Content Strategy Roles Infographic by Richard Ingram

First, be sure to go check out the link above and give Richard’s infographic a really good look. What makes this so important is that it does such a nice job defining the different roles in content strategy, how they relate, and how their responsibilities tie together. By articulating this complex relationship in a way that makes it easy to visualize and digest, it becomes easier to craft job descriptions and positions based on what you have.  If you have one particular position, but not another, you can get an idea of how to spread out the responsibilities that are left over. In higher ed, this is important, because we often struggle to define the limits of our jobs and how to best configure our offices for success. And I should mention that you need to keep in mind that this is outline roles as it relates specifically to content strategy, and it doesn’t necessarily hit on some of the other important needs of web development outside of content.

For example, using the chart as the template, if you discover that all of your tooling falls into the technical side, you can begin to easily understand why you likely have needs in the editorial and strategy/planning sectors that aren’t being met. You can also see that if you spend time focusing resources in technical and strategic areas, it is possible to spread out responsibilities to cover the editorial. In fact, of the eight core roles, you could lose half of them (Front End Developer, Back End Developer, Interaction Designer, and Search Engine Marketer), and still conceivably manage all of the responsibilities save for one (conversion tracking under search engine marketing). These relationships are important, because it shows how groups of people can be organized to help each other do a job. Even though a Web Editor-in-Chief and a Content Creator could equally work on a content style guide, together than can be more than the sum of their parts due to the complementary nature of the roles. Instinctively we know a lot of that, but it’s nice to see that converted to a black and white concept we can show others.

Of course, in a lot of cases, many of us don’t even have four folks to leverage, and if we do, they might not be set up like this example (for instance, you may have database or system admins, programmers, etc that don’t play directly into content strategy itself, but are key components to keeping your site going). But, that’s the value. Looking at this, when you start double (or triple) covering roles with one individual, you can make assumptions about who fits best where. For example, if you don’t have a Web Editor-in-Chief, it makes more sense for the Content Creator to cover that role and its responsibilities than a Back End Developer. The Content Creator could also split those jobs with a Brand Strategist. On the other side, if you want to develop yourself or an individual in one particular direction, you can make sense out of the skill progression that would, for example, take you from wireframing to content coding. Think of it like a skill tree in a role-playing game. You level up by connecting adjoining skills together.

The other thing to take from this explanation is a sense of organization. In your job, if you find that you are doing content workflows, wireframes, and content development, and others working with you are similarly spread out, then you are going to be losing efficiency through a lack of focus. Rather than being great over a unified area, you’re just good at some random unrelated things. Use this as a guide to group responsibilities to the parties where it makes sense. This is exactly why it is so hard to develop and execute content strategy in shops where it is a one man army. In that case, you’re simply all over the place. As a result, so is any strategy that you try to develop.

Here’s another way to think about it: use internal strategy to reinforce external. If you are well organized and properly tasked, and you can show how internally your processes are a clear machine, it makes it much easier to convince others that the strategy you are suggesting to them is sound. Even if you only have two or three people, by diagramming out responsibilities, overlap, and progression, it will make you much more confident and appear much better prepared. That will ultimately be reflected in the shape your content strategy takes. Beyond that, it will help you communicate some of the otherwise more ephemeral concepts to other people you rely on or answer to that don’t have the instinct or access to the concepts we deal with day in and day out. It puts into perspective ideas like “I’m a back end developer who does a lot of content coding, and here’s an idea of why I’m not real great at content analysis.”

Last but not least, craft solutions. You can’t start generating content strategy when you or your office is in turmoil to begin with. Use this concept as a guide or blueprint, tweaking as necessary to tailor it to your environment, and actually craft professional development goals around it. If you currently have two or three people in your office that just “do a bunch of stuff,” sit down with them, play to their strengths, then lay out a plan to develop them into trained, targeted individuals. A year from now, see how you’ve done developing those skills, and add more in. In the end, you’ll hopefully have more well rounded individuals that can take on jobs and tasks flexibly, and you’ll have fewer things that only one person can do.

The smaller our offices are, the more hectic our lives are, we’re all familiar with it. Introduce some order.

Related posts:

1. Content Strategy is More than Marketing Strategy
2. Need a Link Building Strategy? Create Content!
3. Content Management Manifesto

The Reasoning

Why does this matter to content strategy? For one, a whole lot of higher ed sites still don’t have a real content strategy on the books, but many see the importance in it. As a result, eventually it will get the attention that it needs. As that happens, it’s good to know where the trail in front of you goes (or at least should go). A lot of schools are also moving their web offices out of IT and into a more marketing or communications driven office. Just listen to some of the higher ed web folks on Twitter, and you’ll notice conversation increasingly littered with discussions and articles about marketing, recruitment, content, and communications. Less and less is about the “tech” side of the web, despite the fact that the two are yin and yang. You either wield the power of both (at least a little), or you can expect to excel at neither.

Sorry, I’ll stop with the web Confucius stuff now.

The reason you need to be vigilant is that despite our changing roles, the vast majority of our web content is not marketing content. Now, I can hear the marketing people clamoring already: “ALL content is marketing!” The more I hear that philosophy (and its corollary: everyone is a spokesman) the more I can’t really decide if I agree or disagree with it. I think that’s because while the theory is sound, the practice is not, unless every person who works on your site also happens to be a marketer, or everything on your site has to be approved by one. Otherwise, vast swaths of your site are little more than brain dumps of dry-write (the kind of stuff folks write when they are asked to write it, meeting minimum requirements with no regard for use). That’s just what they are, and there’s not really a better way to put it. And that’s why today’s post is important. Maybe another way to look at is that all content is marketing content, but that doesn’t mean it’s primary reason for being is marketing. A good marketer can make anything into a tool for “the sale,” that doesn’t mean that’s why it was created in the first place, or that it should be transformed into such a tool.

Until we live in a world where our website is ruled by marketers with an iron fist (gods forbid), we must keep in mind that a large majority of content is both different from how we treat our marketing face, and requires a different approach. That doesn’t mean marketing doesn’t get a place in your content strategy (I’ll address that in a moment), it just means that it is only a component of the document. You need to make sure that each component is given due diligence in your plan for managing the stuff on your site and make sure that it all isn’t treated the same.

The Non-Marketing Stuff

Basically, the huge chunk of stuff on your site that isn’t marketing serves one of two purposes: learn some information or do something (I don’t consider ‘we need the past ten years of meeting minutes from this committee on our web site’ to really qualify as a bonâ fide ‘purpose,’ per se.). This content is generated at nearly every level of your university hierarchy, and in most cases it isn’t usually vetted by an actual web writer. In fact, it’s normally just thrown up there by whomever wrote it. These are the folks that need the most help, and will benefit the most from a content strategy that helps to set up a framework for things as simple as reviewing and editing.

Assume a person runs a page with content designed to help a student set up an organization. From year to year, it’s likely that the codes and rules for this will change. Helping your user understand that it is part of the strategy that “policy-centric” content must be reviewed annually will ensure that a visitor’s goal of doing something isn’t compromised by out of date content. Furthermore, the strategy would hopefully help define where that information should live, to make it easier for the student to get to as well. Then, as time goes on, you have a way to tell if something has actually been neglected assuming you’re using a CMS or other system to document the content workflow.

Consider for a moment just how deep your rabbit hole goes. Folders in folders in folders in folders. Under normal circumstances, addressing an issue like that is, first and foremost, a usability or information architecture issue separate from marketing. Cumulatively, these issues have no bearing on marketing, but rather have bearing on the general quality of the site. It doesn’t take a marketer to fix them, just a well trained individual with some helping guidelines. That’s the key to success: training is part of content strategy. Your users don’t need to sell their pages, they just need the guidance to create them well for your visitors. Selectively determine what will be hijacked for marketing later.

The Marketing Stuff

Despite all this, that 1% of your content that is clearly marketing needs attention too, and should be considered when you start compiling your list of dos and don’ts and hows and wheres. Identify content that clearly needs marketing whizbang. This might be the top level pages of departments, or your admission site. It might even be as broad as “all pages in the top ‘layer’ of the site.” That’s okay as long as you lay it out and have the authority to actively control that content. While content strategy is more than marketing, it does include it, and it deserves a certain amount of respect. In that process, you might actually find that you need to take more content into consideration in marketing than you initially thought. Don’t be afraid of that. That’s just a little thing I like to call paying attention.

Incorporate goals into the strategy so that when review time is up, not only are you checking for accuracy and timeliness of the content, but you’re making sure it’s doing what it’s supposed to be doing. This isn’t absolutely necessary elsewhere, but in a marketing world obsessed by ROI, it should be almost automatic for your marketing content. This is all about follow through and accountability. And maybe something isn’t performing as expected – that’s totally alright. What isn’t alright is not adjusting your strategy to reflect that. Follow through. A lot of this part of your strategy should apply specifically to this content though, and nothing else (not by default anyway. There’s nothing wrong with someone asking for some analytics to help them better craft a normal page.).

As opposed to the ‘everything else’ of your web site, marketing content needs constant attention, like a puppy that never grows up. It needs fed, watered, cleaned, and walked all the time. Average stuff doesn’t. Not that it couldn’t benefit from it, but in a world where we must prioritize resources, if we only check in on a faculty recommended reading list page once or twice a year, we will survive. Clearly defining the differences between marketing and non-marketing content, and how it will be used and audited ultimately allows you to best organize and apply your time and people to the issue at hand.

Walking the Walk

We can’t teach every single person contributing to our web sites to be a marketer. That is unrealistic (and unnecessary) and not even remotely part of most people’s job descriptions. But we can try to teach them to be an active content creator, and a good one at that. We just need to arm them properly and show them the value in taking time to do things ‘by the book.’ I have worked with a lot of people (a lot), and while many have the web dumped on them, a lot are certainly willing to learn if you are patient and take the time to help them. They are even more receptive when things are clear. Content strategy is part of that. It will help them understand how to be clear and present in their web content, rather than brain dumping dry-write page after page. It is a tool, and the better it is crafted, the happier they’ll be.

It ultimately helps them see where they fit in, what considerations they should give to what they are putting out, and what is expected in terms of maintenance. It should also offer options if they don’t think what they are doing is necessarily in line with the strategy. That’s where you come in as the expert. Walk your walk, talk your talk, and help your people out. When trouble arises, they expect to be able to come to you as the expert. A strategy will give you the ability to make consistent, educated decisions when those folks come to you. We make up enough other stuff on the fly as it is.

Every once in a while you might have to step in to help someone out, or provide an interpretation or clarification. That’s a good sign, believe it or not, because it means folks are paying attention. It means they do care about what’s on their site. Talk to them if you don’t believe that, because it has certainly been my experience that while some are better at maintaining a site than others, they all effectively care about their site when you boil it down. Don’t discourage it, and don’t get frustrated by it when they come to you. Content is a big job, but it’s even bigger for the folks we ask to help out who aren’t used to this world. Most of the frustration in our environment builds up when people aren’t properly trained and aren’t well supported. That creates the frustration and resentment. That doesn’t help anyone.

