Revised Site Launch Date Set for Mid-May Following Final Exams (and Other Project Updates)
It’s been awhile since our last project update. I’m including below an e-mail that was sent to the college community via a campus-wide e-mail on April 9, 2010.
Since January, we have been working hard to add newly written content and migrate thousands of existing Web pages into the new content management system (CMS). In addition, the Web staff have been learning the new Ingeniux CMS, further customizing the software, and working through the many bugs that arise when rolling out new technology.
New Site Launch Date
Since the end of the academic year is quickly drawing near, we want to minimize any potential impact to faculty and current students by switching to a new system at a critical time of year. We have revised our target site launch date until mid-May following final exams. This will also allow us more time to complete our content migration and work through any remaining technical issues.
Making Updates to Existing Web Site (in the current CMS)
If you need to make important changes to content that is in the current CMS, you are free to do so. Laura Rossi and I continue to make content updates to the current live site as needed. However, if you make any content updates in the current CMS, please remember to use the process we outlined in our January project update regarding tracking those changes . This is the only way we can be sure that the changes you are making to the current site will be added to the new system. This notice does not apply to Web sites managed outside of the CMS by software like Adobe Dreamweaver or Microsoft Frontpage.
Content Review With Departments
Since we are migrating content from dozens of administrative departments to the new site, we simply do not have the time or ability to meet with each department on an individual basis prior to the launch of the new Web site. We know that many departments are anxious to get our assistance on technical, content, and creative concerns. As soon as we have the new site live, and training completed for departmental Website managers and editors, we will be happy to assist those departments needing our help. We ask for and appreciate your patience.
Training on New Content Management System
The Web staff will begin conducting group training sessions on how to use the new CMS immediately following the launch. Training sessions will likely begin in early June and continue on an ongoing basis over the summer and fall. We will endeavor to provide as many as possible, including some evening and off-hour sessions to accommodate schedules.
Next week, we will provide you with an update on important information about the new site’s architecture and navigation (the ‘what will live where map’ and how those decisions were made). That update will also include information about the publishing process.
Knee Deep in Web Content, Among Other Updates
We are spending much of our time these days writing content for the new site. This includes writing many profiles for the new “Faces” faculty, student, and alumni Flash piece, a bank of stories for the new home page’s Wall gallery, and content for the many new pages we will be adding to the site. It’s all hands on deck for the Communications and Marketing staff as each member of our office is writing Web profies. We’re also gearing up to have a handful of students to assist us during winter break with pulling content out of our current Web site and readying it so it can be easily posted in the new CMS.
Should We Use Underscores or Hyphens in URLs?
As part of our implementation of Ingeniux CMS, we’ve had to decide how we want URLs to read (i.e., how will the page name read in a browser’s address bar).
Out of the box, Ingeniux displays page URLs as numbers with an .xml extension (e.g., 345.xml). Although, this method is short and clean, numbers aren’t real memorable. It’s much easier for site visitors to remember academics.html or news.html than 345.xml. You have some inclination where academics.html will take you when clicked, whereas 345.xml is pretty vague.
To present more human-readable URLs, Ingeniux allows us to utilize structured URLs using a hyphen or an underscore as a separator and specify .htm or .html as an extension. So which is better, hyphens or underscores? For me it has always come down to usability, something we touch on during each CMS training. It is much easier to read a Web address done in hyphens than underscores, especially when including URLs in print. If URLs appear as underlined text, the underscores are often harder to read.
When it comes down to it, search engines treat both underscores and hyphens differently. Google for example treats hyphens as separators or dividers while underscores are not treated as such as shown below.
Underscores vs. Hyphens
Example 1: www.anselm.edu/my_web_page.html
Example 2: www.anselm.edu/my-web-page.html
How Google reads these URLs.
Example 1: mywebpage
Example 2: my web page
Ingeniux CMS Training in Seattle
I spent all of last week in Seattle attending CMS training at Ingeniux’s offices. It was time very well spent.
I came away from the week of training even more impressed with Ingeniux, especially it’s flexibility and robustness as a CMS. The first day we covered all of Ingeniux’s terminology and their use – site controls, components, page types, navigation types (taxonomy vs. standard navigation), among others. We covered workflow and permissions as well as the underlying technology that powers Ingeniux – XML, XSLT (stylesheets), and schemas. It was a lot to pack into five days.
Ingeniux Selected as New Content Management System
I’m pleased to announce that we have selected Ingeniux as our new content management system (CMS). The selection comes after nearly eight weeks of work and with considerable assistance and input from our Web vendor, BarkleyREI, and the CMS Selection Group, which included staff, faculty, and student representation.
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. Read more