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Climbing Migration Mountain: 200+ Sites from the Ground Up
- 1. Monday, September 15,2014 Climbing Migration Mountain: 200+ Sites from the ground up 1 CLIMBING MIGRATION MOUNTAIN 200+ 270 Sites from the ground up Liz Hunter, Web Developer – lizhunter@siu.edu Jessica Mann, Assistant Director – jmann@siu.edu Web Communications, University Communications and Marketing Southern Illinois University Cascade Server User Conference Monday, September 15, 2014
- 2. Monday, September 15,2014 Climbing Migration Mountain: 200+ Sites from the ground up 2 Southern Illinois University • Public research university • 18,000 students • 8 colleges and School of Law • Approx. 60 academic departments • Made the switch to Cascade in 2011 • 500+/- websites!
- 3. Monday, September 15,2014 Climbing Migration Mountain: 200+ Sites from the ground up 3 Background: Websites (pre-Cascade) • Very few standards • Almost 500 independent sites • Multiple Platforms • Webmasters were faculty, staff, students = bad websites and manual migration
- 4. Monday, September 15,2014 Climbing Migration Mountain: 200+ Sites from the ground up 4 Background: The University • New chancellor • Complete rebrand (including all websites) • Reorganization • Declining enrollment • Faculty strike • Mistrust in administration
- 6. Monday, September 15,2014 Climbing Migration Mountain: 200+ Sites from the ground up 6 WE HAD TO GET IT DONE (& WE WANTED TO) Organization | Buy In | Communication | Work
- 7. Monday, September 15,2014 Climbing Migration Mountain: 200+ Sites from the ground up 7 Organization We knew we wanted to: • Standardize/streamline the process • Move quickly • Have clearly set goals Three things that kept us organized: • Writing a detailed plan • Creating visual timelines (both yearly and projects) • Whiteboards, spreadsheets, & forms
- 8. Monday, September 15,2014 Climbing Migration Mountain: 200+ Sites from the ground up 8 Organization: A written detailed plan • WE DID THIS FIRST! • Set goals • Gain continuity in designs and system • Migrate core University websites • Defined priorities • Raised questions and possible roadblocks • Outlined methods of meeting goals Download our detailed plan
- 9. Monday, September 15,2014 Climbing Migration Mountain: 200+ Sites from the ground up 9 Organization: A written detailed plan Methods of meeting the goals • Needed to work closely with departments • Needed to work with groups of 6-8 websites • Needed to outline the basic steps for each project Basic steps toward completion 1. Kick-off meeting 2. Communicate to learn key info about each site 3. Develop site architecture 4. Training 5. Enter content 6. Check accessibility/brand compliance 7. Launch
- 10. Monday, September 15,2014 Climbing Migration Mountain: 200+ Sites from the ground up 10 Organization: visual timelines
- 11. Monday, September 15,2014 Climbing Migration Mountain: 200+ Sites from the ground up 11
- 12. Monday, September 15,2014 Climbing Migration Mountain: 200+ Sites from the ground up 12 Organization: Whiteboards
- 13. Monday, September 15,2014 Climbing Migration Mountain: 200+ Sites from the ground up 13 Organization: Spreadsheets
- 14. Monday, September 15,2014 Climbing Migration Mountain: 200+ Sites from the ground up 14 Organization: Forms Old School Online!
- 15. Monday, September 15,2014 Climbing Migration Mountain: 200+ Sites from the ground up 15 WE WERE READY, BUT WERE THEY?
- 16. Monday, September 15,2014 Climbing Migration Mountain: 200+ Sites from the ground up 16 Buy In • We needed to not only inform the campus about the change, we needed to gain the confidence of the campus and reassure stakeholders that we would give full support to the mission of the university and departments. • Large town-hall style meetings & CMS demos • “Look, it’s easy!” • Meetings (or project kick-offs) with stakeholders • Deans, directors, chairs, editors • Never say never: problem-solve instead!