Content strategy is about doing everyone a favor. You and them. It formalizes the environment and the ‘rules.’ Not Rules, but ‘rules.’ Like the rules that govern schoolyard kick-ball. They are easy, widely understood, might vary a little from place to place, and might get bent just a hair to keep things going smoothly. To put it another way, content strategy is a quality of life issue, while your marketing strategy is about the quality of your clothing.

That’s it, I’ve said my piece (again). If you can’t tell, I’m big on the importance of content strategy for [higher ed] web sites. Between this post and the last one, if I haven’t convinced you that you need to at least start thinking about this, then I probably never will. But remember, we all want to make our jobs a little easier, and when we stop flying by the seat of our pants so much, that will actually happen. This is a place you can give yourself a good, powerful tool for the future – something that guides your whole site, not just the part whose boss you answer to.

Related posts:

1. Need a Link Building Strategy? Create Content!
2. Content Strategy Roles and You
3. Live Blogging AMA Higher Ed: The New Power: Social Media Marketing Strategy for Higher Education

The Problem

The problem of online catalog design is that by its nature, it goes against one of the fundamental tenets of web design: You don’t just push a print document to the web. But we aren’t talking about a flyer or pamphlet here. We’re talking about one of the biggest, most important print documents a university puts out. The two challenges that make this especially difficult are that the workflows in place for creating the catalog tend to be very complex and non-web-centric, and the project normally starts as print and is then pushed to web, instead of the other way around. It also doesn’t help if you’re in an environment where the primary content managers for your catalog are neither web nor print people.

Changing this normally requires a complete overhaul of the process used to create the catalog. Not an easy task. Not at all. The bad part is, most modern CMSs are completely capable of managing an online catalog that could output XML that would drop right into software like InDesign. Add some photos, a cover, and an index and bam – instant catalog. Too often, however, the project doesn’t start with the process, only the technology. Knowing what your CMS is capable of, and making sure the process in place to use it is implemented right are two different things. Compounding the issue, this might be just one of several projects your office is involved with. Next to a complete site redesign or student portal implementation, this is probably one of the biggest undertakings a university will tackle. If you aren’t giving it your complete attention, odds are the result will suffer. It’s easy to just dump a bunch of copy and pasted text into HTML page, it’s hard to actually make it useful and usable.

And as I mentioned in the first paragraph, there just aren’t a lot of great reference points that showcase “this is how to do it right.” As a matter of fact, a quick search of eduStyle reveals only one entry tagged catalog, and the numbers on it aren’t good. Run through some Google search results. A lot of the top hits are kind of trainwrecks of information overload.

Some Advice

I can’t tell you the end all way of how to do something like this. The fact of the matter is, every university is likely to be quite different from the rest in how this is done. But, I will offer up some advice:

• Make sure ALL stakeholders get together (registrar, print folks, graphic designers, etc) to understand the transition.
• Commit to a ‘data first’ policy. Catalogs are no longer print projects, they are data projects. Do the data right (most likely in your web CMS), and the rest falls into place.
• Understand that whatever processes produce the catalog now, they will almost have to be scrapped. Don’t try to shoehorn a legacy process into place.
• Realize that even though you will have the same data in both places, your online catalog doesn’t have to have the same presentation or organization. Respect your medium.
• Devote considerable time to developing a thoughtful, appropriate information architecture and navigation for web. Remember, web users won’t use a catalog online the same way you would use a book. Having a table of contents page ten miles long might not be advisable (Sorry UT-Austin, I’m looking at you).

I would also advise you to not entirely disregard taking a shortcut with a catalog service such as ACMS (See UT-Knoxville below for a good example). Are they perfect? No. But they have tried to address the most common issues facing the development and management of online catalogs, and in many cases catalogs I have seen using them have been much better than those without. This is an area where, like deploying a CMS or e-commerce platform, the project is big enough that trying to find an in-house solution may simply not be reasonably feasible given the resources you have available to devote to it.

Also, be sure to work the maintenance and upkeep of the catalog into your overall content strategy. Catalogs are already living documents, regularly being edited and updated for the next version. In many cases, you can process and prepare those changes ahead of time on the web. It’s possible that it can always reflect the most recent up to date information available. Have a routine for that. Be sure the routine involves the right people at the right points for the content creation and approval. Also keep an eye on options for enhancing or improving the features of the catalog by enabling ways to help people use it, such as specialized search, course filtering, and other yet-to-be foreseen tools.

Now, Some Inspiration

First, these are in no particular order. And I want to point out that I didn’t pick some of these because they were the prettiest. I tried to select these based on a combination of aesthetics and usability. I can forgive something not looking top notch if the navigation makes sense and information is presented well. I would also say that all of these have improvements that could be made as well. But, if you need some ideas, these would definitely be some to keep handy for reference.

Catalog at the University of Texas, Arlington

School: University of Texas, Arlington
Link: http://wweb.uta.edu/catalog/
Why We Like It:
UT-Arlington has put a nice amount of effort into their online catalog’s presentation, partly because they no longer offer a print catalog (like some of the other examples here, part cost saving, part sustainability). Individual pages can be exported as PDFs, allowing users to selectively save copies of only what they need. While some pages can get rather lengthy at times, those pages usually have their own table of contents at the top to get you where you need to go quickly. This is one of the best “feeling” catalogs I’ve seen.

Catalog at St. Cloud State University

School: St. Cloud State University
Link: http://bulletin.stcloudstate.edu/ugb/default.asp
Why We Like It:
St. Cloud has put together a nicely unassuming catalog. It might not jump out at you at first, but the navigation is pretty straightforward and makes good sense when you start interacting with it. Individual pages are broken down progressively so that you are never hit with an enormous amount of information at once, they keep stuff pretty bite-sized.

Hopefully these examples can give you some inspiration of a good way to architect your online catalog moving forward. Have I missed a really exceptional one? Be sure to share it in the comments!

Related posts:

1. E-Expectations: How to Focus Your Online Recruiting Efforts
2. Don’t lose your identity – Create an effective print style sheet
3. eduWeb 2009 LiveBlog – Web Wide Architecture

Done? Good. Now, more than likely, you’ve learned that you need to forget everything you know. The old conventions don’t work any more, and the new ones are highly suspect too. If Halvorson does only one thing in her book, it should be showing you that large or small, it is possible to put a process in place that can be successful at managing all the stuff on your site. It’s just a matter of accepting the fact that the way you are doing things now is, more than likely, not ideal. I’m going to warn you right now that the bulk of my message today is going to be “blaze your own trail, and be ready to make people angry doing it.” I repeat, you are warned. If I’m lucky, I’ll push a few buttons. All of what I say here isn’t meant to apply to everyone, but every part will certainly apply to someone. But I’m not one to shy away from inciting a few people if it means getting a point across.

Here’s the thing, content management/strategy is HARD. It’s hard on normal sites, and it’s the biggest damn elephant in the closet for higher ed sites. The only way to really approach it is to go big, or go home. In my time in higher ed, I have learned that a lot of us aren’t willing to go big. That’s crap, and as a community, we’ve got to get over it.

Go Big or Go Home

Are you a web person? Are you a marketing person? Do you have ANY control over your university’s web presence? If you are reading this, then odds are the answer is yes (if not, thanks for reading anyway). The first thing I want you to do is go put someone in charge of web content. Not development. Not graphics. Content. Step two, give them authority. If you can’t give them authority, find someone who can. They will ask why, and you’re going to convince them (again, if you read the book, like I told you to, you already have your talking points lined up). Ultimately, how to convince them is entirely up to you.

You put out some kind of magazine on campus, yes? Doesn’t it have someone in charge of editorial oversight? Don’t TV shows? Don’t magazines? The fact of the matter is, every major source of content needs someone in charge of bringing it all together. Pull your analytics, show that your web site is the single largest interaction point for people. Trust me, it will be more than TV, more than advertising. Build your case, because the facts are already in.

• “But that isn’t my job!” Yes, it is. Because if no one else is stepping up to push the effort, then someone has to. ANYONE can offer a persuasive suggestion. Specifically, if your job involves the web, then it’s time to get off the bench and be a leader.
• “But there’s no money for another position!” Yes, there is, you just might have to go out and find it. There is always money for important things. All you have to do is make your case (hint: how much money do you throw away on billboards every year?). That is easy to do here, because as far as campus communications go, there simply isn’t anything more important than your website. You cannot imagine how serious I am about that point.
• “But… but… but…” No excuses. In higher ed, we have a habit of doing that. Politics, budgets, resources… we are masters at excuses. STOP IT. You cannot believe how serious I am about this point too.

Look, we’re here to do a job, and that job is web. Schools aren’t the only ones that need websites. You are in competition with everyone else for your visitors’ attention, and it is our job as industry professionals to make our superiors understand that you can’t have corporate expectations on a non-profit budget (thanks #eduweb). The compounding problem is that it isn’t just internal pressure that creates corporate expectations, our users drive that just as much, and rightly so. The web is a huge, flat world. Whether a site is big or small, user expectations are still high. And the crux of the issue is that because we are big, because we are the ‘pinnacle of knowledge,’ we end up on a pedestal to begin with. As a result, when compared with another site of similar size, an average visitor can be expected to demand more from us. We cannot, cannot, blame them for that. We have an obligation to show them we care. That’s a huge job that takes huge effort. It’s why we are here.

Your CMS Sucks

It’s true. Do you know how I know that? Because content problems are not technology problems, and a content management system is a solution to a technological issue. Content is made and consumed by people, therefore content problems are people problems. As a visitor to site X, how much of the content there is generated solely by a computer? Hint: 99.99% isn’t. In fact, a CMS will frequently create or expose entirely new problems in your workflow. It’s a fact of life, and it doesn’t matter how good the system is.

Most people, especially non-web folks, buy in very dearly to the idea that a good CMS lets you delegate control of your web site to the people who should run it. They think the ability to re-use content is golden. Autogeneration of PR RSS feeds is a holy grail. It’s also a mountain of new features and workflows that a bunch of non-technical people end up having to learn and use. It mechanizes processes that would previously involve human interaction, diluting the message and severely restricting its power. This isn’t exactly a good scenario. But, because all these issues – workflow, technological, content – are so closely intertwined in our environment, it oftentimes seems like if you are solving one of the issues, then you are solving several. That is simply not the case.

Ultimately, whatever platform you have in place for managing content, it shouldn’t get in the way of crafting content. The two realms are almost entirely mutually exclusive. Your content can be made anywhere (even, heavens forbid, Microsoft Word). Your review and update cycle has nothing to do with your CMS. All of the things that really matter, can happen with or without your CMS. A good CMS might try to help that along (for instance, setting content expiration or review flags), but that is merely an augmentation (and it can be for better or worse). I don’t care if you still manually update pages over FTP, you can have a content management strategy that is just as good as someone with a $100,000 CMS.

And for God’s sake, don’t try to force a square peg in a round hole. If you started using part of your CMS for a reason that ultimately doesn’t mesh with the human side of the equation, stop using it. Don’t try to force your people to adapt to it. That only breeds resentment and poor execution. Making changes to adapt to problems is not a failure. It’s a sign of growth. Identify and respond to deficiencies appropriately. Maybe you end up wasting some value of the CMS. So be it. The value of your people is paramount. No people, no website.

