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Report on: "Content management
systems: the good, the bad, and the ugly"
Worcester MA Report by: Bridget Rawding, Merrimack College |
| February 9, 2007 |
David Wisniewski, Senior Web Architect, Web and Library Application Services (WaLAS) Library and Technology Services, Brandeis University
This project evolved from the merger of the Library and Information Technology departments at Brandeis University two years ago. Approximately six months later, the combined Library and Technology Services department began the process to select and adopt a Content Management System (CMS). They decided to do this because their original web publishing method had grown unwieldy (approximately 250 site authors, all publishing straight to the web server).
The library web master suggested using user centered design for the CMS selection process. User centered design means the product is chosen based on criteria designed by users. These criteria were determined by focus groups and surveys. Wisniewski noted that user centered design is more involved and time-consuming, but worthwhile.
Mr. Wisniewski then outlined the phases of the selection and implementation process:
Visit: http://go.brandeis.edu/cms for project documentation and additional information.
Focus groups comprised of a variety of experience levels were formed. It was determined that most users of the current system found it to be complicated and tedious. Lack of time was also presented as a major barrier to using the system. Participants expressed desire for a system that could be learned with simple, one-page "cheat sheets."
They conducted a scan of the marketplace, and selected six vendors for half-day, on-campus demos of their products. From this pool, two vendors were chosen to install trial versions of their products. Part of the research process included calling other institutions for references. Brandeis decided they did not want a client-based system. The entire product is web-based, to allow for remote use in the future.
The in-depth selection phase took about five months, at which time they selected Hannon Hill's Cascade product. Primary reasons for choosing this product were:
At this point, Mr. Wisniewski noted that there are two kinds of CMS: baked or fried. Baked systems allow users to create a static page, which the CMS then publishes to the server. Fried systems are "cook to order" in that it builds the page for the user. It is important to consider what kind of system will work best for a particular institution's community needs.
Product was implemented as a pilot project, which immediately resulted in fewer support calls from campus web publishers. Now web authors connect to the CMS (rather than the web server), and the CMS publishes their content to the web server. Brandeis is currently in the process of phasing out the pilot phase, and is planning a roll out of all basic template sites.
The pros and cons of a site-wide CMS implementation.
Patty Patria, Manager, Technology Deployment and Integration, Bentley College
Patty Patria began with some basic information about the Bentley College community. Bentley positions itself as a national leader in Business education. As such, they strive to have state of the art technology facilities on campus. Prior to implementing their commercial CMS, Bentley had a "home-grown" content management system, with limited features. The old workflow was slow, and resulted in many backlogs. Pagemasters would use FrontPage and FTP, and new template designs had to be applied manually to every page. As a result, the college's website was largely a static entity.
As they began the process of seeking a new system, the Information Technology department analyzed the internal and external environment. They targeted CMS tools that allowed web content management, document management and collaboration. Serena Collage was selected for its ease of use for end users and administrators.
Prior to implementation, users were classified into new categories, and new workflows were designed. The four new classifications of CMS users became:
These reclassifications affected people's jobs, and it was essential that everyone had to be on board. Although it was a difficult transition, ultimately, they were.
The migration was hard, because the old site was unstructured. Over 2000 pages had to be copied and pasted into structured pages. All images and documents had to be uploaded. The difficulty of this led to a direction change; staff decided to spend time building cascading style sheets to govern the template.
Problems to be aware of in this kind of project:
Benefits to the college:
Benefits to users:
Other benefits:
Other new functionalities include: being able to view the site's statistical data using a web analytics tool, allowing pagemasters to build their own forms, and enabling the ability to publish to multiple servers.
Download: PowerPoint Presentation
Desktop solutions for content management on the web.
Jason Black, Director of Administrative & Web Services, Salve Regina University
Finally, Jason Black spoke on delivering campus web services through content management at Salve Regina. He noted that there is a very decentralized structure at that institution, and web management is handled by about a dozen different "web silos."
The goals for adopting content management were:
Phase one was institutional. They sought early staff use and acceptance through onsite training and lunchtime sessions to encourage sharing and gathering of information. The primary business use would be for versioning and office content management. Another goal was global, one-client access.
In terms of web page development, templates were created using DreamWeaver; these templates provide centrally managed navigation and specified regions on a page that are editable. The approval process involves forwarding draft pages to webmaster for approval on a test server. Once approved, files are transferred via ftp to the production server. The content management service is provided by Adobe Contribute (formerly a Macromedia product). Dreamweaver is powerful, and a good product, but it can be too much for those who just want to update their content. Contribute can meet that need.
Phase two was individual. Publishing was made available for everyone (for example library web sites for instruction, integrated learning portfolios, etc.). They use MyDATA to provide document management and a web based, secure file manager on the server. Behind the scenes, each user is allocated space to store, share and present files, documents and web pages.
Future plans include providing 24/7 access to this system regardless of connectivity. They hope to enable better use of sharing and versioning of content, as well as increased customization. Finally, they are exploring ways to have open integration between this system and the college's Course Management System.
Report by:
Bridget Rawding
Head of Public Services
Merrimack College
North Andover, MA.
bridget.rawding@merrimack.edu
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