Website Issues, Quick Fixes, and Problems for Neville to figure out

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Robbin Antony

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Aug 5, 2013, 3:59:51 PM8/5/13

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Hey Everyone,

So all day I've been scouring the website for problems and trying to figure out solutions so we can send to Neville the issues that only he can fix. I've been talking with all of you asking you to send me anything you guys may find and you have all been very helpful, but here are some things we should probably go over together.

Featured Images

In Neville's e-mail he addressed this, but his guidelines were a bit confusing. What he meant was that if you find a pictures online (via Google Images or another source) make sure that the picture you download is default at least 700 pixels wide. In order to fit them to the featured window screen, you must adjust them to 628 width x 250 height.

I know he said 2:1 ration but there have still been issues with that. I haven't had a problem yet making photos 628 x 250. But like Neville said, aim to find pictures that are already 700 pixels wide. It looks better to shrink pics than to stretch pics.

Video Issues

One main problem that I and others have found is that when you are drafting and try to embed a video and you want to preview your post to see how it looks; sometimes the video does not show up.

There is a trick to this so you do NOT need to publish in order to see if the video works. Simply refresh the preview screen and the videos should appear again.

Another issue people seem to be having is embedding videos from places other than Youtube (CBS, NBC, CNN). This is because their embed codes are much more complex than Youtube.

These embed codes have several areas in the code where size is mentioned and you need to manually change each time they have a size listed. Here is an example:

Regular CBS News Embed Code:

Adjusted CBS News Embed Code (2 Column format):

Another example

Regular NBC News Embed Code:

Adjusted NBC News Embed Code:

NBC Embed Codes include a message at the bottom that says "Visit NBC News". If you go into the visual you need to take that manually as well.

Hyperlinking:

I am including this in the list to Chelsey only to see if Neville can make this a Default. We need to make sure that anything we hyperlink in our posts opens in a NEW window. All you have to do is check the box "Open in a new tab/window".

THIS IS THE LIST I AM GOING TO SEND TO CHELSEY (LET ME KNOW IF ANYTHING IS MISSING):

General Fixes:

Digest - Because Digest is going to include the date every time we update it in reverse chronological order, we need Neville to figure out how to remove the Standard date feature included in the post, or at least hide it. For regular posts the date should be there but for digest since we are including the date ourselves I do not think that the date should be there twice.

Neville mentioned her could reduce the font size of the "metadata" for each post; so maybe he could remove the date feature from the Digest pages.

Hyper Linking - We need to make sue everyone knows, especially any new recruits, that anytime you hyperlink something, it MUST open up in a new window. We need to make sure people are not led away from our website. Is there a way Neville could program this to be a default?
Watch - At the top of both the Videos section and the Courtroom section there is a feature that says Show. In Show it has a link to All and then to Videos or Courtroom depending on which section you are in. It seems as if this feature is unnecessary. Maybe I am missing something but I don't see the point of showing all courtroom videos if when you click on the courtroom tab that is what you already see.

From Ashley - Can the description for the courtroom videos appear on the light box when you click on the video in addition to appearing on the main video page? Also, on the main Watch page, can Neville cap the amount of text that is shown?

About Us - When you click on About in the tab bar it leads to a blank page. That should lead directly to the About Us page. Also I don't see a Contact Us anywhere on the website. This might be something we need to look into.
Ads - When we put ads in the sidebar in-between the Hottest, Latest, and Off Hours there is a little divider line that separates the ad from the section. Can we make that line darker and also put it before AND after the ad? Right now it only shows up before the ad.
Comments - Several people have expressed distaste for the Discus comment plug-in. Is there a different plug-in that we can use that won't require much information from the user prior to posting a comment?

Mobile Version:

Home:

Ads - The Ads test page looks good except I think the size of the ads should not be bigger than how the posts look. On the mobile version, when the ads are included with the content they could detract people away from the actual posts since some of them are bigger than actual posts.

Join the Jury:

The videos in Join the Jury overlap on the mobile site. This needs to be looked at by Neville.
The polling feature we are using is not very user-friendly. Is there a different plug-in that we can use that makes it easier for users to vote?
Are we still planning on doing "Create a Jury", and if so can Neville create a sample for us?

Thats all I have for now guys. Let me know if there is anything I can clarify or help with.

~Robb

Christina Teoli

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Aug 5, 2013, 4:13:26 PM8/5/13

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This is just my opinion on the aesthetics of the site, but it might be worth including if others from the team agree -- I feel like the logo needs to have a background (whether it's white, or even a clear outline) so it stands out from the banner. I would also make the social media buttons larger.

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Ashley Powell

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Aug 5, 2013, 4:17:55 PM8/5/13

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Here is a list of comments about the email...

Videos: It automatically resizes when you put it in columns. Why do it manually.

About US: We don't have an about us page yet. Chelsey and Christina are taking that responsibility.

Watch: All is necessary if you just want to see every video we have in watch. It is part of the set up of portfolio feature. The video and courtroom are sorting functions of portfolio.

Digest: what is the point having the most recent stuff at the bottom of the page?

On Mon, Aug 5, 2013 at 3:59 PM, Robbin Antony <lawstree...@gmail.com> wrote:

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