The Central(ization) Problem

Here’s the thing, and this is a theory I hold pretty solidly to: web decentralization (in our world) is not a long-term, viable solution. “Why is that?” you may ask. Go ahead, ask. Here’s why: we frequently use phrases like “putting the content experts in charge of their content” (especially when you get that shiny, new, sucky CMS).  The reality is that content experts aren’t necessarily experts at making content. It’s true. For every person that is working on content on our web site that I feel actually “get’s it,” there are twenty that really don’t. In a lot of cases, offices and departments view maintaining web pages as the process of checking contact information once a year and putting a new picture of the front of the building on the first page. Maybe one of every two departments will also want to put up a form for something that ends up filtered into a folder and never viewed.

I place no blame on them for this though. We ask deans, faculty members, and secretaries to keep web pages up to date. These people have more important things to do, such as the things that are actually in their job description. I use the automotive analogy a lot in discussions on this topic. Cars are ubiquitous. Everyone can drive one. But when it breaks, you take it to the mechanic. Maybe it’s as simple as changing a spark plug. With modern cars, I don’t fault you for one minute for going to an expert to get it taken care of, because cars, like content strategy, can be damn hard. And even if they wanted to do it themselves, some people just can’t learn how to be a mechanic, no more than I can be a painter or football player. It’s not their fault. It’s not that they are stupid (in most cases, far from it in fact). The reality is that the web is our life. We work day in and day out to keep up and study user behavior and understand scanning habits and this and that ad nauseum. Then we turn around and ask someone who logs into our CMSs twice a year to maintain the page.

Do you see the problem?

For a lot of us, this practice grew out of the first years of the millennium, when we had too many requests, and too few web gurus. The technology was still basic, and combined, it resulted in bottlenecks where updates were just taking too long. At the time, that made sense. Today, it doesn’t. The technology we use to do our jobs (such as the CMS) is a lot better now. We, as the experts, are better empowered and prepared to deal with the environment. The big thing that is lacking is organization and planning. But if we hope to continue developing powerful, coherent, consistent web sites, there has to be one flag and one caption.

Another analogy (last on, I swear… I think). A cruise ship has a captain. It also has teams for engineering ,communications, food, stewards, etc. The captain doesn’t necessarily get his hands dirty in the engine room, but by god he makes sure everything is working together to get from port to port intact and on time. Website have lots of components. We have many different teams contributing work. So who serves as your captain? The system simply falls apart due to the complexity and miscommunications that occur when no one is clearly in control, top to bottom.

It Sounds Like a Fine Theory…

“…but our campus is too big. Every college has their own CMS, and different areas run different campaigns.” I don’t care about the excuses, in case I wasn’t clear about that to begin with. I never said this stuff was easy. In fact, I specifically mentioned that it is damn hard. But if you don’t like being overworked, underpaid, and given nearly unattainable goals on a day to day basis, then what are you doing here? Governor Christie (R-NJ) recently told teachers at a public forum who were complaining about budget actions the state was taking that if they didn’t like it, they know where the door is. That hurts, but it’s true. You have to really love this stuff to put up with it, and it needs and deserves us desperately. For every ten complaints I get about X, Y, and Z, it’s the one compliment that really makes it worthwhile, because I think the ultimate goals are worth every single late night and headache. And don’t forget that sometimes you have to separate the logistic challenges of our environment from the job at hand.

Tackling the mountain (I mean ocean… wait, I said no more analogies, crap!) that is content strategy requires patience and effort. But more importantly, it takes you. You have to believe it can work. There is a state of mind that goes along with this, a philosophy that you must, absolutely must believe in. There are plenty of books, articles, and sites that can help with the nitty gritty of the strategy itself. I’ve caught flak in the past for advocating putting in work on your own time, but I stand by it. I look at what we all do day to day, and can’t help but think how much easier this kind of stuff is compared to how hard my parents and grandparents worked. In a way, we actually have it pretty darn good.

Look, all I want you to walk away from here is motivation. Motivation to:

• Be a leader (and sometimes being a great leaders means not everyone likes you)
• Be an expert
• Be an evangelist
• Discover and address the core problems in your content cycle
• Do some extra footwork (yep, even if it’s on your own time and unpaid)

But it’s the first three that really matter. The rest comes naturally. And trust me, it will pay off for you. I promise. That’s because content is a people problem. When you build social capital with people, when people trust you, when people respect you – the solutions are shockingly much easier to find.

Related posts:

1. Content Strategy is More than Marketing Strategy
2. Need a Link Building Strategy? Create Content!
3. Content is More Important than Design

What is Reason?

Reason user interface for a typical site. Note the customized Luther content types, Flickr Slideshows and Twitter Feeds.

Reason is an open-source web-based CMS licensed under the GNU General Public License; it’s ideally suited for small teams operating on a limited budget. It was developed by higher education (Carleton College) for higher education. Unlike Drupal it is a full-featured CMS out of the box.

Luther College runs Reason in a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) environment although it can also be installed under Windows and Mac OS X. There is no cost for the software itself; technical support via the Reason discussion group is outstanding; and content contributors on campus give it thumbs-up for ease of use. With knowledge of PHP programming, Reason can be extended and customized to suit the specific needs of the institution.

Reason’s feature list is substantial. At a glance it includes:

• ability to create an unlimited number of sites with a single installation and to share content across those sites
• a WYSIWYG editor called Loki (TinyMCE, FCKeditor and others can also be used)
• full version control
• a large number of content types, including blogs, newsletters, images, text blurbs, events calendars, attached documents, and multimedia
• built-in integration with LDAP for authentication and identity management
• ability for an administrator to assume the role of any user
• a WYSIWYG form editor to create and edit web forms
• automatic generation of RSS feeds for common data types such as blogs, newsletters, and events

Deployment

At Luther College, Reason is deployed on a dual-core Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU running at 2.80GHz, which more than adequately handles the over two million page requests the server receives each month. Reason’s required MySQL database operates on the same server as Reason, and there is also a devoted server for development and testing.

Initial setup began in late February 2009. Installation requires a system administrator with Linux knowledge but is nothing out of the ordinary. Integration with LDAP went smoothly. By early March a skeleton template of the home page had been moved into Reason. Much of April was spent learning the Reason administrative interface and becoming familiar with the Reason code base. In mid-May a design concept for the new admissions site was finalized and June was frantically spent developing its template. On June 30, 2009, just over four months after our initial kick-off, the home page and redesigned admissions site went live in Reason.

Fast forward a year later: 140 sites are now in Reason, about two thirds of those live and the balance in development. The goal is have all departments currently using Dreamweaver and Contribute deployed in Reason by summer’s end then commence to move sports and music. Did I mention that there is a complete site redesign of www.luther.edu thrown into the mix due to be completed in October 2010?

Staffing

Reason form creation using Disco. Note the Luther customizations to the Email of Recipient field.

Luther College has three FTEs devoted to supporting the web for its 2,500 students, 180 faculty, 500 staff, 22,000 alumni, 20,000 prospective students, and the general public. The reality is that resources are needed to maintain a CMS, open-source or not. With an open-source product staff are required to maintain a server, write templates, develop style sheets, create content, customize code, and support users. With a commercial product resources are needed to maintain a server, write templates, develop style sheets, create content, convince a vendor to customize its code, and support users.

Instead of paying the high up-front cost of a commercial CMS and on-going yearly maintenance fee Library and Information Services reassigned one of its full-time programmer/analysts specifically to Reason system administration, writing extensions to Reason, and training and supporting the 150 or so content contributors on campus. In addition the Publications Office has two full-time staff members dedicated to web work, one of whom is responsible for writing content critical to the marketing mission of the college and assisting Reason users, the other for developing templates and style sheets, writing custom modules in Reason, and supporting campus wide web infrastructure. A student worker is also devoted to web work for 10 hours each week during the school year.

What Reason could do better

Luther College’s current web architecture makes extensive use of http proxy to take advantage of different back-end servers, including Reason. One complaint of Reason is that it doesn’t behave well under an assumed name. The server name is hard-coded into much of its code base, and the Loki editor automatically converts any relative link to absolute. So /admissions/students becomes reason.luther.edu/admissions/students, instead of letting Apache prepend the appropriate www.luther.edu during proxy. Reason does this by design since a Reason site may be based on a virtual server name such as sports.luther.edu and music.luther.edu. Carleton College does not make use of proxy but rather redirects most of its web traffic to its Reason server hosted at apps.carleton.edu. For example carleton.edu/admissions gets redirected to apps.carleton.edu/admissions.

Another annoyance is the Reason console’s lack of ability to select a group of items to be included on a page all at once. For example if a user wants to include 20 images on a given page each must be selected one at time from a list, with a page refresh each time. The process needs to be repeated for each of the 20 images.

Support

It is an understatement when I mentioned earlier that technical support for Reason is outstanding—it’s phenomenal. I would go as far as saying that Reason’s unofficial support exceeds the service received on any platform campus wide. When a question is posted to the Reason discussion group, Nathan White or Matt Ryan at Carleton College reply back usually within the hour with a detailed and accurate remedy to the problem. On several occasions Carleton’s web group has welcomed us to campus for day-long tutorials and coding sessions. Documentation is certainly adequate, and for you budding authors out there, the Reason bible has yet to be written. There has even been talk of Reasonpalooza, the first ever Reason Users Group conference, rumored to be held next winter in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Extending Reason to integrate with other systems

Twitter Feeds is a Luther College customized content type available to any Reason site.

The beauty of open-source programs is that you don’t have to wait for a vendor to develop a requested feature—you can do it in-house if you have an experienced PHP programmer on board. Reason is laid out in such a way that it is easily extensible. A directory called reason_package has the complete Reason code base, and a corresponding directory named reason_package_local contains any user modifications. Reason is smart enough to first look for local customizations before loading the core modules.

Luther College has developed several extensions to Reason including:

• site-wide integration of Highslide Javascript thumbnail viewer
• an image slideshow that loads images directly from a Flickr account
• enhanced media capabilities to include YouTube videos
• customized Twitter feeds

By default, when a thumbnail of an image is linked to a corresponding full-size image, the larger image appears in a pop-up window. Luther College easily changed this default functionality to utilize Highslide instead.

The Image Slideshow module is fairly basic in Reason. Luther College enhanced this module and then went one step further to serve images directly from Flickr. The campus wide response to the Flickr solution has been overwhelmingly positive with many departments jumping on the bandwagon.

Luther College moved much of its video hosting to YouTube during the 2009-10 academic year. The publications office was spending too much time creating and encoding Quicktime videos then embedding them in Dreamweaver and Contribute pages by hand. By writing an extension to Reason’s Media Works module, placement and styling of a YouTube video is dictated by Reason template instead of haphazard positioning of an html embed tag in the main content. Note that the thumbnail used to link to the video itself is loaded directly from YouTube.

Student groups in particular needed a solution to incorporate Twitter feeds. Reason not only has a way to extend modules but also a method to create or customize a content manager itself. Luther College’s Twitter feed content manager has its own administrative form in Reason designed to gather information about a specific Twitter account. Be aware that writing a content manager can be overwhelming at first and is certainly more involved than extending a module. But once completed it is fully integrated within the Reason framework.

Other projects in the works are a campus wide e-commerce solution and a Reason interface to Google Calendar. Although users can sign on to the Reason server using LDAP, single sign on from Reason has yet to be integrated with other campus services.

