Upload
jonathan-smith
View
854
Download
0
Tags:
Embed Size (px)
DESCRIPTION
Presented at the Computers in Libraries conference on August 1, 2009.
Citation preview
Implementing CMS: Academic
David [email protected]
George Washington University
Jonathan M. [email protected]
The Catholic University of America
GWU Overview
• Content Management System used for public site
• Powered by Plone: an open source CMS• Launched in January, 2009• Site created by Web Team
o Web Services Librarian, student programmer, representatives of Reference, two satellite campuses, Special Collections
Determining Needs
• Identified needs based on student and staff feedbacko Usability testing, focus groups, comments
• 11 Project objectives (including)o Intuitive navigation & searchingo Consistent visual designo Minimize redundancy in contento Provide tools to staff allowing them to create web
content directly• Identified that a CMS could be solution to
several of these issues
Evaluating Features
• Considered Drupal, Joomla, and Plone• Scoring criteria
o Taxonomyo Navigationo User Managemento Stability: support and ongoing development
Addon dependenceo Standards Compliance: valid XHTML & CSS
• Plone scored significantly higher for uso Based on Python and Zope
CUA Overview
• Content Management System (CMS) used for staff intranet
• Chose Mambo as our solutiono One year later, migrated to Joomla!
• Went live in summer of 2005• Staff Web Site Committee
Selection
Mission Statement
"STAR: Staff Resources for the CUA Libraries is a collaborative effort to facilitate communications throughout the CUA Libraries and serve as a central repository of policies, procedures and forms."
Selection
• Establishing needs & evaluating featureso Stakeholders = library faculty and staffo How to import existing content?o Common open source platform
Apache, MySQL, PHPo Knowledge of HTML not necessary for content
authorso Active user community
Deployment - Learning
• Install CMS on development server• Online documentation
o http://docs.joomla.org• User forums
o http://forum.joomla.org• Joomla in Libraries
o http://www.joomlainlibrary.com• Books
Deployment and Costs
• Technical Deploymento Local Hosting
Development and production servers
• Costso Serverso Software = $0o Initial staff timeo Ongoing staff time
Organization
• Content Typeso Text: articles, blog postso Files: pdf, ppt, xls, etc.
• Taxonomyo Hierarchical structureo By function, not department
Security/Ownership
• Accessible to general public?• Public content vs. restricted content• User levels – author, editor, publisher• Content ownership
Deployment - Learning
• Local laptop installation• Courses• Conferences/User groups• Documentation on web and in books• IRC support channel• Peer institutions• Consultants
Deployment - Technical
• Hosting – evaluated companies based ono Plone expertiseo Academic clientso Level of support
• Specifications for Development, Production, and Backup servers
• Divided content migration duties and manually transferred pages
Implementation Costs
• Hosting costs: ~$5,000/year• Consulting fees: ~$2,000
o Configuring caching and load balancingo Development of custom templates
• Staff timeo 1.5 year project for our Web Team
Typically several hours per week Usability testing Graphic design Content and taxonomy development Plone configuration
Content Types
• Default typeso Pages, news items, folderso Collections
Means of grouping content objects like queries
• Addonso Faculty/Staff Directory – from UPenno Scrawl – blog post content type
Security/Ownership
• Plone supports granular ownership and rights over site content
• Publicationo Content staging – public and private states
• Workflowo Can assign rights over different parts of the
publishing process Create, Edit, and Publish
Taxonomy
• Opportunity to rethink organization• Move away from departmental
organization of content• Categories intended to reflect functional
needs of users• Also created a secondary taxonomy
based on intended audience
Theming
• Creation of unique look and feel• Began from a set of draft page designs predating our
selection of Plone• Modified Plone display elements to reflect our
proposed layouto HTML templateso CSS – for fonts, images, positioning
Training
• Conducted departmental training sessionso Covered content creation and editingo Provided overview of architecture to Library iT
• Individual trainings and followups, as needed
Feedback/Problems
• Feedbacko Very positive user feedbacko Staff reported that page editing was intuitive
Some issues copying from Word
• Technical issues mostly in initial month of useo Form bugso Memory leako Caching issueso Logged in users are more resource intensive
Improvements
• Eliminated redundant content occurrences• No longer have to support a separate blog
platform• Staff able to make edits
o Off-site editing, no software required
Improvements
• Consistent visual identity• Enhanced navigation
o Automated site map, section menus, breadcrumbs
o More coherent taxonomy
Future Plans
• Long enhancement listo Improved staff directoryo Improved media supporto Customized authentication
• Plan to configure second Plone instance as Intranet
• Usability testing
Feedback/Problems
• Initial rush, then decreased content creation
• Fulfills role as policy repository• Desired features• Not used for communication• Use is consistently high or low depending
on department
Future Plans
• Site Redesign• Major upgrade• Reevaluate taxonomy• Desired features/functionality• Refresh visual design