Brad,
Sure, it's feasible. And it's much easier to do with LibGuides v2 than
with v1. Whether it's a good idea or not depends on why you're
considering building your site on LibGuides. Springshare provides
amazing support, but the platform itself is limited.
There's a trade-off to make regarding flexibility, complexity, etc.
There's no efficient workflow that I've found. (There's no SSH/SFTP, no
ability to tweak the CMS, etc. I'm currently drafting a description of
my workflow, in the hopes of receiving suggestions for improvement.) A
lot of what we do on LibGuides is a pretty stylesheet, precise content
guidelines, and a lot of copy-pasting.
I'm not trying to dissuade you. LibGuides has been incredible for us. I
shudder to think where we would be without it. But we decided to build
our site on LibGuides due to (ahem) local operational constraints.
AFAICT, it seems that the bulk of your website is already on LibGuides.
If you're reasonably happy with it, maybe take the plunge and see if it
works for you :)
Hope this helps,
Alex
On 2014-09-22 23:56, Brad Coffield wrote:
Alex,
Thanks so much for sharing your new site built in LG2. I love it. Simple,
attactive, but very useable. It's very interesting to see an
honest-to-goodness "this actually looks like a real website and not like
just some libguide" library website built using lg. More and more I'm
seriously considering LG2 as a feasible option for our library site. Thanks!
Brad
On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 3:29 PM, Joshua Welker <wel...@ucmo.edu> wrote:
I was just curious in general. I'm always interested in data on web
usability.
Josh Welker
-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of
Alex
Armstrong
Sent: Saturday, September 20, 2014 12:34 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
I was actually a bit coy in my previous post. Our old site was reasonably
battle-hardened for usability. It's not like we transitioned from
three-column layouts and guides with three rows of tabs or anything.
I'm still trying to come up with tasks for testing. I suspect a lot of the
big stuff will be OK while a lot of the small stuff will be off.
It's been really hard to test the latter. (And there is a glitches in our
analytics so I'm also flying a bit blind.)
Is there something in particular you're wondering about?
Alex
On 09/19/2014 07:50 PM, Joshua Welker wrote:
Nice job. I like the simplicity. Let me know how the usability testing
goes.
Josh Welker
-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf
Of Alex Armstrong
Sent: Friday, September 19, 2014 10:28 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Long time lurker, second time poster (if memory serves).
We launched our new library website yesterday, which is entirely built
on LibGuides 2. You can see it here: http://library.acg.edu/
For simplicity’s sake we used only two templates:
a full width template for single page guides (e.g., our home page).
a content template that uses ~2/3 of the page for the content
and
~1/3 for guide navigation.
There are no dropdown menus anywhere, for the reasons people
mentioned, nor do we use two columns for content. (Some of the landing
pages use a small grid, but that’s about it.)
We use LG’s built-in second column wrapped around an `<aside>` and
placed at the bottom of the main content for related info. Scroll to
the bottom of this page to see what I mean:
http://library.acg.edu/citations/apa
I decided to keep the navigation menu on the right to emphasize the
main content. My guess is that this won’t work very well for sections
with more narrative. My inspiration (GOV.uk) uses wizard navigation,
which
LG2 supports. That may be a way of handling this issue.
I put the site together with almost no usability testing. I’ll have to
grab some students in the coming weeks and find out how bad things
really are :)
You can see a slightly abstracted version of the content template, as
well as other useful LG2 thingies in this gist:
https://gist.github.com/alehandrof/9f083aa03c287931d9f0
The design was written in Sass on top of an imported and customized
Bootstrap 3.2. There's an option in the LG admin to disable the
default Bootstrap and I only had to write a few hundred lines to
override aspects of the default LG stylesheets. Because I built the
design on top of Bootstrap there was very little tweaking necessary
for the admin side to work properly.
Hope this helps,
Alex
--
Alex Armstrong
E-Resource/Reference Assistant
The American College of Greece Libraries, John S. Bailey Library
6 Gravias Street | GR 153 42 Agia Paraskevi | Athens, Greece
Phone: +30 210 600 9800 ext. 1274, 1267 | Fax: +30 210 601 7795
Email: aarmstr...@acg.edu
On 2014-09-19 12:31 AM, Joshua Welker wrote:
That's a good idea. I changed the template using Bootstrap classes so
that the sidebar will appear below the main column on small screens
(< 1024px roughly). But I might consider hiding the side completely.
