Clackamas County 4-H is a great example of a local program landing page. These are some of the things we love:
Review your landing pages. Is there anything you can do to improve the text, images or layout based on the example above?
See: How to update your program.
We want people to understand what we do and how it is relevant for their lives. This isn’t easy: We provide resources for many topics and our impact is challenging to summarize. Here are some tips when writing for county pages:
The county page design has places to share different parts of our story:
Intro text
Make OSU Extension relevant to the general public. Show why they should care, by helping them understand what we do — and how it affects their lives. Keep it brief.
We recommend including:
We don’t recommend including:
Note: The “what we do” section provides some concrete examples of information that can be learned about in this county.
Intro example:
The Benton County Extension Service helps you solve problems, develop life skills and manage your resources.
We share reliable, research-based education. Access is affordable, often offered at no-cost: Talk one-on-one with an expert. Attend a demonstration, tour, short courses, youth development club or activity. Read our publications.
County landing page example, see Hood River.
Intro
We recommend including:
We don’t recommend including:
Note: The “what we do” section provides some concrete examples of information that can be learned about in this county. About section can be a great place to include impact information, this displays further down on the page.
‘What we do‘ intro example:
Extension faculty, staff, and trained volunteers work alongside partners across Deschutes County to provide educational workshops, activities and services tailored to the unique industries, natural resources, and demographics in our communities.
Oregon State University’s land grant mission drives us to conduct research and share research-based education to minimize community risk, improve economic vitality, and promote personal and environmental health.
‘What we do’ page example: Union
Titles
Create concise, easy to understand titles.
Title example:
Description
Briefly outline the benefits. The description text shows on the “What we do page”.
Example title and description:
Activities for youth: 4-H empowers young people with hands-on learning experiences to help them grow and thrive. By creating a safe and welcoming environment, young people develop the skills needed to make a positive impact on the world around them.
Home garden and landscape: We provide research-based information for backyard gardeners and green industry professionals, including regional specific information.
We will be collaborating with each county on developing their county pages. This will include optimizing the use of the website’s design, refining landing pages and creating focus areas.
We have some wonderful program pages to share with you. These are great examples of how you can lay out your content for program participants, volunteers, and other people who are involved with or interested in your program. Here’s initial feedback we’ve been hearing from all of you about the updated design features:
Check these out too:
These pages also turned out well:
More local 4-H examples will be coming soon.
The above examples were created through a partnership between EESC and these groups. A 4-H and Master Gardener local program was selected from each region. They were selected because they had a lot of wonderful content added to their pages, which gave us a great starting point.
We can walk you through how to create this look when you’re ready. Send us questions, training requests or your feedback on the designs!
A shout out to Alisha Atha, Holly Burton, Rose Clarke, Shevon Hatcher, Renée Johnson, Samara Rufener, Sara Runkel and Michelle Sager for partnering with us to create the examples programs listed above. We greatly appreciate the content you added to the website before we got started—and your feedback and suggestions along the way! Thank you!
Now that the new county designs have launched, it’s time to focus on filling out content for your county’s focus areas. Here are some tips to get you started. Also, if you’re in Eastern Oregon, the web team is coming your way for a training this week (see more at the end of this blog post).
When writing a title for your focus area, we recommend:
Here are some examples:
Please contact us if you have any questions or would like some help identifying focus area titles or how to organize content to fit within focus areas.
There are three options for focus areas:
Or, link to existing content:
Select which desired option under “How to display” when creating a local focus area.
Read last week’s blog post for training materials to get started on creating or editing your focus areas.
The following focus areas have been or will been created for you:
You can change the order of focus areas on the ‘What we do’ page and select which three to include on the county landing page.
County programs & local focus areas
Three focus areas are set to display on the county landing pages. The ‘What we do’ page also includes:
Links to the ‘What we do’ page are in your county’s navigation. Links to 4-H and Master Gardener can now be found with focus areas.
Social media & newsletters
When the content is for:
We recommend using announcements to promote new newsletter issues.
County subpages
Content that is currently in county subpages will be transitioned to local focus areas by EESC. If we aren’t sure how to make the content fit, we’ll work with you to find a solution.
You are invited to attend in-person trainings in Eastern Oregon this week:
The trainings will focus on using the new county page designs. Please bring your questions and a laptop if possible, so we can work with you on your county pages. For questions about the location or accommodation, please contact Bobbi Howell (Malheur County) or Sherry Nantz (Union County). For questions related to the training, contact Bryan Mayjor or Victor Villegas.
A shout out to Carrie Berger and the forestry team for the awesome content they developed for county subpages! This content provided an inspiration and starting place for the focus area mockups below.
Focus area mockup with annotations.
