When deciding what would be appropriate for CANVAS we must take into consideration the new improvements of the web, and the capabilities web 2.0 has given us.
While many facets of this new meduim are helpful for general online use some would be redundant on a site of our size. To make CANVAS successful we must only take what we an use productivly from Web 2.0.
Flash: After discussion we have decided to use flash to create a community atmosphere within the 'Your Union' page with a flash slide show showing party pictures taken by our users. It creates user generated content, a chance for users to comment and become interactive within the site and is also a nice addition to masses of copy.
Comment: When craeting a site that covers sensitive issues to a small community it is important to give the user a chance to have thier say. Comment boxes at the end of features and news stories enhances the community atmosphere and helps users communicate thier ideas in a convient place with other like-minded people.
RSS feeds: With a site as subject specific as ours a feed needs to be carfully selected. This could be easily done on Google news and we could choose topics such as students news, student finance and student news from around the world.
Search engines: As our site grows with time it will become harder to navigate and find specific topics that many be archived, here the search engine would be useful but while our site is small and easily navigated it would be rather pointless.
Social bookmarking: As much as we would like to think our content is worthy enough to be bookmarked I think it would be useless to try we are a small site catering to a equally small audience, bookmarking would be time consuming and useless.
Multi media: This is one part of 2.0 that we can use to our advantage adding links to video or embedding it within the page gives another dimension to a story and stops the raeder from getting bored. We must on the other hand be careful to use it wisely and not get carried away with adding to much that will distract readers from the copy.
Blogs: Thsi could either enhance the site or distract readers away from the main site. Blogs could be a great added extra which create a bigger sense of community by adding other students degree specific blogs or they are taking traffic away from CANVAS and giving it to less important sites.
