Hey everyone,

 

I've been toying with the idea making something because I can't seem to find
a free alternative, but I thought I'd do my due diligence and pick your
brains. I'm open for any alternatives to the following, but I'm specifically
looking for a free option with an API.

 

Scenario: our main website lives on the university's server, which turns out
to be a very dull playground: HTML/CSS/JS only. This means there's about 150
static files that I'm now presently rolling into a WP Network living on our
own boxes-and our own domain-(we've been waiting for the last year for a
university-wide CMS, but we just don't want to hold our breaths any longer
J) but the main site, the landing page, will always be static. This means
that whenever there's an early closure, a hurricane watch, or some other
announcement someone has to submit a ticket and then I have to make a
change. My goal is to cut me-the middleman-out of the process.

 

My potential project: So what I was thinking was jury-rigging a Wordpress
theme into an "alerts" dashboard for managers, directors, and so on. I want
to empower the Circulation manager to login, make an announcement, and be
done with it. For all the departmental and other sites that live on the WP
Network, I'd write and install a corresponding "alerts" plugin that watches
the JSON API for an alert and-if true-display it. For our static sites, I'd
toss in a jquery plugin that did the same. 

 

My question: this seems like something that's been done before! Has it? If
not, anyone want to collaborate on github?

 

All the best, 

 

Michael Schofield(@nova.edu) | Web Services Librarian | (954) 262-4536

Alvin Sherman Library, Research, and Information Technology Center

 

Hi! Hit me up any time, but I'd really appreciate it if you report broken
links, bugs, your meeting minutes, or request an awesome web app over on the
Library Web Services <http://staff.library.nova.edu/pm>  site.