Josh Welker
-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf
Of Michael Schofield
Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2014 1:55 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
I love your minimal template. We're experimenting with similar
minimalism.
If you all can't agree on the existence of the right column, you
might compromise and use media queries to display: none; until the
screen is sufficiently wide. E.g., 1140px so it will only pop on
widescreen monitors and avoid almost all tablet orientations.
Good work.
-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf
Of Joshua Welker
Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2014 2:43 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
I am in the middle of building a very minimalist LibGuides 2.0
template to go with our new website. Here's the current status:
http://ucmo.beta.libguides.com/test-guide.
We are still torn on whether to have any side columns. We currently
have a right column just for important site-wide information. We used
the right rather than left with the rationale that it is not an
essential navigation menu and that we didn't want it to be the first
thing users notice. Content should come first. The fact that users
will not focus heavily on the right-hand content is actually a good
thing in this instance.
I go back and forth on whether to scrap the side column. I am pretty
adamant that there should only be one column for page content,
although I am prepared to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous
fortune.
Josh Welker
-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf
Of Brad Coffield
Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 5:24 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Benjamin: "Unfortunately we have authors who want *three* columns
plus left-nav..." LOL
Margaret: Love the floating nav on that page. It's exciting that
we'll be able to leverage Bootstrap with our guides now. Moving the
entire library website to libguides CMS is looking more and more
promising.
Some more thoughts:
I'm no UX expert but is it generally agreed that left-nav is the much
better choice? It seems like it to me. Given current web wide
conventions etc.
One big issue to switching to left-nav in v2 is the amount of work
it's going to take everyone to convert all guides to the new layout.
Which is one of those things that both shouldn't matter (when looking
at it in a principledness way - that is, "Whatever is best for the
patrons! No matter
what!) but also does matter (in a practical way - that is, "OMG we
are all so busy being awesome").
But part of me, when looking at other people's guides and my own,
wonders if three columns isn't just a little TOO much for the user.
How is one supposed to scan the page? What's the prioritized
information? For a couple years now I've been eschewing three columns
whenever possible. Do others agree that three columns can be info
overload?
Brad
On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 4:32 PM, Benjamin Florin
<benjamin.flo...@gmail.com>
wrote:
We've been tinkering with our LibGuides template in preparation for
an eventual redesign of our site and guides, e.g.:
http://libguides.bc.edu/libraries/babst/staff
Some of our guide authors weren't happy with the LibGuides
side-navigation's single-column limitation, so we made our own
template, moved {{guide_nav}} off to a left column, and wrote our
own styles to make the default top-nav display as left-nav. We've
found that a 50/50 or 75/25 split next to the left nav looks pretty
good.
Unfortunately we have authors who want *three* columns plus left-nav...
In general the LibGuides templating has felt modern and easy to work
with.
Ben
On Mon, Sep 15, 2014 at 3:18 PM, Brad Coffield <
bcoffield.libr...@gmail.com>
wrote:
Hi all,
I'm finally diving into our Libguides v2 migration and I'm
wondering if anyone would be willing to share their
experience/choices regarding templating. (Or even some code!)
I'm thinking left-nav is the way to go. Has anyone split the main
content column into two smaller columns? Done that with a
column-width-spanning
box
atop the main content area? Any other neato templates ideas?
We are in the process of building a "style guide" for all libguides
authors
to use. And also some sort of peer-review process to help enforce
the
style
guide. I'm thinking we are going to want to restrict all authors to
left-nav templates but perhaps the ideal solution would be to
require left-nav of all but to have a variety of custom left-nav
templates to choose from.
Any thoughts are much appreciated!
Warm regards,
Brad
--
Brad Coffield, MLIS
Assistant Information and Web Services Librarian Saint Francis
University
814-472-3315
bcoffi...@francis.edu
--
Brad Coffield, MLIS
Assistant Information and Web Services Librarian Saint Francis
University
814-472-3315
bcoffi...@francis.edu
