Joe Knox's Blog Posts

New releases for Stanford Drupal themes, August 2016

Joe Knox — Wed, 24 Aug 2016 19:10:57 +0000

We’re excited to announce the August 2016 release of our updated mobile-responsive Drupal 7 themes:

Open Framework 7.x-2.5
Stanford Framework 7.x-3.2*
Stanford Wilbur 7.x-3.0*
Stanford Jordan 7.x-3.0*

5 Useful Google Analytics Standard Reports To Check Out For Your Website

Joe Knox — Tue, 22 Sep 2015 17:05:18 +0000

You can do a lot to improve the performance and user experience across your site by making use of your Google Analytics account. In this post, we'll cover five valuable standard reports that you can view for your site right now.

This post aligns with the Google Analytics set up and menu structure as of September 22, 2015.

Why We Luv GitHub and How You Can Level Up Now!

Joe Knox — Fri, 22 May 2015 15:35:00 +0000

Our team treasures productivity power tools and applications. Of all the tools that we’ve adopted, the one that has consistently proven critical to our workflow is GitHub. In this post, I'll share a few use cases related to why we luv Github and highlight an upcoming level-up opportunity.

How We Learn Anything New, and the Importance of Focusing on Practice

Joe Knox — Wed, 29 Apr 2015 15:30:00 +0000

When learning something new — no matter what it is — many of us move through the same levels of competence. In this post, we'll look at this progression of learning, and discuss how a focus on practice can lead to a more sustained level of self-awareness.

Why You Might Want to Request a Development Site

Joe Knox — Mon, 23 Mar 2015 16:00:00 +0000

Have you ever wanted to try something new on your site, but wished you could view and experiment with it before making the change(s) live? You can! All you need is a development site. In this post we'll talk about how to request a dev site and why you might want to have one.

Getting Started on Sites: Adding Google Analytics to Your site

Joe Knox — Mon, 02 Feb 2015 17:00:00 +0000

Google Analytics gives you critical insights that help drive innovation and evolution by showing you exactly how people are using your site. Understanding how your site is being used can aid in identifying where improvements can and should be made. This post will cover how to add Google Analytics to your Drupal site.

Designing With Emotion and Personality in Mind

Joe Knox — Tue, 09 Dec 2014 16:50:40 +0000

In this post, I'll share one of my take-aways from reading A Book Apart's Designing for Emotion, highlighting how infusing personality into the things we create can help produce emotionally engaging experiences that make long-lasting impressions on our audience.

Stanford Sites Updates, December 2014

Joe Knox — Thu, 20 Nov 2014 18:57:51 +0000

University IT will perform updates for all websites hosted on the Stanford Sites Drupal hosting service on the following dates:

Friday, December 5th, from 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Saturday, December 6th, from 4 a.m. - 8 a.m.
Sunday, December 7th, from 4 a.m. - 8 a.m.

The changes are significant and include security patches and upgrades for both Drupal 6 and 7 sites. See below for a complete list of module updates.

Roundup: Getting Started on Sites

Joe Knox — Thu, 06 Nov 2014 17:00:00 +0000

Need to build and manage a website for university work? Want responsive and accessible themes that work well on phones, tablets, and desktop browsers? Looking for a self-service tool that requires little technical expertise and has all patches and upgrades handled at no cost? Stanford Sites is for you!

Post updated on May 20, 2015.

The Stanford Sites Drupal hosting service has many of the most popular Drupal modules and unique Stanford themes pre-installed. It’s customized for our academic environment and is available to current faculty, staff, and students free of charge, so you can use it to build your personal and department or group website.

As of fall 2014, there are more than 1,400 websites hosted on Stanford Sites, and all are monitored and securely maintained by University IT. Training and support are available as well.