I have been composing in hypertext since 2001. My work in this medium is personal, educational, nonprofit, commercial, and scholarly. The following is a sampling of the projects in which I have been closely involved.
UNEPortfolios
In 2016, following a couple false starts, we launched a third effort at ePortfolio in English at the University of New England. Working from an external host, we’re running ePortfolio on a WordPress multisite installation. We paired this effort with the opening of a digital makerspace we’re calling Digispace, a digital consultant-supported lab space for student digital projects. The Digispace also supports digital projects across the Core curriculum, so it is much broader than just the ePortfolio effort. I wrote the proposal to support the initiative, managed the installation and web presence for the effort, and worked to generate faculty interest in both the platform and the Digispace.
Northeast Writing Across the Curriculum Consortium
As webmaster for the Northeast Writing Across the Curriculum Consortium (NEWACC), in summer and fall 2010 I worked with Mike Palmquist (Colorado State University) to secure server space at the WAC Clearinghouse for a NEWACC website. Taking guidance from other members of NEWACC, I noted that the group sought a website and blog platform. I decided to use the WordPress platform. I am particularly proud of this installation because we have WordPress (running with PHP and MySQL) functioning on Windows Server. The original idea for the NEWACC logo came from a student at Mount Ida College.
Across the Disciplines
In 2007, soon after becoming assistant editor for Across the Disciplines, I undertook a major effort to bring XHTML- and CSS-standards compliance to the journal. While the basic look of the site (the skin) has remained largely unchanged since the inception of ATD, the code behind the site is leaner, cleaner, and in line with contemporary coding practices. After 2007, all ATD articles were validated against World Wide Web Consortium standards before being published. Some years later, ATD moved into a CMS.
Unforgotten Masterpieces: Campus Art at York College
Unforgotten Masterpieces
was a collaborative online gallery of the art on York College’s campus. This hypertext was the product of a collaboration among students in English 384, Writing for Electronic Media, in Spring 2008, and includes work previously done by students in one of Professor Margaret Vendryes’ advanced courses in Art History. I include this website among my hypertext projects because I played a significant role in helping the students shape the project. This web project remains a work in progress, with much material lurking just below the surface. Sometime around 2015, York College of the City University of New York removed the online gallery from its servers, revealing the validity of criticism that digital projects (unlike physical projects) are not recognized as worth retaining. The WayBack Machine may have images of the gallery.
E-Portfolio for Tenure & Promotion
The faculty reappointment, tenure, and promotion portfolio is an important part of a junior faculty member’s representation of self at York College. Since I work so much in electronic media, especially in hypertext, I chose to augment my print portfolio with an electronic version. While the complete portfolio is available only as an interactive CD, the online portfolio here is a very close approximation of the CD version. I prepared the e-portfolio in 2006, and again in 2007.
WPA Poster Session – CCCC 2005
As a recipient of a WPA Council Research Grant in 2005-05, I was required to prepare a poster presentation for the WPA Breakfast at the CCCC in San Francisco. This java-based interactive website is the poster presentation.
English Department, York College/CUNY
As webmaster for the English Department at York College, I undertook a wholesale revision of the Department’s website in 2004. The website I produced was the Department website until August 2008, when the English Department migrated its content into the College’s content management system (Plone). I still like the old site, even though it marks the kind of work I did before I shifted my web development to XHTML & CSS based layouts. One can still find some semblance of the old site with the Wayback Machine.
Down the Shore in ’04
This is a fun little family website I threw together after a family vacation at the Jersey Shore in, yup, 2004. There’s not much to the design, especially since the site is really about the family photos.
The York Scholar
The York Scholar is an annual reviewed journal of student writing at York College that I helped found in 2004 and co-edited until 2010. The journal is published in both print and online versions. I served as the online publisher of the journal until I left York College.
Writing Across the Curriculum Program, York College
In 2004 I accepted the responsibility for creating a website for York College’s WAC Program. While the site was quite successful over several years, when York College moved to a college-wide content management system in 2007 the website content was moved over into the new CMS. Much like the English Department website created in the same period, I still find much to admire in this design. One drawback: The site is definitely a table-based layout, and is not particularly forward looking in terms of semantic, structural markup. I imagine the site is not particularly attractive on a mobile device. This site is no longer accessible, except through the Wayback Machine.
#FFFFFF, #000000, & #808080
I am very proud of this webtext. Published in Computers & Composition Online in 2004, the hypertext won the prestigious Kairos Best Webtext Award for 2004-05. Like all my pre-2005 sites, this hypertext uses a bloated table-based layout. It also relies heavily on javascript to manage the rollover effects. Looking back on the piece I am struck by the depth of my CSS ignorance at the time I built this site. One simple indication of my limited grasp of CSS is in the background image. I tiled the image, but failed to restrict tiling to the x-axis. The result, on larger monitors, is a repetition of the horizontal lines in the background. Funny.
Nathaniel Elm Cripps (03/27/03)
My son Nathaniel was born at St. Peter’s Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey on 27 March, 2003. I visit this site about twice each year and I get a chuckle out of it. Everyone in it is so much older now.
Between Linear and Nonlinear
This peer-reviewed article represents my first serious foray into academic hypertext composition. It is also probably my only use of “frames” in a hypertext project. I generally think frames can be avoided in hypertext composition. In this instance, however, I needed to use frames to retain the reader’s position in the Dynamic HTML navigation system of the text. This article was a Finalist for the Kairos Best Webtext Award in 2002-03.
Pine Grove Nursery School
I was the webmaster for Pine Grove Cooperative Nursery School from 2002-2005, and was responsible for building the site from the ground up. I am still proud of the way I incorporated the school’s logo into a watermark background image across the entire site. I have not been involved in the school since 2006, and have not done any work on the site since 2005. A visit to the URL some years ago revealed that the original design remained. This site used a table-based layout, and so is a mark of my earlier work in web development.