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Content Management
Keep Up or Fall Behind
7/1/2007
BUILDING THE CONTENT behind Wofford’s website (which features blogs, podcasts, videos, and interactive functions such as maps) took administrators three months last summer, working 10 hours a day.
Previously, Corbin explains, Wofford had a “mini site” that could be updated only to a limited extent, and mostly manually at that. With the new CMS, “content is driven by databases instead of static pages,” she says, adding, “We’ve implemented Web 2.0 into the fabric of our site. When you change content in one place, it automatically changes in another. You also can set an expiry date. It’s a much more manageable and dynamic system.”
According to Kyle James, the institution’s webmaster, about one hundred publishers on campus now use the content management system. “All have their websites inside the main site,” he notes. “They update them on their own, and so the control of each site is in each department’s hands. There is an approval chain for every department, and when that is completed, the content comes to us for approval.” He adds that the content rarely has to be edited, since individual publishers usually are conscientious about upholding image and content quality.
Still, James says, it took the various departments some time to understand the extent of control they had over the content: “A lot of them still don’t realize they have this ability,” he admits. But with a small staff of two full-time IT professionals, three programming and support workers, and two student employees, Wofford found that it was just plain smart to turn over most of the CMS tasks to campus editors and publishers. “It frees us up to be innovative,” he maintains.
Innovation, in this case, has led to an award: The Wofford Office of Communications and Marketing was recognized earlier this year by the Council of Advancement and Support of Education for excellence in overall website design. It also has led to a “continual, ever-growing process” of refining and updating content, according to Corbin. She adds that because of the system’s flexibility, the college has bought an unlimited number of licenses for publishers, enabling a variety of people and departments to participate in creating content. “In some departments, students are the editors,” she points out. “It’s a great campus job for a student, and a great addition to a resume.”
CMS Self-Assessment
In the process known as single-instance storage, a system retains a single copy of content that multiple users or computers share, thus eliminating data duplication and improving efficiency. Does your CMS platform aggregate content so that when users access it, they all see the same file?
Northwestern University:
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