Site Architecture: knoxmercury.com David Doyle INSC 597 Spring 2015

Group Information Q: Who has two thumbs and had about a week and a half to bring this site to production? A: This guy.

Organization: Knoxville Mercury Local altweekly newspaper formed after Knoxille’s Metro Pulse was shut down without warning by its parent company, KNS Media Group, 10/15/2014 Editorial staff composed of core Metro Pulse editorial team members; many writers from Metro Pulse joined Knoxville Mercury as well Local, regional, and national award-winning writers and designers

Purpose and Goals: knoxmercury.com Deliver Knoxville Mercury content in digital form Short-form (~700 words) and long-form (2000+ words) journalistic articles Multimedia content: image galleries, streaming A/V content, podcasts Deliver content on platforms that readers want: Desktop, mobile, tablet

Target Audience Young, urban, liberal*, local * At least, liberal in the mid-sized Southern American city context. Your mileage may vary.

Client Needs & Design Goals “As natural an extension of the print edition as possible” Design must match stylistic cues from print edition Robust, simple CMS, equipped to handle text and multimedia content User-friendly Scalable to large amounts of content over years of service Responsive Web design One site, one URL, automatically scaling to browser window size and adapting on the fly via CMS and CSS wizardry

Data Collection Institutional knowledge Metro Pulse editorial staff (now Knoxville Mercury editorial staff) have decades of experience running a profitable(!) altweekly in the Knoxville area Professional/academic resources Altweekly community UTK JEM school community

User Groups Readers Read-only access (user comments notwithstanding) Editors Write access: Article creation Designer (that’d be me) Full access: build, read, write, edit, add users, add categories, create, destroy

Content Inventory Static pages: basic informational pages with little to no dynamic content Home, About, Contact, Advertise, Donate Dynamic pages: categories, subcategories, articles, built against database content, organized by PHP templates Category: main top-level categories (e.g. News, Features, Arts & Entertainment, etc.) Subcategory: second level categories that group articles together (e.g. columnists, performing arts, restaurant guides) Article: single story

Site Blueprint

Sitemap Home About Us Contact Us Advertise Donate News Feature Stories Words With… Columnists Patrice Cole George Dodds Donna Johnson Jack Neely Stephanie Piper Joe Sullivan Eleanor Scott Kim Trevathan Chris Wohlwend Editor’s Notes Arts & Entertainment Art Classical Music Movie Reviews Music Reviews Music Stories Performing Arts Program Notes Shelf Life Inside the Vault Food Home Palate Quick Guides Restaurant News Dirt to Fork Sips and Shots Calendar Submit an Event

Databases Article database: stores article data and relevant metadata Event database: stores event listing data and relevant metadata

Server/Environment Requirements Web hosting Offsite, managed hosting Dedicated technology staff would be cost-prohibitive Content Management System WordPress: open source, easy to use, highly customizable and extensible, handles multimedia content well, high adoption rate in small- to mid-sized media environments Database/PHP compatibility: Web host must play well with WordPress’ MySQL/PHP requirements Web storage: Lots. High priority

Content Map

Wireframe Excerpt: Home

Wireframe Excerpt: Single Article

Wireframe Excerpt: Submit an Event

Task-Oriented Blueprint: Submit an Event

Constructive Process Site programmer (again, me) Install CMS, build user accounts, harden site Build static pages, create framework and hierarchy for categories and subcategories, create menus Build homepage, set “selected stories” fields to populate from correct categories Integrate Events Calendar software into site Train users Site Writers Static page content Pre-launch article content (“Vol. 1, Issue 1” content) Post-launch article content Events Calendar content Graphic Designer Text design: fonts, font sizes, font weights, line spacing, capitalization use Visual design: Color palettes Logo and art design: All original line art and logo design Image design: Design and optimization for Web of images from photographers

Site Build Schedule Targets Test environment ready for testing: 2 days Static pages ready on test environment: 4 days Events Calendar integration testing: 1 week Test environment graphic design elements in place: 1.5 weeks Article content ready for testing: 2 weeks Testing with article content in place complete: 2.5 weeks Post-test changes and bugfixes: 3 weeks Final rounds of testing, tweaking, bugfixes: 3.5 weeks SITE LIVE IN PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT: 4 weeks NOTE: These are “perfect world” estimates – actual start-to-finish on v1.0 of site was ~2 weeks