Two blizzards, four days of canceled classes and one destroyed outdoor canopy later, things seem to be returning to normal at American University.

The weather caused us to miss two print editions, so the Web became center stage.

As Web Editor at The Eagle, I continuously monitored Twitter and Facebook for signs of any news. I was originally tipped off about the canopy story through Twitter, and we also learned about some snow-related personal injuries through the snow as well.

We asked for user-generated content on Twitter and Facebook, and got some great pictures as a result.

Our biggest news day was Wednesday, when the canopy collapsed. Our readers were hungry for updates, and we tried to provide those to them. Officials who rarely talk to us at outside of normal working hours were happy to talk to us — in the middle of a blizzard — which surprised me

I also started doing rewrites of some metro news that came from other sources. It was good to have, but the traffic did not seem to agree with me.

But in closing, my best advice is to have a Web plan going into a major news event. Know what your resources are. We were fortunate to be given some advance notice, and were also able to benefit from not having classes, but that’s not always the case. Either way, think of creating an “on duty” position — someone responsible for keeping the blogs updated, keeping the art and homepage fresh and doing rewrites. Basically a jack-of-all-trades.

And most of all have fun. Enjoy the increased traffic to your site, Twitter followers and Facebook fans. Working hard to cover a major event definitely pays off.