Oops. We had an outage of Planet Carleton last night and into this morning, caused by a mistake we made when we added 16 (!) new feeds. We thought we had gotten out the kinks enough to not label it "beta" anymore, but then something like this comes up and bites us.

I'd like to bring your attention to some of the latest Carleton site designs: Off Campus Studies, Philosophy, and the site for the upcoming Art Gallery exhibition Chikanobu. We're trying out some new design directions with these sites, and I hope you like them.

Here's a rundown of what's new and upcoming in Reason: slideshows, form enhancements, randomized page elements, image and asset sorting, profiles, podcasting, blogs, and more!

Jeff Croft elegantly summarizes why you get more out of a designer when you come to him or her with a problem rather than with a solution.

We at Carleton's Web Services Group have released a Beta version of Reason, a free, open-source web content management system. Built in PHP/MySQL, Reason allows you to build a powerful, full-featured suite of web sites very easily, with your web browser. It is the engine behind 90% of Carleton's web presence, and we are actively improving and developing it. We are hoping to build a community of people and organizations who are interested in collaborating on an open tool for managing web content. More information and download

Reason now supports podcasting. Find out what that means, and what to do to produce a podcast for your office or department.

Web content guru Gerry McGovern reminds us that "The best websites know that customers are ready for action. They help customers complete common tasks quickly and easily."

Read the article.

Feeds are a useful way to subscribe to the information on a web site. When you subscribe to a feed, you get updated when information is added to the site. We've written an overview of feeds and how they work. Check it out!

Provides an overview of podcasts and podcasting, and brief instructions on how to subscribe to a podcast.

This article provides information on MPEG-4 video, the H.264 codec, and free software for Macs and Windows PCs that will allow you to access high-quality video content on your computer.

Want to write a web page people will actually read? In the latest issue of A List Apart, Erin Kissane argues that you need to get out the axe and start chopping.

How do people read on the web? Mostly they don't. They skim and scan the screen for the information they're seeking. To ensure that the message you're putting out there actually gets across, you need to adapt your writing to fit this reading style.