Conclusion

In .eduGuru’s most recent CMS survey Reason topped the customer satisfaction list in the open-source category. Luther College has been very pleased with Reason and can vouch firsthand for the high marks Reason received in the polling. If we had it do all over again, we’d choose Reason. For those currently searching for a CMS I would definitely take a serious look at what Reason has to offer.

Related posts:

1. How Le Moyne College is Using DotNetNuke
2. How Victor Valley College is Using OmniUpdate’s OU Campus
3. How Edinboro University is Using dotCMS

So, two things faithful readers. First, if you know of an existing list, please share it in the comments below. Second, we’ve started a Google Doc spreadsheet to begin cataloging systems and giving them pass fail marks on various checkpoints dealing with the systems’ administrative, development, and management UIs (except the first column, dealing without output). In detail, based on WCAG 2.0 checkpoint levels and 508 guidelines (as they equate to WCAG 1.0). The hope is to provide a specific apples to apples comparison of how different CMSs stack up. This is a pretty large undertaking, and I can’t stress enough how important it is that you share any information you may have or know through experience (even if it just means only filling in a couple data points). This will be a big collaborative project that will have a lot of value outside of higher ed as well, so please share and pass on this post to anyone in the web development community that could contribute!

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/loriwright/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Related posts:

1. [Guru Survey] Higher Ed CMS Usage
2. The Web Singularity is Near
3. Web Development: Progressive Enhancement – Part 1

First, a couple thoughts. If you are waiting to work on the mobile web, you’re already behind. You should be planning now, at the very least. Higher education is notorious for playing catch up on technology issues, don’t let that happen here. Don’t make excuses. The mobile web is not going away. It’s not a fad. It’s not something that you want to sit and wait to “see what happens.” In the brief history of the web, we’ve seen only a couple major paradigm shifts in the Internet. The first was the shift from a small, infantile web where a few companies had staked territory, to one where anyone and everyone could have a site. Suddenly the web flattened out. The second shift was to the read-write web, a place where not only can you have your site, but you can contribute to others. The web socialized, it began to get a personality, and it was your personality. Now, we are moving to mobile devices – the next shift. I don’t look at this as a technological shift (by itself) because the change occurring isn’t just about the hardware, it’s about how we design, architect, and consume information. The ubiquity of mobile devices and the rapidity with which they are penetrating society is something entirely different from what we’ve dealt with before.

So, the good stuff. First off, let me be clear. I’m a one man army, like many of you. This project wasn’t the result of the effort of a team of a dozen people over 6 months. It was me, a couple weeks, and a lot of lost sleep. To do this, I committed to the idea that it would be a pet project. I went home, and lived mobile data and code until 1:00 or 2:00AM every morning (as my wife would probably angrily attest to). I did this because I understood that in terms of priorities, it just didn’t really fit in the 9 to 5 for me right now, but it was also something that I believed couldn’t sit around and wait for my normal project schedule to lighten up. Maybe you’re luckier. If you’re not, do what you have to do. But like I said, don’t make excuses, don’t tell me that you don’t have enough resources to get this done, because you do (you just might need to keep a little extra coffee on hand). Besides, it’ll make you look great to your boss, assuming your boss doesn’t mind you going off all maverick and coming back with cool new tools. And I won’t lie to you, you might have to take a chance on this that people will see it and be on board with launching it, especially if you’re doing it like I did as a side project. Part of me feels that you have to be willing to take those risks though when you’re in web development. Playing it safe means you’ll only ever be average.

Mobile Analytics Stats

I started with analytics, because strategy starts with informed planning. For a while now, Google Analytics has had built in visitor segmenting by mobile devices or carrier. Mobile web is still very much in a maturing phase, and one of the big questions you should consider is how to target users needs. Now, here’s quotable quote #1: Yes, a well coded, properly built site should be able to be used on any device. That is the ideal, and it is not unreasonable to say “this is what I want to strive for.” But, this project isn’t about converting your normal site into a mobile friendly template so it works everywhere. In my case, I saw that over 83% of my users were on devices with WebKit based browsers. Based on that fact, I decided to take a slightly different route, and I’ll explain why as we go on.  I started with the idea that users coming to our site were coming for specific tasks, and I was able to back that up with analytics (logins and email the big two). Now I had a starting place to build around, knowing that I had certain things to cover that mobile users were definitely doing. . That’s not to say it’s okay to ignore that other 17%. What I’m doing is trying to provide a killer experience to the biggest audience I can, with the goal to roll the rest in as best we can over time. Rather than taking a long time to get everyone, I’ll take a little time to get most people, and deal with the long tail.

jQTouch Website

jQTouch is a jQuery plugin for websites that allows you to rapidly deploy mobile sites that are feature and function rich. The catch is that it really only works in WebKit browsers. So, question number one you need to answer is if the feature tradeoff is worth it. In my case, I said yes. I was willing to sacrifice the 17%, not just because of the features, but because jQTouch gives you the added bonus of allowing you to build and deploy a site relatively rapidly. But, there are also other platforms, such as the MIT Mobile Web framework that would similarly enable you with somewhat better compatibility, albeit lest whizbang factor out of the box (plus we aren’t a PHP shop).

Another benefit of jQTouch is that it can effectively allow you to build an entire site in one HTML file (obviously including CSS and JS includes, which add a not insignificant amount of overhead, I recommend compressing them all). Once the page has loaded, it can give you access to a large amount of information very quickly, without page load delays in between. I use this for most of the core navigation and pages, then use the built in AJAX detection to handle things like the news feeds and events which change frequently. I should note that our content management system, dotCMS, allows me to be extremely flexible with dynamic content reuse on our site. Doing custom things with content used elsewhere on the website is an extremely painless process for us. I hope you are just as lucky in that case, because it will dramatically improve your development process. If not, RSS feeds can be your friend.

What it amounts to is jQTouch lets you design a mobile site that can behave very much like an iPhone application. Why would you want that? Because it’s not about pages anymore. Mobile usability is a completely different realm from our normal websites, so it’s not good enough to just do a mobile compatible layout (this goes back to the earlier point). It’s the information that is important. You have to take into account how people are using your site from a mobile device, because their activities will be substantially more action and goal driven than they would be sitting behind a PC. We are stewards of information, and webpages are the vessel. But the terrain is changing, and that means we need a new vessel for our information. It’s about the content, the context, and the motives

Now, quotable quote #2: Never stop improving! Ever. Our initial feature set was based on two things: what our analytics told me about where on the site people were going while using mobile devices, and what I could easily integrate without polluting the interface (news and calendar). From within the mobile site and from the site’s PC based about page, there are links to recommend features or report bugs. Believe it or not, the people using your site will tell you what does and doesn’t work for them. You just have to be listening. And once in a while you might have to get out and ask. My point is, don’t make guesses about what your users need, let them inform you. Over time, you might discover certain features go stale as user tastes, trends, and expectations change. Be prepared to cut away things that didn’t work or don’t work anymore to make room for better tools. User needs will change. But you have to be paying attention in order to address it.

Along with that, you need to set some kind of goals, so that you know what to strive towards. But be realistic. Don’t come out saying you want to do something that would completely require a change in the fundamental way someone expects to use the site: for instance, getting 10% of admission applications from mobile devices isn’t exactly realistic, because that’s not an activity you would expect people to be doing from a mobile device anyway (or maybe they are, if that’s what your analytics tells you, in which case that’s pretty awesome on its own). Start with reinforcing anticipated behavior and building expected behavior.

So, to recap:

1. Start checking your analytics, get out and ask people, find out what mobile users are doing on your site now.
2. Figure out what you can easily, and rapidly get out to those users from that list, plus anything else that could be valuable.
3. Pick some kind of framework or model to base your site on. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Don’t run before you can walk.
4. Change how you think about “web content.” Consider how and where it is to be used.
5. Set up a couple goals, something simple, something realistic.
6. Build it. Include analytics in it.
7. Watch. Listen. Measure.
8. Improve it. Make new goals.
9. Repeat steps 7 and 8 until you die.

Once your site is out in the world, you can start to really refine the experience. If you have the developer backing, you can even easily turn that site into an actual mobile app using tools like PhoneGap, letting you kill two birds with one stone. Suddenly, not only are you maintaining a mobile site, but you’re covering five different mobile app markets, with barely more overhead than the initial site.

I will be presenting on mobile web strategy with HigherEdHero.com July 29th at 12:00PM CDT, so mark your calendars if you want to get more information on this topic.

Related posts:

1. Mobile Analytics Revisited (Have You Been Keeping Up?)
2. Best of the Mobile Higher Ed Web
3. Mobile Analytics: The Neglected Mutant Step Child

Today, it is completely unimaginable that a university would exist without a website. Bad, good, awesome, terrible – it doesn’t matter, you have one. It is expected, demanded, and if you didn’t, it would have a devastating impact on the impression people have of your school. We are little more than a stone’s throw away from this same trend for mobile web. Over the next two years, expect this demand to grow exponentially (and I’m not speaking hyperbolically). Start researching now. Learn what others are already doing, and begin to craft a strategy so that you will be ready to make the move.

First, here are some suggestions when you start thinking about what you should do to design your mobile web site:

1. Having a mobile site isn’t just about making your current site look pretty on mobile phones. Usability is different. Accessibility is different. Trends are different. The same as with your current site, starting a mobile site means researching your audience(s), and building the tools to meet their needs.
2. Mobile web is about more than the iPhone. Yeah, there are a lot of them out there, but don’t forget about Blackberries, Android based phones, Palms (though their future is uncertain), and Windows Mobile, to name a few. WebKit is cool and renders pretty well, but it isn’t as ubiquitous as you might think.
3. Sites are better than apps. A well designed mobile web site will serve you better and be easier to maintain than trying to keep up with several different mobile applications (even if the apps themselves are really cool). If you have the resources, then go for it, but only if you feel you have done everything with a mobile web site that you can. Besides, if you can’t do a mobile website well, what makes you think you can handle one or more mobile applications?
4. Set goals. Once you know your audience and needs, decide what you’ll provide them and how to determine if it was a success. Once you’ve done that, begin looking at the problems introduced by a mobile platform, and then set new goals to fix them. Goal #1: Never stop setting goals.
5. Don’t be afraid to compromise. Like I said, whining about our resources won’t change the fact that we’ll have to address this need, but we can acknowledge that we might not be able to do it perfectly. Do what you can, plan phases into your feature roll out, and admit (to yourself, your peers, your bosses, and your audiences) that good work can take time. This might sound in conflict with #2, but we still have an obligation to balance the ideal with reality.
6. Don’t reinvent the wheel. It’s hard to be revolutionary, and if you are, you risk alienating audiences with predefined expectations. Your mobile site might end up looking like someone else’s, and that’s okay. Make your tools good, usable, and valuable. People will forgive you even if you aren’t setting a new standard. I’m not telling you to not try new things, just don’t try to redefine the standard.
7. Measure and adjust. Let me say that again: MEASURE AND ADJUST. This might surprise you, but this concept applies to stuff beyond mobile web development. Being successful at what you do means you need to measure goals, and make adjustments accordingly. Even the most successful efforts will turn stale over time. The web is like a living thing (I’ve been really going with these comparisons lately, huh?), you must maintain it. Feed it, groom it, and take care of it. If you stop measuring and adjusting, you are not doing your job.

