Issue 31, Fall 2004
by Andrew McGlone
You have a website for your Academic or Administrative department. It has grown exponentially over time, and while it is an effective communication tool, it is far from perfect and you spend significant time lamenting this fact.
When reviewing the site, much of the content is out-of-date or inaccurate. People say it is hard to find things. Updating the site is inordinately complex, and the appearance is becoming dated.
If this sounds grim, you are not alone. In fact, it’s the natural by-product of managing communication in a large and diverse enterprise such as Western.
In response to this situation, the ATUS Web Services team is working on an exciting project to empower you to take control of the content on your web site in an ongoing manner.
Content Management Pilot Program
A Content Management System (CMS) supports the creation, management, distribution, publishing, and discovery of departmental or college information. It covers the complete lifecycle of the pages on your site, from providing simple tools to create the content all the way through publishing, and finally to archiving. It also provides the ability to manage the structure of the site, the appearance of the published pages centrally, and the navigation provided to the users.
This fall, Web Services will be piloting OpenCMS, an open-source content management system based on Java.
There are several benefits to implementation of a content management system.
Browser-enabled work environment
The CMS work environment, or “Workplace,” is fully browser based. The CMS software is installed on a web server, so users can access the system from any location with their web browser. There is no longer a need to buy and install expensive web design products to simply manage the content on your web pages.
Asset Management
Images and other download files can be managed in galleries to avoid data redundancies and provide easy handling of media assets. The CMS supports the import of almost all common file types. The galleries can be quickly accessed by drag and drop from the WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) editor.
Project-based Publishing
The CMS integrated project mechanism provides a typical work environment with offline “work” and online “live” system on the same server. All content is maintained in projects. Changes to the contents of your web pages can be reviewed and approved and thoroughly tested before the project is published. You can also undo all unpublished changes (new/changed/deleted pages).
Workflow and Task Management
CMS features powerful mechanisms for workflow management. A “4-eyes” workflow is always active for content creation because of the integrated project mechanism with “online” and “offline” projects. Tasks can be created in the Workflow view for different groups, priority levels, due dates, and preferred users with various notification options. Depending on the selected notification options, emails are automatically sent to either the preferred user or all users that are assigned to a group as soon as a new task has been added to the project. Each stage of the task’s life is recorded to ensure that the workflow remains transparent.
WYSIWYG Editor
Editing pages is easy with CMS, a built-in WYSIWYG editor allows you to edit pages similar to popular office applications. No HTML knowledge is required to edit a page, yet an integrated source code editor allows experts to exert full control over the HTML source. With the help of the WYSIWYG editor, pages with “unstructured content” and complex layouts can be easily created. You can insert images or links to downloads from galleries with drag & drop, create complex tables with the table wizard and add links with the link dialog or from the external link gallery.
Versioning of Content
All contents are fully versioned in CMS. The history function of the Workplace enables you to track which changes were made when and by whom. All of the previous versions are archived and can be restored, enabling you to access older versions at any time.
Universal Support of Accessibility
With CMS we are able to centrally manage issues of accessibility by using template technology. This technology allows us to run the necessary tests once for the entire institution rather than once per website.
In the next several months Web Services will be scheduling a significant number of demonstrations in an effort to get your feedback regarding the viability of this exciting new product.
If you are interested in this project and would like more information on content management systems, please contact Andrew McGlone, Web Services Manager at 650-6355, email andrew.mcglone@wwu.edu.
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