New Essay File Website Launched

Submitted by admin on Tue, 07/29/2008 - 18:45.

At the end of July 2008 the Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary Library launched a rebuilt essay file website. The essay file has been a popular destination for years and has served thousands of essays to its visitors. However, the technical process of website upkeep and maintenance was becoming more and more difficult and time-consuming. To alleviate the problem, the library began to construct a website using modern web technologies. The result is a the website you see now. It runs a web-based content management system. The system is database-driven which provides a speedy, flexible and automated method of site upkeep and delivers more useful features to the site's users.

To learn more about the site, read on or visit the help section to view video tours of the site.

Permanent URLs

One of the most compelling changes to the site is the URL system. Each essay has been placed in the web database and therefore has a unique identification number. This ID number is represented in the URL for each essay. The basic pattern for URLs on the site is wlsessays.net/node/#, where # represents the essays unique identifier.

What this means is that from here on each essay has a permanent URL. Thanks to the flexibility afforded by the database-driven content management system, the library can perform massive changes to the organization, structure, and look of the site if needed, but the URLs for each essay will remain intact. This was not possible with our previous configuration.

The necessary sacrifice, however, is that all previous links to essays are now invalid and will return "Page Not Found" errors when used. We apologize for any frustration this causes, but we are confident that benefits from the resulting permanent URLs schema are well worth it.

Over the coming months the library's online catalog will be updated to reflect the changes in URLs. Please update any bookmarks or links you may have created as well.

RSS Feeds

Another new feature that the content management system provides is RSS. For more information about RSS technology and its use on this website, please visit the help section and view the RSS introduction video.

RSS allows site visitors to subscribe and receive updates when new essays or other content are posted. There are two global RSS feeds for new essays and new audio essays. Along with the two global feeds are hundreds of category specific RSS feeds. There is literally a feed for every subject and author on the site.

For more about RSS, see the RSS page.

Audio Essays

We've also begun to record audio versions of select essays. In the coming months more and more essays will be published in audio format. These audio versions will accompany the text copies of the essay. You can subscribe to the audio essay RSS feed or keep an eye on the "Recent Audio Essays" block on the homepage for links to new audio essays.

Multimedia Content

The library is committed to providing more and more multimedia to our site visitors. We are in the process of digitizing a great deal of analog content from cassette tapes and VHS. Check back on the essay file home page for announcements about new multimedia collections.

Regular Announcements

This is the first posting in our new essay file announcement section. Subscribe to the RSS feed for announcements or check back periodically for ongoing updates about new features and new multimedia content.