CMS tips

Have you noticed how more and more institutions choose open source content management systems such as Drupal, WordPress or DotCMS to power their websites?

The trend has been accelerating these past few months with several high profile redesigned websites such as Duke University and Bates College as well as other redesigns in process.

With more and more higher ed institutions opting for open source solutions, it makes no doubt that these non-commercial solutions should be considered by committees or teams in charge of evaluating possible web content management systems at your institution (that is if you don’t have any or aren’t happy with yours, obviously).

So, if you’re planning to implement a new CMS at your institution, you should definitely consider registering for the first higher ed open source CMS Fair.

What is an open-source CMS Fair?

Think about your traditional college fairs, but for CMS (and without the brochures ;-).

During this 3-webinar series scheduled on April 13, 14 and 15, 2010, you’ll be able to pick the brain of three of your higher ed colleagues who have implemented and managed an open source CMS.

The ultimate goal of this webinar series is really to give you exclusive access to expertise and experience that you’d be able to use in your own evaluation process while comparing 3 of the most popular CMS in higher education: Drupal, WordPress and DotCMS:

DotCMS for Higher Ed Websites
Michael Fienen, Web Marketing Manager at Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, KS, will tell you all you need to know about DotCMS and how this open source content management system can be used to power an institutional website. He will also demonstrate in a pre-recorded demo a few basic user scenarios.

Drupal for Higher Ed Websites
Blyth Morrell, Web Services Manager at Duke University, will tell you all you need to know about Drupal and how this open source content management system can be used to power an institutional website. She will also demonstrate in a pre-recorded demo a few basic user scenarios.

WordPress/WordPress MU for Higher Ed Websites
Shelley Keith, Web Site Coordinator at Southern Arkansas University, will tell you all you need to know about WordPress and WordPress MU and how this open source content management system can be used to power an institutional website. She will also demonstrate in a pre-recorded demo a few basic user scenarios.

And, if you need an extra incentive to register for this great series, how about 2 extra on-demand webinars about CMS implementation and redesigns for free?

If you register by March 30, 2010 for Open-Source CMS Fair, you’ll get free access to these 2 webinars until July 31st, 2010:

How to survive a Website Redesign & a CMS Implementation
(Recorded on February 17, 2010)
Ben Riseling, Manager of Web Operations for the Office of News & Communications at Duke University, will make sure your survive your next website redesign coupled with a CMS implementation. He will share the best tips and tricks he acquired during the 9-month process preceding the launch of the new duke.edu powered by the open source CMS, Drupal, in October 2009.

Website Redesign & CMS Implementation: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
(Recorded on April 22, 2009)
Tonya Price, Director, Marketing and Web Operations at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, will share what went bad in WPI redesign coupled with a CMS implementation and how her team managed to overcome these challenges. She will also present her recipe to prepare, manage and survive any big website redesign project that will come your way.

If you want to learn why Drupal, WordPress or DotCMS could be your next web content management system, make sure you register for Open Source CMS Fair at www.higheredexperts.com/cmsfair.

And, that’s just for January, February, March and April 2010.

I’ve tried to put a program that will help you do your job even better at a time where you are asked to do a lot more with a lot less (time, money, staff…)

As usual, places are limited, so it’s always wise to register ahead of time if you want to secure a spot for your team. You can register by visiting each of the dedicated web addresses of the series. And, if you have any questions, feel free to email karine@higheredexperts.com – always happy to help.

Start The (Word)Presses: How to create the online version of your print magazine or newsletter with WordPress
January 21st, 2010 – 1PM-2PM ET
Register by January 11, 2010 January 19., 2010 at www.higheredexperts.com/startwordpresses

Website Redesign Boot Camp: what you need to know before jumping into a redesign project
February 16, 17 & 18, 2010 – 1PM-2PM ET
Register by February 8, 2010 at www.higheredexperts.com/redesignbootcamp

Analytics 360: How to track and measure (and show to your boss) the ROI of your marketing initiatives
March 10 & 11, 2010 1PM-2PM ET and an introductory session on-demand
Register by March 1st, 2010 at www.higheredexperts.com/analytics360

Open Source CMS Fair: Why Drupal, WordPress/MU or DotCMS could be your next Web Content Management System
April 13, 14 and 15, 2010 – 1PM-2PM ET
Register by April 5, 2010 at www.higheredexperts.com/cmsfair

Note from Karine: This year, I’ve asked all the eduWeb speakers working in universities/colleges to share in 140 words or less the biggest take-away from their presentation or table talk. If you’ve attended this session, feel free to weigh in by posting a comment, a question or a suggestion.

