Archive for ‘Blogs’

Below are the blog themes available to all Campus blogs hosted at blogs.acu.edu.

NOTE: Online Marketing does not provide support for these themes. Instead, they are validated by our group to work as they are intended by the author.

If you need training on how to administer a blog, we recommend Lynda.com’s WordPress Essential Training

• Aggregate – http://www.elegantthemes.com/preview/Aggregate/
• Askit – http://www.elegantthemes.com/preview/AskIt/
• Coldstone – http://www.elegantthemes.com/preview/ColdStone/
• Flexible – http://www.elegantthemes.com/preview/Flexible/
• Harmony – http://elegantthemes.com/preview/Harmony/
• InStyle – http://www.elegantthemes.com/preview/InStyle/
• Knowledge Base – http://inspirythemesdemo.com/knowledgebase/
• Lucid – http://elegantthemes.com/preview/Lucid/
• MiCasa – http://yootheme.com/demo/wordpress/micasa
• Nano2 – http://yootheme.com/demo/wordpress/nano2
• Nano3 – http://yootheme.com/demo/wordpress/nano3
• Nimble – http://elegantthemes.com/preview/Nimble/ 
• TheStyle – http://www.elegantthemes.com/preview/TheStyle/
• Beach – http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/beach
• Pilcrow – http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/pilcrow
• Twenty Ten – http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/twentyten
  
• Twenty Eleven – http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/twentyeleven
• Twenty Twelve – http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/twentytwelve
• Twenty Thirteen – http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/twentythirteen
• Vertex – http://www.elegantthemes.com/preview/Vertex/

Abilene Christian University won eight awards, including three Grand Awards, in 2010 regional Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) competition. Awards were presented March 29 at CASE’s annual District IV conference in Austin, Texas.

University Marketing winners included Grand Awards in periodicals improvement (for “ACU Today magazine”), brochures/flyers/booklets (for “Introductory Viewbook”) and viewbooks (for “Academic Viewbook”); second place Excellence Awards in logo design (for “Study Abroad Logo”), publication design series (for “Live Up Campaign”) and color photography series (for “A Semester to Last a Lifetime” in ACU Today magazine’s Fall 2009 issue); a third place Achievement Award in viewbooks (for “Introductory Viewbook”); and a fourth-place Special Award in admissions, recruitment and promotional literature (for “Football Recruiting Guide).

CASE represents more than 3,000 institutions and 60,000 higher education professionals in alumni relations, communications, marketing, advancement services and development in 61 nations. District IV includes colleges, universities and schools of all sizes in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, New Mexico and Mexico.

ACU has won 97 regional awards and four international medals from CASE since 1985. Its winning Live Up and viewbook entries for 2010 were developed in concert with Stamats Communications and Corey Patterson, ACU’s director of enrollment marketing.

At the Austin conference, Ron Hadfield, assistant vice president for university communication, and Scott Kilmer, director of new media, presented a breakout session about ACU Today’s work to present its award-winning magazine to readers in multiple mediums, including print, Web and blog formats. Hadfield is editor of ACU Today, and Kilmer helped the magazine develop its Issuu.com site in 2009. Issuu hosts major Abilene Christian publications here.

Two issues of ACU Today magazine can now be viewed on Issuu – including the first Bonus Coverage available only to online readers. The Summer 2009 issue is now joined by the Fall 2009 issue, which is a 76-pager, thanks to 24 pages of Bonus Coverage related to the cover story about the university’s Study Abroad program.

With its “page-turning technology,” Issuu provides a features-rich way to view what is essentially a 3D-looking PDF of the magazine. Each online issue is searchable and has live hot links to any URL appearing in the print edition. 

Issuu versions of the magazine should make a huge difference in our international alums’ ability to keep up with news of their alma mater. Otherwise, alums living abroad would expect to wait weeks or months for their issue of the magazine to arrive. 

We will soon be adding other back issues of ACU Today to Issuu, where other high-quality university publications can be found, such as the 2009 Mobile-Learning Report and the new-style Football Recruiting Guide (previously the Football Media Guide). 

We also are using WordPress to create a new blog for ACU Today.  The design complements the new design of the magazine, and will be soon supplemented with older content from the magazine’s original blog. Associate editor Katie Noah Gibson and I will be the primary authors, but I am hoping to add content from some of the magazine’s professional freelance writing staff, each of whom is an ACU alum. We are blessed with some great writers and I hope this can be a forum for some of them to contribute even more often.

We’ll be adding some additional features and widgets to the blog this week. Our aim is to make this a between-print-issues, regular stopping place for alums to learn more about ACU news and people than we might otherwise be able to share with them via other Web sites or in the 48 pages of the print version.

Faculty have been using Class Blogs since the beginning of the Fall semester. Now Campus Blogs are available for offices, departments, groups and individuals. Find out more at blogs.acu.edu. Click on the Class Blogs or Campus Blogs button for more information. The ACU Blog Guidelines will answer most of your questions.

To request a blog, visit blogs.acu.edu/request.