So, now the fun part. I want to showcase a handful of sites for you that are out there that you might be able to get some ideas and take some cues from. This is obviously not an exhaustive list. It’s not a perfect list. It’s in no particular order. And I also have to admit I only went through these on my iPhone, as I unfortunately lacked anything else as I worked up this post. But, of the several dozen sites I went through, these all had a little something extra to bring to the table.

1: Virginia Tech – http://mobile.vt.edu/

Virgina Tech’s mobile site is a great example of a site with a nice smattering of a little bit of everything. The layout is simple, and the theme is fairly eye-pleasing and easy to read. While their mobile map implementation is simple, it is a nice touch and can be useful for visitors who come to campus. On that note, they dedicate a page to visitors, though I think that would benefit from a parking location map under the parking info section.

2: MIT (http://mobi.mit.edu/about/) – http://m.mit.edu

I’m not really sure how you can expect MIT to not make this list. For one, they have probably one of the most technically heavy mobile sites available currently. Two, they’ve actually released their framework for anyone to use, and that’s just super nice of them. Sure, it’s not going to win any design awards, but they have crammed a ton of tools into a limited space, and made them flexible and useful. They have also kept their audience in mind, not wasting space on tools that simply wouldn’t be useful to the average, geeky student there.

3: Adelphi University (http://m.adelphi.edu/info.php) – http://m.adelphi.edu/

I share Adelphi as an example of a simple, but appealing mobile site design. They’ve named their page (AU2Go), and followed the Apple tradition of icon based “app” links. The “Today at Adelphi” is a great idea for a tool, giving users a quick snapshot of things taking place that day. Ideally, this would be more than just an event list, and could include more engagement, specific calls to action, and multimedia to reinforce those activities. The campus directory is a nice touch, even if it lacks people search. I also found it interesting that they specifically broke out the art exhibitions and have to wonder if that’s a result of specific community targeting, or just a “let’s do it because we can” feature.

4: West Virginia University (http://m.wvu.edu/about/) – http://m.wvu.edu/

Like Adelphi, West Virginia also sticks to the button theme. But, I find WVU to have successfully created a mobile page that I just find exceptionally pleasing to look at. The colors are nice, the icons are sharp, and the color theme is easy on the eyes. They’ve gone the extra distance to actually pull their YouTube feed right into their page, a nice touch, as well as provide a directory search within the mobile framework. The map, though a little slow, is very well implemented. Lastly, check out their athletics section. If I had to pick a favorite, WVU might just be it, as they’ve done a whole lot right and very well.

5: Roanoke College (http://www.rcnewsblog.com/?p=933) – http://i.roanoke.edu or http://m.roanoke.edu/

Roanoke took a simple approach to their button tools. That’s okay. What really makes them stand out is the fact that they have used their mobile home page as more than just a bunch of button links, and have gone so far as bringing in news and multimedia to share the space as well. You have to scroll the page to see it all, which can get missed since the page doesn’t provide any indication of more content “below the fold” of the mobile viewport. I like that they thought outside the box on that though, and it doesn’t feel awkward at all when using it. They are also one of the only sites I saw that included a dining menu too, something that even as staff I would find useful, as I like eating on campus once in a while. Lastly, they took the time to do two versions of the site, one specific for iPhones, and one more generic (both links above).

6: Oxford University – http://m.ox.ac.uk/

Across the pond at Oxford they’ve also gotten in the game. What made them stand out to me was that they have built in their iTunesU section for mobile devices, and have also made campus webcams available for viewing. While I’m not sure how useful the webcams would be, it is certainly darn cool. Looking at their mobile domain name also makes me giggle a little, for no good reason. The map, in my opinion, needs work. It has really been built with campus people in mind, and as someone who’s never been to England in the first place, I couldn’t even use it. So, nothing super great here, but a couple unique touches that are nice to see.

7: Ohio State University – http://m.osu.edu/

Last but not least is Ohio State University, which is right there with WVU for sites that I have stolen ideas from really like. Right off the bat, on the iPhone you’ll notice they’re making use of the GPS (I assume for things like the directions page). The page itself is well designed, and is easy to look at and make sense of. They broke away from the more common button/icon based navigation, which I thought was nice to see. The search tool is top notch. They were also one of the only mobile sites I saw that included a section for mobile media, like ringtones and wallpapers. I would be curious to see if they are tracking stats on that tool’s usage. All in all another very well planned, designed, and executed mobile site that their users should be proud to have.

Tools

The mobile world is still a little wild and untamed at the moment, and it is important to make sure you have the necessary tools to make sure you mobile site behaves as expected. Here’s a handful of resources to get you started, in hopes that they can make your tasks easier. Use them to populate your toolbox with to prepare you as you look into building or enhancing your mobile presence.

Simulators/Emulators

• Opera Mobile Simulator
• Microsoft Device Emulator 3.0
• Blackberry Device Simulator
• iPhone Test Center/Emulator
• More reading on mobile device emulators

Scripts

• jQTouch – A jQuery plugin for mobile web development on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and other forward-thinking (preferably WebKit based) mobile browsers. Documentation isn’t great, but the tool is pretty awesome. Look back soon for an article outlining our experiences using jQTouch to develop Pittsburg State University’s mobile site.
• MIT Mobile Web – A project designed to allow developers to collaborate on developing Mobile Web Sites primarily for higher education institutions to provide mobile access to information to students, faculty, staff, and visitors.
• Detect Mobile Browsers – A PHP script to detect and handle users showing mobile user agents.
• WURFL Project – Not a script, per se, but a configuration file crammed with mobile capabilities. They feature also feature Java and PHP APIs.

Sites/articles

• AdMob – A mobile analytics system.
• Google Mobile Blog – This is linking specifically to their post talking about the introduction of mobile based tracking built in to Google Analytics.
• Mobile Analytics Revisited – This is one of my past posts looking at ways to track and use mobile analytics with Google.
• Mobile Web Design Trends for 2009 – Even though it’s a year old, this article from Smashing Magazine still has a ton of good and relevant information in it.
• Jakob Nielsen on Mobile Usability – Always thorough and extremely useful, Jakob looks at a number of issues facing mobile site usability.
• CSS eye-candy in mobile browsers, a comparison – a simple table view of some advanced CSS3 features and how they compare across multiple mobile browsers.

Hopefully you can walk away from this with some ideas and ammunition for your mobile project. If you have any additional resources that you’ve found particularly useful that aren’t mentioned here, be sure to share them in the comments. We have recently completed the first step of designing our mobile web site using jQTouch, and will be launching it shortly (thanks to those of you that assisted me by lending me your eyes and phones for testing). Just after the formal launch, I’ll be outlining and discussing the process we took, and how we’ll be handling the site moving forward, so keep your eyes open for that post coming up soon to answer additional questions you may still have.

Related posts:

1. Mobile Analytics Revisited (Have You Been Keeping Up?)
2. Mobile PittState – How We Did It With No Money or Resources
3. Mobile Analytics: The Neglected Mutant Step Child

To allow OU Campus to publish to this server, we created an eDirectory user (we are a totally Novell campus) and granted FTP permissions through our firewall to their system using their servers’ static IP address (which we setup in the “Accounts –> Sites” of OU Campus…very straightforward), and I added that IP address to the Linux server’s ‘hosts.allow‘ file.

Selectable editable regions

In June of 2007, we migrated the website off of that Linux dinosaur (it had been running faithfully since August of 2001 at that time), and onto a Dell PowerEdge 1750 1U Rack mount server running Novell NetWare 6.5, Apache, MySQL, and and PHP. This server was a dual 2.8GHz Xeon CPU system with 36GB RAID array and 2GB RAM (so a BIG step up). We used a combination of Novell network copy and OU Campus to move the site over to the new server and publish the up-to-date content (site export and import in OU Campus is very nice).

In August of 2009 (of course, on the first day of the Fall 2009 Semester @ about 10:00 am), the hardware in that Dell PowerEdge 1750 server experienced a major problem, so we switched over to a Dell PowerEdge 1955 Blade server (with similar specs as the 1750 above) and were back online within 20-30 minutes. Manipulating site configuration in OU Campus during these moves was no problem at all.

Getting our site ready for editing was not difficult, although it was somewhat labor-intensive to add editable region tags to each ‘existing’ website that I wanted to hand over to individual departments for editing. OmniUpdate’s staff tagged a large number of pages for me, and offered to assist me in the setup of my initial couple of templates, although at that time, the website that I had inherited had no rhyme or reason to it (there were at least 6 or 7 completely different page layouts, not to mention the endless series of “one off” web pages/sites that had been created by individuals who were clearly not familiar with how to put together a website, yet had been given ‘carte blanche’ FTP access to their site’s publicly available web directory on the web server), so I told them I would just start slowly, tagging individual websites as I trained each department to edit their own content.

Find and replace

At the same time, I slowly began removing these aforementioned individuals’ direct FTP access to our web server, and began ‘nudging’ them towards using OU Campus as I tagged their particular departmental website for editing and uploaded it into the CMS. Every single one of them, once presented with a basic overview of the OU Campus interface, fell in love with it immediately and were relieved to not have to use DreamWeaver or FrontPage anymore. Additionally, these users use the CMS all of the time (user adoption has been 100% here for each person trained), and they always have nothing but good things to say about OU Campus each time I talk to them.

Currently, I still do not have a single ‘template’ created within OU Campus (chock up that stroke of brilliance on my part to foregoing OmniUpdate’s offer to create them for me back in ‘06, yet I have never set the time aside to create them since…). Fortunately, you don’t have to have templates in the system to use it, however, having templates does give you more control over what happens when a new page is created. I do have plans to setup some templates in the near future (for content repurposing at the time the page is published using XSL and XSLT transformation to output multiple file types and content formats from that single publishing action), however I have not yet put them together.

File browser popup

Staffing requirements to manage OU Campus has been just me. I don’t have any other web staff here with me, and I’ve never had a student worker to assist me, so the overhead to manage existing users and incoming web publishing approvals is very manageable. With the simplicity of administration of OU Campus, I don’t honestly think another staff member is necessary. We increased our user license count to 100 this past fiscal year (which quadrupled our available user accounts, but only doubled our cost), and every new department and/or user that I train eases the deluge of incoming update requests just a bit more each time. At this point, we have setup 40 of the 100 available user accounts, most of which have been handed over to departments for managing their site’s content, so I would venture to say that the actual ‘user’ group on our campus is effectively double that number at this point in time, and I have been getting requests from other departments to set them up as well, so I anticipate that number rising dramatically within this next year…very good news.

Our annual cost of ownership was initially just under $12,000.00 (on a 3-yr. contract with a 25-user license), and it is currently $25,000.00 (for 100 user licenses) plus $4,000.00 annual support. We host the website(s), our ‘vvc.edu’ top-level domain and a full Class C IP address range ourselves, plus we have an on-campus OC3 backbone connection from a partnership with Verizon (we get a portion of the OC12 that we host on our facility for them), so that lowers our costs in that respect. The only salary to factor in to this would be mine (I’m the only web staff member at our institution), but I’d be doing this work with or without OU Campus, so that cost doesn’t apply to this study.

