributors and networks: How do they present their multi-sites? Examine individual program sites: How do they acknowledge their parent distribution/production agency?

Emulate what they do right; avoid their mistakes. For example, Localore has a great front page linking all their projects, but inconsistent branding on the individual project sites. PRI’s front is not as engaging, but their programs use the same logo at each site (more examples below).

SV Network

Branding

SV Credits are sometimes in header, sometimes in footer, sometimes neither. Sometimes credits have SV logo, sometimes not. One of the best ways SV integrates with a program is SLP’s header:
TNBQ header

Favorites Icon

A crucial web brand is your “favorites icon” (favicon), a small logo that appears in browsers tabs. For example, these pubradio site have one; SV does not:

These same icons appear in a user’s bookmark’s and history list; again SV has no icon:

Intra-site & Cross-site Consistency

Content Management System

SV sites use several different CMSes. TRBQ uses two different ones at same site (?????).

WordPress: BURN An Energy Journal | The Public Radio Energy Project
Joomla (and WordPress): SoundVision’s The Really Big Questions
Drupal: SoundVision Productions Presents The DNA Files
None (or RYO): SoundVision Productions: Projects and Science Literacy Project

WordPress Multisite

Recommendation: Use a single CMS on all your sites. This way any SV staff that learns it at one site can use it at another.

WordPress is a good candidate for SV: its “Multisite” option makes it possible to have one site control a network of sites (more info below):

WP SV Net mockup

Style Guide

A basic style guide helps gives sites a consistent look. And it saves content creators from wasting hours trying to decide simple things: How do SV sites write a date, “February 20, 2013” or “Feb 20 2013”? How do you indicate an updated article: display the original publish date and the update? Or just the last update? Or all the update dates?

For instance, this might be a style guide entry:

Always use “SoundVision”, with a capital “S” and “V”, when referring to the production network. When referring to the company, add the registered mark: “SoundVision Productions®”.

SV can save time by starting with an existing Style Guide (ProPublica’s) then adapt it.

Think Like the Web

Don’t just be on the web; be part of the Web: Offer ways for people to embed SV multimedia and share SV infographics. When choosing things like image sizes, think about NPR Content Depot and PRX standard sizes, and about thumbnail sizes at station websites. Chose standards and solutions that work best not just for SV, but for all pubmedia.

Use the same standards in all SV’s websites: same an audio player, same size thumbnail images, etc.. This saves time for content producers, and provides site visitors with familiar visual cues.

Also, SV has the opportunity to cross-promote and combine its resources. Different projects, might tackle similar stories together, e.g.: TRBQ and BURN on “How Much Stuff is Too Much Stuff?”.

Get Inspired

Great SEO starts is mainly: great web content. SV’s staff has the skills to provide among the best content in SV program’s subject areas. Here’s a few presentations showing the different ways the web can now weave a story:

NYTimes: Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek
Pitchfork: Cover Story: Bat for Lashes
Timeline: Revolutionary User Interfaces
Greenpeace: Into the Arctic
ESPN: The Long, Strange Trip of Dock Ellis
Energy related (inspiration for BURN):

Other Networks: Site Examples

How other distributors and network present their multi-sites:

How individual program sitesacknowledge their parent distribution/production agency:

Localore has a great front page linking all their projects. However, branding on the individual project site is inconsistent.
WNYC uses a logo in the footer to brand their relationship with Radiolab and Studio 360.
WBEZ has their call letters at the top of This American Life and Sound Opinions.

APM has different logos/ branding on each site — also note the following titles of each program’s front page, some w/ APM, some not: