The CMS finalists were Ingeniux (based in Seattle) and Hannon Hill (based in Atlanta). Both CMSs have a strong foothold in the higher education space with hundreds of college implementations between the two companies. Both CMS companies spent a full day on campus in April where they met with the Web staff, key staff from Information Technology, and provided two-hour demos of their CMSs in front of our selection group.

We started the CMS selection process with a clear understanding of our CMS functional requirements and objectives. These were communicated early on in the Web redesign project in the original RFP and then again during the CMS selection process. Both vendors submitted full proposals, which covered in detail how they matched up against our functional requirements. Their on-site demos also addressed how each product addressed our requirements. Both Hannon Hill and Ingeniux met most of these requirements, but in the end, Ingeniux came out on top.

We spoke with seven colleges that are currently using Ingeniux (from more recent implementations to long-term clients of nearly eight years who have gone through multiple product releases and redesigns). In all cases, the schools were very satisfied with the Ingeniux product and with ongoing support, maintenance, and product upgrades (and the ease of upgrading to new versions).

Why Ingeniux?
What impressed us with Ingeniux was the usability of the user interface. It’s definitely a very easy system for content contributors to learn and use. This is something else we heard from the college references we spoke with and this is very important to us given Saint Anselm’s distributed workflow and content production by multiple departments. Ingeniux also offers very detailed and flexible content workflows for content approval.

Ingeniux’s Web editor also works on a PC and Mac and in multiple browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari. It also does not require the install of a Web editor (it’s entirely AJAX-based), so long gone will be the days of needing to call someone to install your Active-X based Web editor.

Ingeniux also has a very robust taxonomy engine, which supports site-wide content sharing utilizing content keywords and tags. This is very important to make content easily shareable between department sites, e.g., if we produce a news or magazine feature, we should be able to easily share this content with an academic or administrative department (and vice versa). Being able to easily tag content is also important if you want to link to similar content of interest to Web visitors in sidebars or at the end of a page. For example, “Learn More” or “Related News” or “Also of Interest.”

We were very impressed with how Ingeniux easily allows you to share content in multiple lengths, e.g., some content authors might just want to utilize a headline in a sidebar, another user might want to use a headline and teaser text, and so on. This can easily be accomplished with Ingeniux.

Ingeniux is a “baked” CMS and publishes full pages out to a separate Web server verses being a “fried” CMS, which queries page content from a database each time it is requested by a Web visitor. Now there are benefits and drawbacks to both approaches, but a couple benefits of a “baked” CMS are that pages are served up faster and hopefully there is better search engine optimization (SEO).

Ingeniux also allows you to serve up multi-format output, meaning we can serve up PHP, ASP, JS, or ASPX pages through the CMS. This is a real plus and allows us more flexibility.

What also tips the hat toward Ingeniux is their commitment to ongoing product development based on the needs of their higher education clients. This can be seen in more recent offerings like their enterprise blogging platform (BlogXite) and their enterprise rich media module (PodXite). Both “Xites” are available as part of Ingeniux’s Developer 360 program, which we will be participating. Lastly, Ingeniux has also recently launched Cartella, an enterprise level social media/networking platform. We don’t plan to implement Cartella in our redesign project, but it’s great to see that Ingeniux has developed products in this area as well. In each case, these applications integrate with Ingeniux’s core CMS, so content produced in one is available for site-wide content distribution.

More information about Ingeniux will follow as we begin implementing the CMS. Thanks again for the efforts of everyone at the college, including the CMS Selection Group, Information Technology, and everyone who attended the on-site CMS vendor demos.

As was announced previously in this blog, a campus group is assisting College Communications and Marketing will CMS selection. The CMS is the software used by the college to manage Web site content.

Ingeniux has more than 100 college implementations of their CMS, including Stonehill, Franklin and Marshall, Bates, Roanoke, Swarthmore, University of the Pacific, University of Puget Sound, and University of Pittsburg, to name a few.

Hannon Hill has more than 100 college implementations of their Cascade Server CMS, including North Carolina State University, William & Mary, Bowdoin, Brandeis, Duke, Emory, Hofstra, and Northwestern, among others.

The following faculty, staff, and students are assisting College Communications and Marketing with reviewing three-to-four content management systems. The CMS Selection Group will review content management system proposals, participate in on-site demos for each system, and provide feedback and recommendations to College Communications and Marketing regarding CMS selection.

CMS Selection Group Members

Doug Minor, Communications and Marketing (chair)
Adam Albina, Information Technology
Katherine Bentz, Fine Arts
Lauren Chooljian, Student, History
Lorie Cochran, NHIOP
John Dillon, Geisel Library
Fr. Mathias Durette, O.S.B., Student Affairs
Lisa Gowern, Events Management
Nancy Griffin, Admission
Keith Hrasky, Admission
Rui Li, Information Technology
Anne Lord, Alumni Relations
Br. Issac Murphy, O.S.B., Monastery
Jessica Pappathan, Chapel Art Center
Michelle Rocheleau, Academic Affairs
Laura Rossi, Communications and Marketing
Bob Shea, Dana Center
Cory True, student, politics

College Communications and Marketing is very appreciative of this group’s assistance during this phase of the redesign project during what is a very busy time of year for everyone.

The BarkleyREI team has been a joy to work with. They have a very talented team and we are very pleased with the progress made so far.

Last week BarkleyREI presented their initial Web redesign strategy via conference call and Web presentation. We’re currently reviewing the document with internal stakeholders and will include an overview of the site strategy in this blog in the next couple of weeks.

BarkleyREI began their strategy presentation by saying the following:

“Arriving on campus we had certain perceptions about a small, Catholic, liberal arts college, but after hearing the many stories and experiences of faculty, staff, and students, you blew us away. Saint Anselm College is truly a special place. I want my kids to go there.”

So What’s Next?

As part of BarkleyREI’s work, we’ve asked them to review our current Web staffing level, how the site is currently managed and supported, adequacy of training provided to faculty and staff, and current Web budget. The goal of this exercise is to better understand the resources required to maintain and support an interactive, engaging Web site that incorporates multimedia technologies and content. BarkleyREI will present their recommendations to us later this week.

We’ve also asked BarkleyREI to recommend three content management systems (CMS), based on what they’ve learned during the discovery and strategy phases. In the coming weeks, we will seek the assistance of a core group of faculty, staff, and students to help us with CMS review and selection. The review and demonstration of each CMS product will be done through an open process. Once the CMS demonstrations are scheduled, campus-wide e-mails will be sent to faculty and staff inviting people to participate in each session. We’re also hopeful people will use the commenting features of this blog to provide feedback during the CMS selection process.

Despite scheduling more than three days of meetings, we are not able to fit in everyone we’d like this time around. Rest assured that we will schedule additional conference calls with groups on campus in the weeks to come. We will begin to schedule these during the week of Feb. 2.

A big thanks to everyone who assisted College Communications and Marketing with organizing these sessions. Your participation is critical for a successful project outcome.

* Please note that each of these sessions are by invitation only.

BARKLEYREI DISCOVERY AGENDA

BarkleyREI attendees: Paul Magnani, president; Amy Kern, account director; Erica Deitzel, director of user experience; Gabe Keller, directory of technology; Phillip Rhode, senior software programmer; Sarah Swartz, senior interactive designer

MONDAY, JANUARY 26

6PM
Welcome Dinner with President’s Cabinet
Location: Presidential Dining Room, Davison Hall

DAY 1 - TUESDAY, JANUARY 27

9AM - 10AM
College Communications and Marketing
Location: Joseph Hall Room 001

10AM - 12PM
Creative Communications Associates (CCA) Presents Research
Location: Joseph Hall Room 001

12PM - 1PM
Lunch with Communications and Marketing Staff
Location: Joseph Hall Room 001

1PM - 2:30PM
Admission/Enrollment
Location: Joseph Hall Room 001

2:30PM - 4PM
Current Student Group Discussion
Location: Joseph Hall Room 001

4PM - 5PM
Student Affairs
Location: Joseph Hall Room 001

5PM
BarkleyREI Night Free

DAY 2 - WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 28

** Some IT-specific sessions will run concurrently with other sessions geared toward BarkleyREI marketing and design staff.

9AM - 9:30AM
College Communications and Marketing
Location: Joseph Hall Room 001

9:30AM - 10AM
Instructional Technology
Location: Joseph Hall Room 001

10AM - 11AM
Meelia Center for Community Service
Location: Joseph Hall Room 001

10:30AM - 12PM
Information Technology Department
Location: IT Conference Room

11AM - 12PM
Dean’s Vision of a Liberal Arts Education
Location: Joseph Hall Room 001

12PM - 12:30PM
Lunch
Location: Joseph Hall Room 001

12:30PM - 1:30PM
Dana Center, NH Institute of Politics, Chapel Art Center, Institute for Saint Anselm Studies
Location: Joseph Hall Room 001

1PM - 2PM
Portal Overview
Location: IT Conference Room

1:30PM - 2PM
Career Education Services
Location: Joseph Hall Room 001

2PM - 2:30PM
Information Technology Facility Tour
Location: Information Technology Help Desk

2PM - 2:30PM
Internships
Location: Joseph Hall Room 001

2:30PM - 3PM
College Advancement
Location: Joseph Hall Room 001

3PM - 4PM
Faculty Group Discussion
Location: Joseph Hall Room 001

4PM - 5PM
“Portraits in Human Greatness,” Humanities Core Curriculum
Joseph Hall Room 001

5PM
BarkleyREI Night Free

DAY 3 - THURSDAY JANUARY 29

9AM - 10AM
Campus Tour
Location: Meet at Admission Office

10AM - 11AM
Tour of Goulet Science Facilities
Location: Meet in Goulet Science Center

11AM - 12PM
NHIOP Tour
Location: NHIOP, Common Ground Cafe

12PM - 1PM
Lunch at NHIOP With Faculty Research Center Chairs
Location: Anne and Paul Harvey Conference Room, NHIOP

1PM - 1:30PM
Geisel Library Tour
Location: Meet at Joe Constance’s Office

1:30PM - 2:30PM
Director of Campus Ministry – “Being Benedictine”
Location: Lower Chapel

2:30PM - 3:30PM
Monastic Governing Board
Location: Joseph Hall Room 001

3:30PM - 4 PM
Fr. John Fortin, “Who is St. Anselm”
Location: Anselm Collection Room, Library

4PM
BarkleyREI Departs for Manchester-Boston Regional Airport

BarkleyREI is a full service interactive marketing agency that specializes in building higher education, travel and tourism, and nonprofit Web sites. They have built a reputation for developing comprehensive Web strategies for many university clients, including Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, North Carolina State, Notre Dame, and Vanderbilt, among others.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the on-site vendor presentations, took time to complete the Web redesign survey, or attended Web Redesign listening sessions in November. Your participation and willingness to provide us with valuable input and feedback makes our work all that much easier.

Next Steps
Work on the redesign project will begin in late January when BarkleyREI visits campus for three days to meet with constituent groups across the college. We’ll post an updated project schedule as soon as it becomes available.

Listening sessions will feature 60-75 minutes of discussion moderated by CCM staff. We’ll be available to go beyond 75 minutes if extra time is required.

Dates and Times (all sessions held in North Lounge, Cushing Center)

• Wed., November 12 - 1:30 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. (faculty and staff only)
• Wed., November 19 - 10:30 a.m. - 11:30 a.m. (faculty and staff only)
• Wed., November 19 - 7 p.m. - 8 p.m. (student-only evening session)
• Thurs., November 20 - 10 a.m. - 11 a.m. (faculty, staff, and students)
• Fri., November 21 - 2:30 p.m. - 3:30 p.m. (faculty-only session)

Please make plans now to attend an upcoming listen session and tell CCM what’s on you mind. If you have questions, please feel free to use the comments feature of this blog or contact Doug Minor, managing editor/director of Web publishing, at 656-6184.

All members of the campus community are invited to complete the Web redesign survey, which was circulated today by campus-wide e-mail to all faculty, staff, and students. The survey deadline is Friday, October 24.

As we plan for the redesign, we want to hear from you. We are interested in understanding how you use the current Web site and any likes or dislikes you have regarding the college’s current Web presence. We’re also interested in gaining insight into your overall usage of non-college Web sites.

Please be as specific and detailed as possible in your responses and include information on what you feel the college is doing well, not doing well, and anything you think is missing from the current Web site, including design elements, content, features, and functionality.

There will be additional opportunities to provide input on the college’s current Web presence through upcoming campus listening sessions and during the discovery process once the redesign project is fully underway.

You’re also welcome to leave comments through this blog.

We can’t express enough our gratitude to the advisory group for all their hard work in reviewing the seven vendor proposals submitted in response to the Web redesign RFP. Advisory group members had to be very familiar with the 21 page RFP and had to read through and score vendor proposals ranging in length from 50-60 plus pages. No small task to say the least given the technical nature of the RFP and submitted proposals.

The college was very fortunate to have such a competitive pool of redesign proposals to review. Putting together a proposal in response to an RFP is no small task for any company since it usually involves multiple staff and many hours of work to produce. So we are very appreciative of all the time and effort extended by each Web firm!

So not to delay any further, here are the three finalists who will be on campus in October and November for on-site presentations.

BigBad (Boston, Mass.)
www.bigbad.com
October 10

mStoner (Chicago & Woodstock, Vt.)
www.mstoner.com
October 17

BarkleyREI (Pittsburgh, PA)
www.barkleyrei.com
November 10 (tentative)

The on-site presentations will be open by invitation only. With that said, once a finalist is chosen for the redesign project, there will be plenty of opportunity for the campus to offer feedback and input. During the redesign’s discovery phase, the vendor chosen for the project will be on campus for several days meeting with faculty and staff from across the college.

We also invite you to use this blog’s commenting capability to leave your thoughts and feedback on items of particular interest to you relating to the redesign.

An advisory group will assist College Communications and Marketing in reviewing the submitted vendor proposals and narrow the selection to three finalists. The finalists will then be invited to campus for onsite proposal presentations.

The following faculty, staff, and student will review the proposals.

• Adam Albina, CIO, Office of Information Technology
• Anne Botteri, Asst. VP, College Communications and Marketing
• John Dillon, Assistant Librarian/Head of Tech Services, Geisel Library
• Fr. Mathias Durette, O.S.B., Asst. Dean of Students, Student Affairs
• Nancy Griffin, Dean of Admission, Office of Admisison
• Doug Minor, Director of Web Publishing, College Communications and Marketing
• Prof. Jay Pitocchelli, Chair, Biology Department
• Laura Rossi, Web Producer and Editor, College Communications and Marketing
• Cory True ‘09, Politics Major, Student Representative

Listed below are many of the key elements included in the RFP

Redesign goals and objectives

• Provide a consistent look and feel across all newly designed pages
• Improve the design and navigation of the top level of the site, while representing the college in a consistent and compelling manner
• Information categories are consistent across similar pages
• Select and deploy a new content management system (CMS)
• Improve the user experience for all visitors with specific emphasis on prospective students and on-campus users (current students, faculty, and staff)
• Present a highly interactive user experiences (using current technologies, including blogs, podcasts, viral video, virtual tours, photo galleries, wikis, etc.)
• Improve the site’s “sticky-ness” to produce return visits and increased time on the site
• Enhance the student recruitment process
• Simplified maintenance of site for all content editors
• Search engine optimization for higher and lower level pages.

Site hosting, requirements, and functionality

• Site hosting can be done on a Windows, Linux, or Unix platform
• Site must adhere to currently accepted Web and accessibility standards, specifically follow W3C standards for XHTML transitional and accessibility requirements as outlined in U.S. section 255 guidelines and Section 508 standards, as well as WCAG 2.0 issued by the W3C consortium
• Server and CMS platform that integrates with current campus technology and systems
• CMS should feature cross-platform compatibility and browser-based editing
• Considerations should be made for the increase use of the Web from mobile devices
• Externally accessible, Web-based events calendar, that supports online submission of events, subcalendars, RSS feeds, iCal and Outlook posting capabilities, and content syndication or tagging for use across the site
• Consideration of how the site can leverage Web 2.0 approaches and technology: social networking, blogging, podcasting, viral video, content tagging, wikis, and additional interactive features.

Vendor deliverables

• Detailed production schedule with listed milestones
• Clearly defined Web redesign strategy
• A site audit of current site (including current information architecture and content inventory), college resources, and staffing
• Technology audit and technology strategy/technical specifications for hosting new CMS, non-CMS sites, database server(s), and multimedia content (audio, video, and digital assets)
• New design including original artistic elements, graphics, logos, wireframes, color palette, and three site design concepts
• Design standards and a plan for implementing them consistently
• Design and respective coding for homepage and interior, lower-level pages
• Design and coding for specialty sites: admission, NHIOP, academics, academic departments, athletics, library, Dana Center, Chapel Art Center, news, campus calendar, campus map, and virtual tour
• Style guide
• Redesign project/client site for tracking project deliverables, status, and reporting bugs.

Web redesign projects of this size are typically broken out into five stages

• Discovery - The “get to know us” phase. This phase is all about gathering data about the college as well as our current Web presence. The vendor will visit the campus for two or more days, meet with groups across campus, survey college constituents, gather any completed market research we’ve done, review existing print publications and college competitors, among other areas
• Strategy - The discovery phase informs the strategy phase. A comprehensive plan is put together outlining our approach to the redesign, including content, approaches to information architecture, technology, messaging, among other details
• Design - The strategy phase informs the design phase. During this phase, design comps are created for the home page and interior pages. Focus groups and acceptance testing are used to identify issues and opportunities with the designs
  
• Build - During the build phase, all the pieces come together: technology, design, information architecture (site navigational structure), and content (text, images, multimedia). Existing content from the current site’s CMS is migrated into the new CMS
• Testing and deployment - During this phase the site is run through quality assurance testing as well as usability testing to catch issues before launch. After QA testing is complete the site is publicly launched.