Red, White & Black

The Red, White & Black website is an online counterpart to the human-guided walking tour about African-American history at NC State.

Overview

Background

The Red, White & Black website is an online counterpart to the human-guided walking tour of the same name that was originally developed by Dr. Walter Jackson and Ms. Toni Harris Thorpe. The walking tour highlights locations on campus that have had a significant impact on African-American history at NC State. This tour was created in 2011 as a collaboration between the NC State University Libraries, the African American Cultural Center and the Department of History at NC State. 

Technical Overview

The original Red, White & Black website was developed as a Ruby on Rails application designed specifically for display on a mobile device. In an effort to reduce the technical overhead required to maintain the site, and to bring it in line with current web development standards, it was rebuilt in 2017 as a fully responsive static website using the static website generator Jekyll. In doing so we were able to recreate or enhance all of the features of the original application while updating the design and functionality of the site to better conform to current best practices.

How We Did It

The rebuilt Red, White & Black website was created with the static website generator Jekyll. It takes advantange of the Jekyll-Maps plugin that allows for the embedded,  customized Google Map.  The Ruby on Rails application that the site was orginially built on allowed for new content to be added via a WYSIWYG editor. In an effort to replicate this workflow the content for each event highlighted in the website is contained in a Google Spreadsheet, and new content for the site can be added via a Google Form. The resulting CSV file is downloaded and parsed via a set of Python scripts when the site is built and deployed. The site also uses lunr.js to enable full text searching. 

Results

Recognition

  • Stoffer, T. (2017). "Going off the Rails on the Jekyll Train", Code4Lib 2017, Los Angeles, CA, March 8, 2017. 

Team