Editing an RSS feed

As we have increased our usage, OU Campus has never had any issues with reliability or stability in any way. Additionally, I recently created a new program website for our college that is hosted on Network Solutions’ servers, and OU Campus easily connected to and provides full editing access to that site (I setup the first page of that site with editable CMS region tags, so that has been a very simple and painless roll-out on the new site). This coming year, I plan on integrating OU Campus with our campus bookstore’s online store site (provided by “Campus Hub”) as well as exploring options for integrating it with Microsoft’s SharePoint Server content, as well as publishing XML course catalog data from our student information system, and providing a XSL/XSLT transformed web front-end for searching through our existing course information without having to edit any of it within OmniUpdate at all (I’m also planning on having that output a searchable, mobile friendly, course catalog web interface…so we’ll see how that goes…keeping my fingers crossed here…).

In just about every way, OU Campus has met and exceeded my expectations.

• Users love it and consistently USE it after I train them
• Once you get a page / template setup with editable regions, and you start creating new pages (or, even better, as your users start making new pages), it’s a pretty “hands free” setup for non-technical users to fully contribute to and manage their online content from anywhere with an Internet connection.

Content pages and options

The only thing that has been a challenge for me has been when I give users too many options on their WYSIWYG toolbars, and then they put all kinds of crazy colors and fonts on the page, and then I have to “reign them in” as I ‘take away their toolbar candy’ (like Font Size, Font Family, Text color palette options, etc.)…I know, I know…you’re sitting there reading this like…”What did you think would happen?”….and you’re exactly right. But hey, we learn from our mistakes, and I’ve since stripped just about all ‘formatting’ options from the toolbar, and I’ve been working on incorporating CSS styles into the toolbar’s “Styles” drop-down menu, so that the users will be able to style their content, without breaking the page layout/design/etc.

At this point I can’t claim to be a power user of the OU Campus CMS. We purchased it to put content management in the hands of the content creators around our campus, and it has done exactly that, but we’re not really pushing the envelope here.

As far as integrating OU Campus with other systems, currently we’re not doing any of that, although I am planning a couple of projects like that (which I mentioned briefly above), so we’ll see how that goes. Based on my experience so far with this CMS, if the content can be accessed and manipulated, I am confident that OU Campus will have no problem providing management of that content.

Built-in image editor and optimizer

OmniUpdate support absolutely second-to-none. When you call them, they answer the phone (important!), they are extremely knowledgeable and can concisely answer just about any technical question you ask, and every question/issue I have ever had is typically resolved in less than 1/2 of a business day. Their support site (http://support.omniupdate.com) is extremely thorough, and they have setup a private Ning network for OU clients at: http://ocn.omniupdate.com. This is a very good resource, and a good way to get quick answers regarding questions you might have. You can also join the OmniUpdate group on the University Web Developers Ning network at: http://cuwebd.ning.com to get involved in discussions with other higher ed web development folks about CMS topics.

Overall, I have been nothing but pleased with the simplicity of administering and managing the OU Campus system for our institution. It has definitely simplified my web content management strategy, it has improved the status of updated content on our website by providing an interface that our users consistently use, and continues to do so more and more each day. Keep in mind, however, that every CMS system roll-out will involve a lot of time to do it right, regardless of what CMS you choose, so you’ll want to be prepared to take that on, but take heart…it is worth it to put in that time.

Related posts:

1. How Le Moyne College is Using DotNetNuke
2. How Luther College is using Reason
3. OmniUpdate Users Conference Next Week

• Apache Tomcat for the application server,
• Apache Lucene for its structured content and indexing,
• Apache Velocity for templating,
• JBOSS for Caching,
• Spring and Struts,
• and Hibernate to drive the back-end database structure.

dotCMS .edu Accelerator Site

These technologies allow dotCMS to be very versatile in an enterprise by allowing it to deploy to existing database engines and Java application server technologies, as well as being fully extendable, customizable, and internationalizable.

At Edinboro, We are running dotCMS with the bundled Apache Tomcat server and have both a production and a development/staging environment.  Each of these environments runs on its own front-end Windows server (dotCMS can run in both Windows and Linux Environments).  Both instances run off of one back-end MSSQL database server (dotCMS is database engine independent and is currently fully supported to run on MySQL, PostgresSQL, Oracle and MSSQL).  All three servers have two dual core processors, and twelve gigabytes of RAM.  We also employ a SAN for file-storage and backup.

In the future we plan on adding an additional front-end server for the production environment (dotCMS fully supports clustering for scalability and high availability).  This will also include a hardware load balancing device. All this supports our nearly 300 content editors and publishers, as well as our roughly 350,000 visits per month and roughly 50,000 pages.

Deploying dotCMS

Deploying dotCMS can be a bit of work at first.  However, the product has come a long way in recent years to ease the entry barrier for new users.  You no longer have to create the database tables and load them with initial data; dotCMS does this for you the first time you start up.  There is also a bundled Windows installer for the most recent version (1.7a) that includes all the software you need to get started and sets it up in one, easy to follow installer. While it took us here at Edinboro a few weeks to get up and running, it is entirely possible to have a working dotCMS install in a matter of a few hours.  It can be as simple as downloading the current release, pointing it to a blank database and telling it to start.  This is in stark contrast to the good ol’ days when it took hours to get everything up and running.  Our original installation (based on version 1.5) took a few weeks to get everything hammered out, from installing the OS and database to configuring LDAP authentication (something that dotCMS now supports out of the box with minimal configuration).

Once you have dotCMS deployed and running, the next step is getting your content and templates converted/imported/created.  At Edinboro we chose to take the staged approach.  We started by building our templates (originally we contracted dotCMS to do this for us) and then converted the top-most sections of the website.  Once we had the main sections of the website completed, we switched the system on and started training our users to convert their pages.  The initial work to get the templates and top most pages done took around 2-3 months.  Over the course of six months to a year we systematically trained our content contributors and worked with them to convert their department webpages.  All said and done the entire process, from vendor selection to switching off the old system, took a little over a year.

Staffing needs

Website Browser

As I am sure is the case with most universities, the staff required to run a 50,000 page website and support nearly 300 editors is not necessarily what we are given to work with.  At Edinboro we have three core individuals supporting our system. I take care of the systems (software and hardware), development of web-based applications, as well as training and support for our content contributors.  We also have two people in marketing and public relations that take care of the content and design of main University’s webpages.  Ideally I would like to see a DBA (backups and database maintenance), a content expert, and another person or two to handle user support.

Costs

One of the nice things about dotCMS is that it is open source, so there are no license fees to worry about.  However, the company that supports dotCMS offers a number of support options and packages for the enterprise world.  At Edinboro we decided to go with their enterprise product and support.  Unlike other open source solutions that offer an enterprise package, dotCMS does not cripple their open source offering just to get you to buy into their enterprise package.  The enterprise package is actually a step behind the cutting edge open source product.  This allows dotCMS to offer things like a warranty and enterprise support without having to worry about the instability of the cutting-edge code as well as supporting the numerous clients that are on older versions of the software.  This doesn’t mean that the open source releases have not passed quality assurance and community testing, just that there is a version that has been locked down to the most stable code they currently run.  The enterprise license will currently run you about $4750 per CPU per year.  This gets you the warranty (if there is a bug they fix it for free with 24 hour response), automatic updates and hot-fixes, and web-based case management.  On top of that, it also opens up the enterprise support options which you can view here:  http://dotcms.org/support. Currently there is no support offered for the open source except what you can get from the community.

Support and documentation

Content Search

Currently to get enterprise support from dotCMS staff, you will need to purchase an enterprise license.  However, that does not stop you from taking advantage of the growing community support options available.  The main method to access community support is through the official mailing list.  There are many dotCMS experts in the community and the company that regularly watch the mailing list and are there to answer questions as we can.  However, you first stop might be to jump into the IRC channel (#dotcms on freenode) and ask away.  There are a growing number of people in the channel there to help.  And when you’ve exhausted the community options and need to go the extra mile, there are a few 3rd party support options that include me (pardon the shameless plug) or eduGuru’s own, Michael Fienen.

In the past year or so, dotCMS’s documentation has come a long way.  There is a great documentation wiki (built on dotCMS itself) that can provide a lot of detail on the inner workings of dotCMS.  The API is also available in javadoc format here: http://www.dotcms.org/api/.  Not to mention that Fienen has created a dotCMS Cheat Sheet and has a beginner’s book in the works.

What is it doing well?

• User Training and Adoption – It is very easy for my users to jump in and start working with dotCMS, and normally it doesn’t take me more than a few minutes to answer their questions as they come in.  The system is simple and easy to use with a built-in TinyMCE WYSIWYG Editor and pseudo-in-place editing (you can see the content in the page as you are editing but the editor opens in a separate page).
• Templating / Development - I have found Velocity (dotCMS’s templating language) more than powerful enough to code just about everything I’ve been thrown.  Velocity gets its strength from being able to directly access Java objects via View Tools.  Despite that, there are a few times where you really need some custom tooling or functionality that dotCMS does not provide.  With dotCMS’s plugin architecture and little bit of Java programming, you can accomplish these types of customizations with ease.
• Scalability – Of the open source solutions I have used, this is the only one that I have found to be scalable enough to suit the needs of Enterprise.  Most systems are great until you try to manage hundreds of users, but dotCMS really excels in this area.  dotCMS fully supports clustering.
• Structured Content – In my opinion where dotCMS truly shines is the Structured Content Engine.  Of all the systems I have tried, none have come close to the functionality and flexability that dotCMS provides. With just about every system there is a way to create dynamic structures of content.  However, it is usually clunky, not very well thought through, and tied to a specific set of content types.  Some systems even require a plugin or hack to even provide the simplest structures.  dotCMS uses a structured content engine called Lucene.  This is a very powerful system that sits at the core of dotCMS.  If you need to create new content types you are not limited to what the tool will provide.  Wrap that all up with a Lucene’s indexing capabilities and an easy way to pull dynamic content into your pages and you have a very powerful system in your hands.
• Multi-Site Hosting – dotCMS also supports multiple sites fairly well.  In terms of scalability and whether or not the system can handle it, it is not a problem.  In terms of managing multiple sites, the current (1.7a) version’s tooling works, but is clunky if you get more than a couple sites.  However, in the next release (1.9) this tooling has been completely reworked to make it much easier to manage the content for multiple sites.

What is it not doing well?

• Entrance Barrier – Having this powerful of a system does come with a cost.  Even with the new windows installer, dotCMS is not just something you throw at a cheap hosting plan and have up in running in a few hours.  It is going to take some work to get up and running.  The templating language also takes some getting used to, just like any system, but since the templating is not written in a more popular language, you will need to learn some Velocity to get started.
• Integration – Integrating dotCMS with other systems is not overly elegant.  In all reality though, I don’t know of many solutions that are.  You can certainly directly access external sources via SQL, but tighter integration will require writing a plugin.  In this regard dotCMS is looking into a number of things which may help to ease the pain of integrating external data sources.  A few of these include switching to a UUID (Universally Unique Identifier) for all its content, and adopting the CMIS standard.
• Forms – dotCMS offers a couple solutions for building and handling forms.  At its current state, I have not found either solution to fit what I need.  The next version of dotCMS has integrated the Front End Content Submission plugin into the product.
• Staging / Push Publishing – Currently there is no way to stage content on a staging server and then push that content to another system.  This also hurts plugin development as there is no elegant way to package up and ship content to another system. They also plan on addressing this with UUID’s in version 1.9, but full UI support for doing this won’t come until later down the line.

