Hello visitors! Sam and I (Amy) are the developers of the updated website pages for Baylor University’s Gaming Concentration. We would like to launch the site by detailing some of our process and the features we developed!
Developing the website involved a unique goal: We wanted to make sure that students, faculty and others could dynamically update the pages with content. For example, we wanted to let them create profiles and add personal flair, images, and more. Other examples include pages for courses and for game projects. This lead to the use of a WordPress (abbreviated as “WP”) blog which gives flexible access while still allowing administrative duties such as post approval. The WordPress uses the service from Blogs @ Baylor University.
In contrast, the portion of the site on the main Baylor website involves more complex permissions. It uses its Baylor’s own content management system, or “CMS”. Thus, we integrated the dynamism of this blog with the officialism of the Baylor website. This led to a good amount of effort in “syncing” the content so that updates on the blog could appear on the main site as well.
For those curious, we mainly utilized JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. We used WordPress’s RSS feeds to pull content. The experience lead to a idiosyncratic blurring of “front-end” and “back-end”. We learned a lot about the complexity and challenges of these content management systems.
In the end, we’re glad to share this with you all! Please feel free to contact us and the rest of the gaming department at our group e-mail, gaming@baylor.edu.