- 17. Monday, September 15,2014 Climbing Migration Mountain: 200+ Sites from the ground up 17 “MUCH UNHAPPINESS HAS COME INTO THE WORLD BECAUSE OF BEWILDERMENT AND THINGS LEFT UNSAID” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- 18. Monday, September 15,2014 Climbing Migration Mountain: 200+ Sites from the ground up 18 Communication • We were clear about the plan (internally too) • Welcomed and encouraged input • Followed up
- 19. Monday, September 15,2014 Climbing Migration Mountain: 200+ Sites from the ground up 19 Communication • An internal communications plan • Tools we used to communicate internally • Tasks on a calendar • Whiteboard • Post-its • Siri Download our internal communications plan
- 20. Monday, September 15,2014 Climbing Migration Mountain: 200+ Sites from the ground up 20 Communication: A clear plan • Displayed plan details on our website • Notified chairs and webmasters 4 weeks before project • Kick-off meetings • Bring cookies! • We were as transparent as possible
- 21. Monday, September 15,2014 Climbing Migration Mountain: 200+ Sites from the ground up 21 Communication Welcomed input • “We are here to help.” • We said it out loud! • Let them pick the time for meetings • Doodle.com polls • Take all suggestions and needs into consideration Followed up • Courtesy calls • Check-in emails • Scheduled 1-on-1 meetings if needed • No contact usually indicated a problem • Followed up with surveys to improve
- 22. Monday, September 15,2014 Climbing Migration Mountain: 200+ Sites from the ground up 22 THE WORK Someone Everyone has to do it
- 23. Monday, September 15,2014 Climbing Migration Mountain: 200+ Sites from the ground up 23 The Work • 2011 - Purchased Cascade • Migrated 3 sites – outsourced 3 templates • SIU created 3 templates • Created migration plan • 2012 – Migrations of “First 50” sites (but really 65) • Created 1 template • 2013 – Migrations of “Second 50” sites (but really 81) • 2014 – Migration of remaining 100 sites That doesn’t equal 270 ??? “In-house” migrations were started by the end of 2012
- 24. Monday, September 15,2014 Climbing Migration Mountain: 200+ Sites from the ground up 24 The Work- How did we get it done? • Outsourced 4 of our 8 templates • Added 10 student employees • Offered limited writing assistance • Trained departments • All hands on deck! • May 2014 – hired one more full time person - Alexis!
- 25. Monday, September 15,2014 Climbing Migration Mountain: 200+ Sites from the ground up 25 Wrapping it up Things we could have done better • Each year we improved • Better knowledge of Cascade • Consistency of naming conventions • Terminology list for users • Cleaner code from the start What now? • Responsive • Fix inconsistencies • Continue improving • Get back to our real jobs • It’s time for a redesign, but at least we have a CMS!!!
- 26. Monday, September 15,2014 Climbing Migration Mountain: 200+ Sites from the ground up 26 What did we accomplish? • Staff can update websites easily and often • SIU has a consistent look • Our department can better support the campus • End web users should *hopefully* be able to find what they are looking for on our websites!
- 27. Monday, September 15,2014 Climbing Migration Mountain: 200+ Sites from the ground up 27 THANK YOU! Our deepest apologies to Edvard Munch. Liz Hunter, Web Developer – lizhunter@siu.edu Jessica Mann, Assistant Director – jmann@siu.edu Web Communications, University Communications and Marketing Southern Illinois University Cascade Server User Conference Monday, September 15, 2014
Editor's Notes
- #2 Introduce ourselves and our roles Our Dept does not fall under IT. How many are here because you have recently adopted cascade?
- #3 More then 200 majors and specializations First year we placed 3 sites on the CMS: SIU, Admissions, News
- #4 -Lack of maintenance -We provided basic maintenance, web hosting, some design
- #5 New take charge chancellor Marketing Agency was hired and Complete rebranding – logo, print, web We knew we had a lot to accomplish and that we had to do it quickly! We also realized that we needed to build and maintain good relationships across the campus Talk about why Cascade here. Make the benefits clear. So we were like….
- #6 With all that was on our plate, we had to come up with a plan which Liz will go through
- #8 Rather than go through our exact processes, we decided to list 4 key components to getting it done (Organization, buy in, communication, and work) and what we did to achieve each of these components. Detailed plan was for us, but was also given to our boss and the Chancellor so they would know that we were working on it.
- #9 Goals – all websites coming from the same place, transition core websites Priorities – 50 sites in first year, core sites that linked from siu.edu or admissions.siu.edu, public facing recruitment and retention sites Questions – What about sites that weren’t in our first 50? What about student organization sites? Remember, this is just a guide!
- #16 By now word had gotten out and it wasn’t just Jessica and I looking like this. It was very important to us to make sure the project went smoothly and for the campus to understand this transition as a positive step.
- #17 Templates were foreign and seen as limiting – we always tried to work to make almost anything possible
- #18 One of the biggest parts of keeping the migrations going smoothly was communication.
- #21 Kick off meetings were our best opportunity for good communication! Describe kick-off fully here! Transparency – a lot of things were changing on a regular basis for us so if we knew of a new change to the branding guidelines we always shared that.
- #22 Websites with unique needs – databases and applications.
- #23 – Even with all of the planning, someone has to do the work of getting all of the content migrated to the CMS. Manual process We went through all our sites, prioritized them, and estimated 3-5 yrs for the entire migration we got 10 students to do it in 3
- #24 - We currently have 1 website left from our migration plan 30 sites are in our queue of In-house
- #25 Because websites were so different the process was manual Trained departments to enter their own content, who ever they wanted, students, directors, faculty, etc Added 10 student employees All hands on deck In the mist of all this, regular work was still coming in- online applications, marketing agency needs, etc
- #26 Each year we improved Better knowledge of cascade (but that comes with time), user accounts set to unpublish Consistency of naming conventions Terminology (or glossary) for users – red box, oh you mean your nav Cleaner code from the start __ Add features to our templates, and workflow