Setting expectations are crucial for a successful CMS implementation.

If you have never gone through a CMS implementation, find someone who has and talk to them about how to set expectations correctly among your community. Then, set up a communication plan so everyone knows what the status of the project is at all times. Make sure there are periodic opportunities to tell everyone where the implementation and subsequent conversion stands. Finally, have a well thought out training plan designed to provide content providers with the information they need to update their content.

Don’t try to be fancy, just give them the tools they need so the system is a productivity tool, not an impediment to them getting their work completed.

The conference is now over, but Dimitri, one of this year’s guest bloggers has sent a few more posts about interesting sessions including this presentation about WordPress.

Drew Geraets and Thomas Knoll wanted something lightweight, flexible, and easy to implement when they ventured on building their new site. Their CMS was bulky and not friendly enough to carry the project. So they turned to Wordpress. The result is the beautiful Freshly Squeezed, a student blogger site. With an extra plug-in or two (freely available from Wordpress Codex), they were able to afford just the right amount of control over the bloggers, without suffocating their inner creative.

Next, they tackled something a bit different: a magazine site. Adding Flickr photos integration, cleverly using categories and custom fields, they put together Concordia St. Paul Magazine. The categories control where an article goes (Feature Stories, Faculty News, etc.) and which issue they belong to (like Summer 2007). The custom fields store information about cover photos. It’s a very simplistic set up, but it serves the purpose.

Today, Drew and Thomas have a few Wordpress sites to brag about, including Concordia Orientation and New York City News Service. Wordpress has proven to be the right tool for the job. With its extensive community and variety of plug-ins, the mature open source blogging platform appears to serve just right as the light-weight content management system, especially for limited-scope, focused sites. With the experience under their belt, the team sensed a pattern emerging.

As a special surprise for session attendees, the speakers unveiled Minnehaha, a downloadable (version 1.0 coming in November), playable, Creative Commons-licensed repository of tips, plug-ins, and resources for higher education Web developers who want to use Wordpress to roll out their next project. Also, they put all of the relevant links on del.icio.us. Go
check them out.

Last July, I conducted several email interviews to prepare my column on how to survive a Content Management System (CMS) implementation for the October 2006 issue of University Business: “10 Tips for Surviving a CMS Switch”

Rose Pruyne, Web Administrator for the Department of Dairy and Animal Sciences at Penn State University, shared 5 tips of her own at this time.

Don’t get more CMS than you need.
Many are overgrown and unnecessarily complex. They’re expensive, difficult to install, and a pain to use. Avoid saddling your organization with a feature-cluttered behemoth that has a nasty learning curve – keep in mind that the idea is to make managing content easier.

Hammer out your requirements before looking at content management systems.
If you do it the other way around, there’s a temptation to spend more time comparing systems than matching them to your needs—and vendors will have an easier time convincing you that you need features you really don’t.

Consider Open Source.
Some of these blog/CMS tools—WordPress comes to mind—make it simple to get a streamlined version up and running quickly. After that, you can add features if and when you need them.

If a CMS does not generate Web Standards-compliant code, don’t just walk away from it. Run.

Don’t assume that a content management system will solve all your problems.
They don’t write content all by themselves. They don’t edit shoddy writing all by themselves. They don’t organize mismanaged content all by themselves. They don’t make strategic decisions about your site by themselves.

Last July, I conducted several email interviews to prepare my column on how to survive a Content Management System (CMS) implementation for the October 2006 issue of University Business: “10 Tips for Surviving a CMS Switch”

Mark Greenfield, Director of Web Services at the State University of New York at Buffalo, shared 5 tips of his own at this time.

Know the specific business problem you are trying to solve.
Are you looking at a CMS to give non-technical staff the ability to update content? Do you need editorial workflow? Do you want to syndicate content?

Look at implementing different solutions for different needs.
A one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t necessarily work well at a university.

Look beyond traditional CMS products.
Blogging platforms such as WordPress and Movable Type can easily be deployed as a CMS, and work well for sites where the content is more dynamic than static.

Understand the campus culture, especially when looking at implementing a campus-wide CMS.
Universities are devolved organizations, with individual schools and departments operating with a great deal of autonomy.

A CMS will not necessarily improve the quality of the content.
Well trained writers and editors are required, even more so when distributing authorship through a CMS.