What should I consider before moving to dotCMS?

When you get down to it dotCMS is a great open source option for higher education.  There are some things dotCMS might not be the best option for.  If you are looking to host a site on a cheap hosting package, dotCMS is not an option.  It is going to take root or administrator access to the machine you are going to host it on.  Another thing to keep in mind is that while you can build just about anything in dotCMS, you have to build it.  It’s not like Wordpress or a wiki where the functionality to do certain tasks is already provided.  It certainly can be built and you may even find some good resources out there to get you 90% of the way, but in the end, you are going to have to build things out.

So there you have it.  dotCMS = Enterprise Open Source Content Management.  If you have any questions or want to get a hold of me you can certainly post a comment. Otherwise, I can be reached at @chris_falzone on twitter or you can email me at cfalzone@cfalzone.com.

Related posts:

1. How Duke University is Using Drupal
2. How Le Moyne College is Using DotNetNuke
3. How Luther College is using Reason

But, in terms of user generated content, that doesn’t mean you give away the keys to the kingdom. People are still adapting to their role in the social brand development space. They need a garden hose, yet Facebook is handing over a fire hose. Hannah Feldman of Clark College contacted us about this issue recently via our Ask the Gurus section out of a concern for this new change in Facebook’s system, and I thought it was more than important enough to open up the discourse to everyone. The issue she noted was that some folks had listed “Clark College” as an interest (or maybe as their employer, or college they attended – it can get sucked in from anywhere), and as a result, Facebook made a community page for them (actually, it appears that they have made several). Like many of us, they have put a lot of time and effort into setting up their own page for people to become fans of like.When you are dealing with communities, especially if it is a small one, it is enormously important to cultivate them and concentrate them. When people have to hunt out and think about which page to like, it ultimately hurts engagement and people miss out on the real dance (remember students joining the fake Class of 2013 pages last year?).

Facebook Quick Results FAIL for Clark College

One of the most immediate effects is that now, a quick search for Clark College doesn’t even turn up their main page in the top eight. That’s some fine SEO work there, Lou. I mean really, Facebook, you value an algorithmically generated page with 9 likers (?) over their established organizational page with almost 900 fans (screw it, fans is easier to say, and so I’m going to)? At least Lewis & Clark can sleep well tonight. Actually, most big players have nothing to fear in this instance, for whatever mysterious reason. It’s all the smaller players that really need the exposure the most that seem to have been overlooked.

And sure, maybe that could be overlooked, except for one thing: the community pages are worthless. Let’s just call a duck a duck here. Big pages are just scraping and displaying information from Wikipedia, and small pages just do a regex match for people’s status updates and aggregates the hits. That has an obvious effect: the community page for Clark College is showing people mentioning Lewis & Clark College. And you know how I mentioned that big pages seem to fair the quick results storm okay? Don’t worry, Facebook has reserved the right to co-op your pages and turn over it’s development to the community, and there’s pretty much no information on what rules or standards apply to that policy, besides “If it becomes very popular (attracting thousands of fans)…”. This is what I meant when I said too much of a good thing. You can’t just open the flood gates and start creating pages algorithmically from the interests, et cetera that people are putting in. Something like this must be balanced, tempered. At least for now, fans of Clark College are now forced to do a hard search for their school if they want to actually engage with them.

What’s to be done? At the moment, I can find very little, besides getting loud and angry. There appears to be no “flag this page as erroneous” feature, or anything like it. Write Facebook and explain your displeasure, and see if we can motivate the development of better checks and balances. I wouldn’t suggest signing up to be notified when they are ready for help building the pages yet, one because there’s no information on when that will be or what it will enable, and two because I’d hate to do anything that would appear to be supporting this process before there’s a clear path to how it’ll help us fix it. Social networking is a dance. You throw a party, help people get out on the floor, and get out of the damn way. People have a good time, they talk about that time you threw an awesome party, and you take credit for that couple that met there and got hitched later. Instead, Facebook has turned into that loud, obnoxious girl that spills her drinks on people and trips you when you’re trying to make your move on the cute girl with the Jimi Hendrix obsession. We just want you to throw an awesome party and stay out of the way, Facebook.

In today’s web, brand dilution is a huge challenge to deal with when marketing your school (or ANYTHING), and Facebook just walked up and dumped a bucket of gas on the fire (no more metaphors or similes, I swear! Especially because a bucket of water is probably a more fitting comparison in this instance…). AllFacebook.com takes a good look at brand impacts from this as well, using an excellent example with Coca-Cola. I’m waiting to see how they answer this issue, but my worry is that some of the damage is done. My initial thought is just how much actual, human interaction it will take to clean up this mess, and I just don’t think they have it, and in this case I don’t really think you can just rely on the “community” while claiming “hey, that’s how Web 2.0 works, baby.”

I wish I could say there was a silver lining. I wish I had a bulletproof suggestion for how to make sure your brand management isn’t tossed to the wind. I don’t. Community pages are designed to be “dedicated to a topic or experience that is owned collectively by the community connected to it,” which is fine for pages about Pogs and brewing your own beer. It’s trouble for companies though. I doubt this story is anywhere near over.

Related posts:

1. Facebook Communities: Now What?
2. Feeling Naked: A Tale of the Disappearing Facebook Fan Page
3. Negative Facebook Comments: @#$% Me

The problem?  Our budget was extremely small, eliminating the more commonly-implemented CMS tools.   Knowing that we wanted to use an open-source tool that would grow with us and utilize our .NET skills, we began to look at DNN.  Much like Duke’s use of Drupal, we also rely on DNN as a framework and a content management system.

DNN calls themselves the “most widely adopted web CMS for business-critical .NET web sites”, touting the fact it can serve as a CMS or a development platform.  DNN uses a three-tier architecture model with a core framework that supports extensible modules.  Third party modules can be (and in our experience need to be) added to extend the functionality.  The look and feel of a DNN site can have unlimited customization using skins and containers (think templates).

The LeMoyne.edu Environment

Online registration has helped automate much of our Admission staff workflow

We’re currently running the Community Edition of DotNetNuke (version 4.8.4) and are in the process of upgrading to Professional Edition 5.3.2.   We’ll talk about the difference between Community and Professional editions later on.

In terms of hardware powering the site, we’re currently running IIS 6 and SQL Server 8 on a Windows 2003 server, but are beginning the process to upgrade to a Windows 2008 server with IIS 7 and SQL Server 2008.  We’re also planning to implement Active Directory, which will eliminate the need for us to use the native DNN security roles and manual account creation.

We currently have roughly 300 users in our system falling into 2 categories:  those who are content creators for the lemoyne.edu site (accounting for the majority of users) and those who have access to restricted portions of our site (such as our Board of Trustees Members, those taking part in a Cultural Competence Initiative sponsored by our Physician Assistant Program, and class-specific portal sites for students in an Advanced Journalism class).   Access for content providers is role-based, which users being assigned to one of 65 current security roles.

Out of the Box and into Production

The best part of the deployment experience was getting under the hood to see all the things the system could do and finding tools to simplify 99% of the custom processes that we’d had to write when we were using a system of largely static HTML.

Sample skin code with DNN tokens

We faced a couple significant challenges, however.  The primary one was communicating to the campus that change was coming.  What worked in our favor was the project was part of the larger integrated marketing initiative, so that eliminated the question of “Why does this need to be done?  The site seems pretty good as it is.”   The other huge challenge we faced was to change the campus mindset from organizing the site’s information architecture by the campus organization chart to an audience-based and task-based structure.  Some of the biggest battles on our campus came not from the decision to move to a content management system or deploying the technology, but from getting buy-in from campus offices that the changes were needed.

Another challenge I faced during the DNN implementation was to convert the templates created by the local design agency we were working with into CSS-based skins.  All the designs were given to us as table-based layouts.  Creating skins within the DNN framework is a fairly straightforward process once you understand the token and class structure that’s used in DNN pages (called tabs) and containers that hold the DNN modules used on a tab.   (http://www.skinningtoolkit.com is an excellent resource to dig into how the DNN pieces will fit together on a skin.  We also invested in a subscription to DNNCreative Magazine http://www.dnncreative.com/ which contains video tutorials for everything from skinning to developing modules, to working with the DNN core functionality)

Deployment went very smoothly because we’d had DNN up and running in a live environment, had the server technologies in place, and had the Microsoft-based skill sets.  Out of the box, DNN comes with a pretty solid feature set, but we did find as we began bringing the content into the system, we had to find some third-party modules to supplement the core functions.  As an example, we discovered that the DNN core video module could not be configured to not auto-play videos, so we purchased a YouTube-like gallery for less than $100 that gave us better customization of playback, plus provided tagging, user comments, and categorizing videos.  On the other hand, DNN’s core Repository module was a perfect tool to allow us to create collections of files that had detailed descriptive information, author contact information, and file size that was not only categorized and searchable, but also allowed community features such as user rating and reviews.

We actually deployed the system two months ahead of schedule.  Our deadline was shifted with the college’s new president coming to campus and identifying the website as a strategic priority for redevelopment.  I wasn’t going to be the one to tell him it couldn’t be done!

Staffing Requirements

Sample text editing screen

System, module, and user support is handled through Information Technology.  Our Communications office is responsible for design of new page elements and ensuring that our content providers stay in line with the college’s design and marketing standards.   There is one student worker within Information Technology that also provides support.   This model is working well for us and because of the size of our institution; the partnership between IT and the Communications groups works well.  While additional staffing would allow us to move further with development, budget constraints are preventing that conversation from happening for a while.

The Bottom Line

When we first launched our DNN site, the biggest annual cost of ownership was an support subscription through the DNN Corporation ($6,000 annually).  DNN has shifted their model to now have two editions:  Community and Professional.  Community remains completely open source, but the Professional edition now includes support ($1,999 annually).    The Professional edition (which we are in the process of implementing) includes new features like more granular permissions, as well as version control (both of which are lacking in the Community edition).  We typically spend around $1,000 annually on licensing new modules to enhance our environment and on training.

Keeping the Lights on

We’ve been very happy with how our site has scaled and performed since deploying DNN.  We’ve seen a 200% increase in traffic to the site since we’ve launched.    One unintended benefit has been that DNN’s user creation and security role functions have helped us answer the question of how to remove access to student workers.  In our static system, we relied on FTP to post content to the site, so removing accounts had to be done manually on the server.  DNN lets us set an expiration date for our users, which has helped us support offices that use a high volume of student workers to contribute content to the site with the knowledge that when they leave the institution, their access will be removed as well.

One area where it has not scaled well for us is URL re-writing.  We have purchased a commercial module to help with this following our upgrade, but currently we use a pretty cumbersome system of creating IIS redirects to provide vanity url’s and landing pages.  Another area where we have had issues is with the lack of version control (we tried a couple commercial modules to help, but they were difficult for our content providers to work with).  We’re looking forward to version control in the professional edition.

