Moving from a Static Site to a CMS or from one CMS to Another Without Losing Your Mind

Best Practices in Moving from a Static Website to a CMS (or from one CMS to another): How Not to Lose Your Mind in the Process

Julia Kulla-Maderhttp://www.juliakm.com@JuliaKM

Julia Kulla-MaderIT Manager at the AASHEDrupal user/developer for 4+ years

Why am I qualified to give this talk?

• Website redesign alumna

• Just relaunched AASHE.ORG

• Long-time Drupal user/developer

• New mom

Some Assumptions

• You are interested in redesigning/reorganizing your organization’s website while you move it to a content management system (CMS)

• You are familiar with the concept of a CMS

• You work for a nonprofit organization with a board of directors

• You work in nonprofit technology

Four Things I Want You to Remember

• Rely on objectives, not hunches

• Build the new site for the person who will be maintaining it two years from now

• Design and implement a user-driven redesign process

• The fourth trimester: plan for support after the launch

6Section: Rely on objectives, not hunches.

Start By Identifying Stakeholders

Sandra Bob

How do we meet Sandra and Bob’s needs?

• Doesn’t see a need for change

• No familiarity with HTML, comfortable to send edits to IT

• Wants to be able to quickly point members to website information

• Prefers to spend as little money as possible Sandra

How do we meet Sandra and Bob’s needs?

• Thinks the current site is “cluttered”

• Heard about a great new CMS from his nephew last week

• Wants the site to look professional

• Loves lots of pictures and movies Bob

Before You Begin: Gather Background Information

• What is the problem we want to solve? Why are we doing this?

• Has this been attempted before? Why did it fail or succeed?

• Is anything at my organization in flux that might change this project?

Develop Objectives with Sandra and Bob

• How will we measure whether the project is successful?

• Each person on the team needs to agree to the project objectives

Example - from AASHE

Plan to engage stakeholders throughout the process

• What phases of the decision process would benefit from involvement by various stakeholder groups? {What phase would not?}

• Should Bob participate in every decision? What about Sandra?

Core Team Extended Team

Example - Engaging Stakeholders

Core Team

Extended Team

Sandra - Program representativeYou* - IT Manager/Web developerMatt - Web developerPaul - Exec. Dir* Project Manager

Board memberMember representativeRepresentative from Team ARepresentative from Team BRepresentative from Team CCore Team

Objectives: Rinse and Repeat

• Throughout the process, when questions or suggestions arise, measure against your objectives

16Section: Build the site for the person who will be maintaining it two years from now

Two Years is a Long Time

Ian“Intern”

How do we meet Ian’s needs?

• Doesn’t care about what a CMS is

• Wants to quickly edit the website

• Wants to integrate the latest social network, Care12.com

• No familiarity with HTML

Choose a CMS that Works for Ian and You

• Maintainability

• Marketplace

• Building Blocks

• WYSIWYGs

CMS Maintainability

• Can you easily upgrade?

• Can you add security fixes?

CMS Marketplace

• How hard is it to find people who are familiar with your CMS?

CMS Building Blocks

• Can your CMS potentially handle all of the fantastic features you want to add in the future?

WYSWIYGs

What’s HTML?

WYSIWYG: Advantages

• Anyone who has used Word can add or remove content

• Anyone can “make it bolder”

WYSIWYG: Disadvantages

• Extraneous tags

• Time wasted cleaning up bad HTML

• Pasting from Word can be a headache

WYSIWYGs: An Alternative

• Markdown

Markdown/Textile: Advantages

• Your site will look the way your designer intended it to

• Easily edit text and perform simple formatting

Markdown/Textile: Disadvantages

• Users have to learn the basics of a new markup language

• Users cannot “make it pink” easily

WYSIWYG: So what should I do?

• What’s best Ian and you?

• Who will be updating your site on a daily basis?

Bottom Line

• Choose a CMS that works for you (Maintainability, Marketplace, Building Blocks)

• Choose a WYSIWYG that works for you and future you

31Section: Design and implement a user-driven redesign process

What does a user-driven process look like?

Develop clear, universally accepted

objectives

Use card sorting to develop your

navigation

Wireframe Again and Again While Testing Against Objectives

Before you launch test with

stakeholders and non-stakeholders

Throughout the Process:Create, follow, and revise your migration plan

Start with Navigation

• Navigation visually defines your organizations priorities

• Navigation helps people from veering off track

• Navigation keeps people on your website

Navigation: Card Sorting Is Your Best Friend

Wireframe Everything Major

• You can go through iterative wireframes and data migration at the same time

• All pages where people are likely to have strong opinions should be wireframed

Wireframing Tools

• Balsamiq, Omnigraffle, Visio, Photoshop

Test Wireframes

• Test wireframes with your stakeholders through questions against your objectives

Wireframe and Test Again Until You Feel Good

• Making changes to a wireframe is easier than making changes to a live site design

Create a Migration Plan Early

• Migration always sucks! Plan to fail 3 times.

• Create a migration plan BEFORE you start implementing anything else.

Migration Step One: Clean up that HTML

• Use Dreamweaver Clean Up HTML

• Use HTML Tidy Interface (http://infohound.net/tidy/)

• htmLawed (http://www.bioinformatics.org/phplabware/internal_utilities/htmLawed/)

Section: Design and implement a user-driven redesign process 40

No programming knowledge needed

Programming knowledge required

Migration Step Two: Plan for Import

• Cut and paste

• Use a module/plugin that comes with your CMS

• Import directly into the database using SQL queries

Migration Step Three: Content Inventory

• Go through each page on your website and assess whether you want it to be imported

Migration Step Four: Test in Bunches

• Migrating everything at one time is a recipe for disaster

Reflect Before Moving On

• Does something not seem right? It’s easier to change things before you launch.

• Feedback Army is a good resource for quick tests

Test and Test Again

• Develop personas to test your site

Shironda - StudentClaire - Grant Officer

Engage Stakeholders Again at the End

• Let your stakeholders evaluate whether you have met your objectives

Launch!

The Fourth Trimester: Support after the launch

• Monitor feedback to your revised site

• Have a plan in place for responding to questions and concerns

49Section: Plan for support after the launch

Think Carefully About Permissions

• As you give staff access to the website, think about who should have what editing privileges carefully

Section: Plan for support after the launch

Educate and Support Your Content Editors

• Provide a knowledge base for answering frequently asked questions

• Have one line of communication for questions (ticketing system, email address, etc.)

Don’t Forget to Update Your Site’s Code

• Update code when needed

• Have a plan in place for how you will find out about and implement code updates

Summary: Four Things I Want You to Remember

Thanks for listening!

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