Last July, I conducted several email interviews to prepare my column on how to survive a Content Management System (CMS) implementation for the October 2006 issue of University Business: “10 Tips for Surviving a CMS Switch”

Nancy Jeanne Mustachio, Application Development Director at Seton Hall University shared 4 tips of her own at this time.

Forge a strong relationship between IT and PR.
Define joint goals and objectives. This is by far the key to success. The dedication of Public Relations to create a positive image of your University, coupled with IT’s skill set and infrastructure required to support a reliable, scalable, feature-rich webspace, must be the first ingredient in this resource intense project. It is through these mutual goals, you will be able to set a requirement list for a CMS, build the Information Architecture, and develop the delivery features.

Conduct an ‘apple to apple’ vendor review.
Create a feature and IT requirement grid, which each vendor must adhere to when presenting. Will the CMS meet your goals and objectives? For example, if your organization has multiple content providers, does the CMS allow for a flexible workflow and approval process?

Estimate your traffic and determine your infrastructure’s point-of-failures.
A content management system is ‘not’ just a webserver, or an application that contains content. A content management system allows for authoring, content approval, dynamic database reads, and content taxonomy. Build reliability into your CMS architecture, and prepare for fail-proof solutions. For example, dedicate one server just to authoring and another as the ‘read-only’ (in case the authoring server fails), preface the authoring with two read-only servers managed by a load-balancer (in case a read-only server fails), and/or update a static version of your entire site onto a remote server (in case any portion of the CMS fails).

In your initial phase, target your content delivery to your institution’s priority audience.
For most institutions, it tends to be prospective students, incoming students, and current students. When building from the ground up, if you try to focus on all constituents at once, the depth of the content or the richness of the dynamic element begins to suffer.

Last July, I conducted several email interviews to prepare my column on how to survive a Content Management System (CMS) implementation for the October 2006 issue of University Business: “10 Tips for Surviving a CMS Switch”

Brian Phelps, Web Manager at the University of the Pacific, shared 6 tips of his own at this time.

Get more buy-in than you think you need.
Use a variety of communication channels—online, in-person, campus-wide “town hall” meetings, email, blog, survey, teleconference, video conference—to get input into the decision making process. Document who contributes to the process by whatever means. As the project progresses, the weight of buy-in from a larger number of participants and contributors will bring along others who are less excited about the changes. It will also demonstrate to management that you’ve done your best to involve a diverse audience and will legitimatize the results down the road.

Get Senior Management buy-in.
Communicate upward, through your own management if necessary, about the project. Solicit management’s specific input. Get in front of the Council of Deans or similar organization at least twice during the project life and brief them on the benefits of the project to their respective organizations. Let them ask questions. Get in front of the President too and formally solicit his or her blessing.

Keep the project process and progress open and transparent.
Develop a communications plan. Figure out what methods will be used to reach targeted audiences at specific way points in the project lifecycle. Create a website/blog that documents project progress and archives all relevant documentation. Keep it fresh. When dates slip, which they will, openly communicate the reasons why. Don’t stop communicating in one form or another, because people will start to think there are problems.

Document the rationale for your project.
Research and document the reasons for undertaking the project. Publish the results online. Publish an assessment of your current site and its challenges. Never point fingers at individuals or specific organizational units. Articulate how the project fits overall university goals.

Relentlessly emphasize the benefits to end users.
Think critically about the impact the change will have on end users and figure out how to communicate the changes as a benefit. Identify product features that will benefit the end users. Develop talking points that you can recite as needed. Downplay the changes affecting existing work habits and methods. Always focus on the benefits to the entire organization.

At the beginning of every meeting about the project with end users, first ask, “What can I do to help?”
They are meeting with you because they have questions. Identify their issues and concerns before you meet. Put yourself in the position as someone who is there to help them accomplish their goals. Communicate how the pending changes will help them.

My fifth column for University Business is now available in the October issue as well as online: “10 Tips for Surviving a CMS Switch”

If you are a University Business reader who has just discovered collegewebeditor.com, welcome! Don’t forget to subscribe to this blog via RSS (use one of the buttons available at the top of the right column) or via email (the subscription form is placed just below the RSS buttons in the right column as well)

In the next few days, I’ll be posting all the tips I gathered in preparation of this column about CMS selection and implementation. So, if you’ve liked the column, you’ll probably find these interesting and useful.

Last, if you have any questions or feedback about the blog or the column, feel free to email me at karine@collegewebeditor.com