Challenge

Y-Press received a grant from the McCormick Tribune Foundation to enhance their site with better content management and add new multimedia in the form of photo galleries, audio created in conjunction with WFYI and their broad archive of video clips. As a student-run journalism program with limited technical knowledge, they required a complete publishing solution for the stories and reviews, plus blogs and community building tools for their writers and editors.

Solution

Small Box proposed to deliver a 100% customized system that would integrate powerful publishing tools with five levels of user accounts, each with their own abilities and responsibilities. The planning included an exhaustive overview of the features and capabilities of each page of the site and descriptions of every function that would be included on the new site. The execution took into account many changing definitions about the roles of the writers, editors and content manager in a Web 2.0 publishing environment.

A design was created that reflected the convergence of the printed product with an online interface, maintaining the link to traditonal publishing iconography. With limited assistance from The Indianapolis Star IT group, Small Box migrated 15 years worth of archived articles and authors into an open source system hosted externally.

Finally the exhaustive training and support required to take full advantage of the built-in tools made the site a completely integrated publishing and community tool for the program.

Results

Within six months the new site was launched to great success. The integrated search tools have enhanced the usability and visibility of the site on the Web, and now they have the ability to solicit donations through the payment gateway established and built into the site.

Now the site adequately supports the broad array of Y-Press' offline efforts and enhances their visibility for years to come.

Portfolio: Y-Press
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