Project Vision and Goal

The current goal of the Toynbee website is to promote the publication of scholarship in Global History and to become a central and respected source for current and developing scholarship in the field. This is being pursued in a couple of different ways.

First is the Global History Forum, which solicits thought pieces on Global History as well as interviews of scholars in the field. The interviews are being conducted and edited by Timothy Nunan.

Second is the Global History Blog, which curates web content related to Global History. The GRA and the Editors at Large are responsible for nominating and publishing this content. Ideally, the Blog can uncover growing conversations in the field that can, in turn, generate more structured Forum contributions.

Third, the Forum serves to highlight the recipient of the Toynbee Prize and the conference panel on Global History at the AHA. This involves posting information about the current recipient and their talk, if available. In years of the panel, one idea is to post about the panel topic early and invite conversation.

GRA Responsibilities

Toynbee Prize

Primary responsibilities of the GRA are the maintenance of the site, maintenance of comments, the managing of the editors at large, and the publishing of content on the blog.

See Managing Editors at Large and Managing ToynbeePrize for details on the editors and publishing content. See Theme Files and Setup - Twentyfourteen Child for info on managing the theme and plugins.

New Diplomatic History

GRA serves also as the web administrator for New Diplomatic History, adding users as requested and ensuring that material is being publicized as desired.

For more detailed information, see Managing New Diplomatic History

Accounts

Servers:

• Dev server: http://toynbeeprize.chnm.org
• New Diplomatic History: http://newdiplomatichistory.org
• Toynbee: http://toynbeeprize.org

You will need both server access and WordPress accounts for these.

3rd Party Services:

See Basecamp for login information

• Read the Docs
• Google Analytics
• Twitter
• Zotero (Global History Group and New Diplomatic History Group)
• Facebook (?)

Email:

We have a Google for Non-Profit account for toynbeeprize.org.

To manage the email accounts and available apps, including docs and calendars, go to http://admin.google.com. Login information is in BaseCamp.

Outstanding Projects

Keeping Documentation Up-to-date

The documentation is under version control at https://github.com/ToynbeePrizeFoundation/toynbee_documentation. Remember to update the ReadtheDocs version (or research if this can automatically watch the repository...)

Navigating Archives

Currently, when on any post, the “next” and “previous” posts are by time. If we could filter these by category, that would make more sense for usability.

Resources Page

Goal is to have a page with Resources for students who are interested in studying Global History. The current concept for this page is a listing of programs, centers, and fellowships that support the study of Global History.

The list is currently under development. The items listed here are currently being created as Posts that are categorized as “Resources” and are tagged according to type of program. The Page is currently saved as “draft,” and once completed, should be added to the Global History Menu and to the Main Menu, under Global History Initiatives.

Editors at Large

The PressForward Plugin is currently not operating on the site due to an unknown permissions problem. Once this is resolved, the feeds listed [?] need to be imported and the

In the Spring, the Editors at Large Corner needs to be activated. All the pages are currently saved as “drafts” and the menus have been created. In addition to publishing these pages, in “Widget Areas”, the “Editors at Large Sidebar” needs to be also activated for the “Scholars’ Network” and “Participate” pages. Also, on both the “Scholars’ Network” and “Participate” pages, the instructions for the Editors at Large need to be uncommented (viewable in “Text” view only), and ” Content for the Global History Blog is curated from the web with the help of our Editors at Large. All of our Editors at Large <a href=”#editors”>are also listed below</a>.” should be added to the Scholars’ Network page.

Once in operation, the documentation for managing the editors at large needs to be completed.

Content Tags

One of the goals is to have centers, people, and posts linked to each other through the use of descriptive tags. A controlled vocabulary needs to be created so that this can be done productively.

SEO

Theme needs to be enhanced with SEO information to get higher search result rankings.

Social Media Campaign

We need a concerted effort to increase followers to the blog and the twitter account. In addition, we need to inspire more people to serve as editors at large and to contribute content to the blog.

Content Generation for the Forum

The GRA provides a support function to the generation of content for the Forum. In addition to Timothy’s interviews and solicitations of material, possible sources include asking authors in the New Global History Journal to either expand or write about new ideas inspired in the process of writing their published piece.