Click mockup to view larger version.
Focus area mockup.
Click mockup to view larger version.
The updated designs provide a way to share and highlight what OSU Extension does within our counties and helps to:
Please keep in mind design modifications will remain an iterative process. Expect the look and feel to evolve, the functionality to be fine-tuned.
Thank you to Amy Schmid, Jenifer Halter and Laurie Gibson for working with us last week to help us test out county content in the new county designs.
Visit our new user guide to learn:
Thank you for sharing your feedback and challenges related to the county pages and the site as a whole. Please continue to share any feedback on how these changes are working for your counties and teams.
Example county landing page
Example focus area
UPDATE: Designs were updated April 10, 2019 based on your feedback. Thanks for your input!
We gave a sneak-peak of the new county landing page design at the Extension Annual Conference during Tuesday morning’s “Ask the Experts About the New Extension Website” session. See design below.
In January on your county’s landing page (homepage), you will be able to add a large hero image, background photos or shading, and calls to action. You can add a ‘quick links bar’ featuring four links to social media, events, newsletters, etc. Also highlight priority county/local programs, activities and resources.
Below is an example of Yamhill County that shows different design features you can apply. Think about how your current content will best fit into this style and where you need to write some text or find some photos.
Full details on how to create this look will be provided when design elements are ready on the live website. Please send us questions or what you think about the new designs!
Thank you for sharing your feedback at the Extension Annual Conference. And thank you for your continued hard work to create and add content to the website. We know this process isn’t always easy or straight forward. Together, we are making good progress! The website is growing as a place where Oregonians can come and easily find the amazing content you create and provide. We appreciate your hard work in making this site awesome!
This is the design for large screens (desktop). Note: The wider you make your browser, the larger you will see the design. View full-sized annotated design.
View full-sized design.
Check out the updated timeline and milestones for the Extension web upgrade project. This will give you a high-level overview of what’s happening with the project–and when.
Project work continues at full throttle, but much of what’s happened to date has been behind-the-scenes planning, research, and early development. We’ve been working on things like server configuration. Super exciting, right? Probably not so much for you. So we didn’t blog about all those details.
Now, the development work and content strategy planning will shift and start to be a little more concrete and visual. In the coming months, we’ll keep sharing status updates via this project blog.
How does this project and timeline affect my site?
Not sure what this means for your site? Review the FAQs.
We will continue to consult with individual site managers, as needed.
Questions?
Please contact the project team. Your feedback will help us improve our communication plan and the project blog, especially the FAQs.
Are you wondering what’s happening with the OSU Extension web upgrade project? Hang in there — we are recalibrating — and will have more news soon, including updated milestones and timeline.
Worth waiting for
There is some cool stuff coming down the pipeline that will make this project better in the long run, including:
We’re hiring
An important part of completing this project is filling a key vacancy on EESC’s web and content strategy team. Here’s the job posting for the web developer position. Please share!
Questions?
Please contact the project team. Your feedback will help us improve our communication plan and the project blog, especially the FAQs.
Project timeline
In consultation with Extension administration, we have adjusted the timeline for Phase 1 milestones from late January to late March 2017. Project work continues at full throttle, to enable delivery of an excellent new user-focused, data-informed web presence and initial content strategy, as planned.
Not sure what this means for your site? Review the FAQs.
Content audit
We audited content on the main OSU Extension website — and identified and prioritized content for Phase 1 based on the project’s guiding criteria.
People/locations directory
We’ve made good progress toward priority features for the people/locations directory. Thanks to Denise Ashley for partnering with us on the current data while we develop the new directory. As usual, please send any updates for the Find Us faculty and staff directory to Denise.
What’s next
– Continue development work on priority features, including the people/locations directory.
– Continue development of initial user-friendly tags/categories.
– Design initial wireframes for page layouts. We will share examples and mockups in the coming weeks.
Questions?
Please contact the project team. Your feedback will help us improve our communication plan and the project blog, especially the FAQs.
The project team continues to make good progress on several Phase 1 milestones in the OSU Extension web upgrade project.
Identify/confirm contacts
Site managers and decision makers have been identified for each site. We appreciate your help!
Features & functions
In our last post, you learned we identified and prioritized features for development during Phase 1. We have started development on selected features, starting with the people/locations directory.
Content strategy
On the “Learn with us” page on the project blog, we’ve added additional resources we’ve found useful in exploring, understanding, and applying content strategy. We invite you to learn alongside the project team. Check these out, and let us know your thoughts!
What’s next
Learn more
Visit the OSU Extension web upgrade project blog for more project details. Please contact the project team with any questions. Your feedback will help us improve our communication plan and the project blog, especially the FAQs.