Pushing the Envelope

Video gallery integrates with Amazon’s S3 service

From what we’ve seen and heard from the DNN community, the size of our implementation by far pushes the limits of a typical DNN installation (we’re currently serving 2,100 pages through DNN).

We’ve created an online training library using a couple of the modules which has helped us reach a broader number of users that couldn’t attend in-person training during the work day.  We’ve also implemented Amazon’s S3 service for video streaming and storage.  Our video module integrates seamlessly with S3 to eliminate the need to have video files stored and served from our campus network.  One of the features we’re starting to roll out to a greater audience across campus is using the child portal concept as a framework to allow a class to create content.   We’ve also been able to successfully run a commerce platform allowing us to accept admission deposits online, as well as provide laptops for purchase to the campus.

Does it Play Well with Others?

We’re at the beginning of a portal redevelopment project, so we haven’t done much in the way of integrating any DNN features with our ERP system or vice-versa.  As we move forward with our Active Directory implementation, logging into DNN will be seamless (we currently manually create accounts and assign users to the appropriate security role without any password synchronization).

We’re in the middle of our first project where course information will come out of our ERP system and we’ll use the XML module to display that data in DNN to have updated information from our College catalog readily available online (instead of a pdf of the catalog).

What if I Need Help?

If someone doesn’t want to purchase a Professional Edition license which includes an online help ticketing system, there are still plenty of sources for support.  DNN Creative has a very active community of DNN users that have been a great resource for troubleshooting.   The main DNN site also has an extensive community of active developers.

We’ve also had very good luck working with our module vendors.   One cautionary note is that DNN will not provide support for any third-party modules that have been added to your DNN installation.  It will be interesting to see if that position changes based on DNN’s relatively new partnership with Snowcovered (a warehouse of third-party modules for DNN)

I’ve also had good luck following a couple recognized DNN leaders (@WillStrohl, @leesykes, @mitchelsellers) on Twitter for quick answers to questions or recommendations of best practices.

Will it Work for You?

The primary reason we selected DNN was because our skillsets aligned perfectly with the .NET platform and we had the SQL and IIS infrastructure in place.  At the point where we selected DNN, the cost of commercial alternatives was prohibitive as well.

A couple things that we really liked that may not appeal to everyone included our commitment to enhancing or deploying third-party modules.  Because of DNN’s commitment to open source, developers are welcome to tweak the modules, as well as develop their own solutions.

We also were very attracted to the flexibility to develop skins (or templates) within the DNN framework.  But that is a process much like building an HTML template from the ground up.

While it might be present in future versions, reporting can be a bit of a challenge as well, but I’ve been able to write some custom SQL queries to generate the answers we need (the biggest example is who has permissions to edit specific modules within the system)

We also had to make a pretty sizable commitment going in to training because it was a dramatic shift in how things were done on campus (although I’m sure that’s true with any rollout).  So in addition to creating skins, implementing and configuring the modules we needed, and bringing content into the system, we held over 20 training sessions on campus (the one thing that worked against us was that the implementation took place over the summer, so it was difficult to reach large chunks of departments).  I’ve been developing a series of videos using Jing that we’re posting on our training site to cut down the in-person sessions conducted in the future and address the commonly-used features of the modules.

Related posts:

1. How Luther College is using Reason
2. How Victor Valley College is Using OmniUpdate’s OU Campus
3. How Duke University is Using Drupal

Here’s the issue, as we understand it. Recently, section 15 part 2 of the Facebook Terms of Service was brought to the attention of the state attorney general. That section reads:

15. Disputes
2: If anyone brings a claim against us related to your actions, content or information on Facebook, you will indemnify and hold us harmless from and against all damages, losses, and expenses of any kind (including reasonable legal fees and costs) related to such claim.

The apparent problem is that the CO state constitution forbids such an agreement. Indemnity is the paying of damages or a sum of money paid in compensation for loss or injury, in this case if you were to do something that got Facebook sued, you agree to pay them back. The issue in point seems to be CRS §24-30-202(1), which states that the state controller has to approve any “contract,” in this case including the Facebook TOS, with regard to the agreement of paying any money out. As a result, they determined the best course of action (legally speaking) was to advise state agencies to suspend the use of Facebook while they work to negotiate around the issue of indemnity. The state attorney general had no comment about the specific instructions or advice given to the organizations, nor about what actions are currently being pursued with Facebook.

So, here’s the thing. It’s not that Colorado is going all “we hate Facebook” on everyone. It’s nothing like that at all. It’s a case where the wild world of web site terms of service is coming into conflict with the realm of state contract law, and people weren’t sure how to respond. As we understand it, the state is or will be negotiating with Facebook to find a resolution to this issue, at which point we can assume agencies will be allowed to resume their use of Facebook (hopefully) normally. But how long that takes, and how successful they are will be variables that we’ll have to wait to find out about. Facebook has never, and reasonably would never actively use indemnity as a weapon to go after users – imagine the PR storm that would follow. More likely, it’s boilerplate legalese that is there just for general protection in cases of serious abuses.

What’s more, this issue isn’t just about Facebook, it’s just what started it. Here’s MySpace’s (it’s actually even worse):

17. Indemnity. You agree to indemnify and hold MySpace, its subsidiaries, and affiliates, subcontractors and other partners, and their respective officers, agents, partners and employees, harmless from any loss, liability, claim, or demand, including, but not limited to, reasonable attorneys’ fees, made by any third party due to or arising out of your use of the MySpace Services in violation of this Agreement and/or arising from a breach of this Agreement and/or any breach of your representations and warranties set forth in this Agreement and/or any Content that you post on, through or in connection with the MySpace Services.

And YouTube:

5. Your Use of Content on the Site
G. You understand that when using the YouTube Website, you will be exposed to User Submissions from a variety of sources, and that YouTube is not responsible for the accuracy, usefulness, safety, or intellectual property rights of or relating to such User Submissions. You further understand and acknowledge that you may be exposed to User Submissions that are inaccurate, offensive, indecent, or objectionable, and you agree to waive, and hereby do waive, any legal or equitable rights or remedies you have or may have against YouTube with respect thereto, and agree to indemnify and hold YouTube, its Owners/Operators, affiliates, and/or licensors, harmless to the fullest extent allowed by law regarding all matters related to your use of the site.

And probably one of the scariest ones, Ning:

22. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Ning, and its successors, subsidiaries, affiliates, co-branders, contractors, employees, all third-party advertisers, technology providers, service providers or other partners, and each of their respective officers, directors, agents, shareholders, employees and representatives, from and against any third party claim, demand, loss, damage, cost, or liability (including, reasonable attorneys’ fees) arising out of or relating to:

* Your Code, Your Content or Your Social Network;
* Your use of any Non-Ning Code or Third Party Applications;
* Your use or misuse of, or connection to, the Ning Platform;
* Your breach or alleged breach of this Agreement;
* Your violation of any rights (including intellectual property rights) of a third party;
* Your use or misuse of any User data (including Ning Member Data and Network Member Data), including, in violation of the Ning Privacy Policy and
* Your breach or alleged breach of any agreement or policy between you and other Users.

Ning reserves the right, at your expense, to assume the exclusive defense and control of any matter for which you are required to indemnify us and you agree to cooperate with our defense of these claims. You agree not to settle any matter without the prior written consent of Ning. Ning will use reasonable efforts to notify you of any such claim, action or proceeding upon becoming aware of it.

Anyway, I think you get the idea (note that I couldn’t find anything in Twitter’s TOS about indemnity or holding harmless). It’s not that these companies are all “RAWR, WE’RE GONNA TAKE ALL YOU’S MONIESSS!“, it’s just that this is extremely common, protectionary contract verbiage. But, regardless of how innocuous it is, it clearly can have a real world impact on those of us in the public sector, where we have higher rules and laws dictating some of our activities. In Colorado’s case, it’s not that they are responding to a problem that arose, they just want to prevent any issues from happening in the first place. Even if we all know that the threat of any liability here isn’t worth breaking a sweat over, the laws are the laws. Welcome to the world of state employment.

Here’s the advise I can give you: inform yourself. Know what your state’s position is on indemnity clauses in web site terms of service. Ask your legislative liaisons and campus lawyers questions. Once this information gets out very far, you can bet Colorado won’t be the last one to go through this situation, so be sure you are prepared and know your state’s legal traps. And in the same breath, READ TOSs! I know the minute I say that everyone goes “Yeah! We should!“, and then immediately goes back to checking boxes and clicking agree to everything. But the reality is, in private there’s not much risk, but in our day job the rules change. Make sure you understand where these conflicts can happen.

I’ll keep this post updated as we get more information and as news develops. If you’ve been through similar experiences in your state or school, be sure to share them in the comments below.

UPDATE 10.04.08 3:44PM CDT: @brucefloyd tells us “Was just told by someone at @uflorida legal that this is a problem for almost all states, inc Florida…” Additionally, Texas appears to have restrictions preventing indemnification in it’s constitution in article III §50-52 and article XI §3.

UPDATE 10.04.08 4:03PM CDT: I offer up an interesting position on the issue of indemnity clauses in web site TOSs. As I am researching my own state laws, one phrase jumped out at me – ” Any litigation, arbitration or other dispute resolution arising from such contracts would be conducted in the state and any contract provision, covenant or clause that conflicts with these provisions would be void and unenforceable.” So my wondering is does it matter whether or not a TOS has an indemnity clause in a state that doesn’t allow for it to provide indemnification? If it were to go to court, would the court not just say “This clause is not enforceable in this state because it is in violation of state statutes, try again next time.” Sadly, IANAL, so I can only speculate on that. Can anyone provide clarification on that thinking?

UPDATE 10.04.08 4:08PM CDT: Yes, Flickr and Google Custom Search both also have indemnification clauses in their TOSs, as does Amazon Web Services (covering things like S3 and EC2).

UPDATE 10.04.13 11:49AM EDT: In Colorado, the state AG is coordinating with other state agencies to negotiate with Facebook to get a customized TOS. In the mean time, they have apparently ordered users that the course of action currently is to take down any existing pages, as previously mentioned. This is bothersome for me, though, because they will no doubt get a custom TOS, yet they want to completely scuttle all the hard work organizations have done thus far and destroy the communities. There is a cost in social capital here that is extremely high. You don’t cut the arm off before attempting to cure the infection. Some groups are looking in to whether or not alumni or foundation organizations could temporarily take over their pages and be stewards until the issue is resolved.

UPDATE 10.04.15 11:33AM EDT: It appears that the state AG in Colorado is now granting permission, at least to universities, to resume and/or continue using Facebook at this time. Though negotiations with Facebook are apparently continuing, this signals they are likely nearing or confident in the solution to the TOS.

Related posts:

1. Facebook Hates Your Brand
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3. Feeling Naked: A Tale of the Disappearing Facebook Fan Page

Or http://www.duke.edu. Duke University’s information technology units have historically followed a decentralized model. As a result, Drupal isn’t “the” CMS at Duke, it’s one of three supported by the central web services team. WordPress and Cascade Server are the other two, and many others can be found across the university as well. That said, however, Drupal is gaining in popularity, and increasingly more division and department websites at Duke are built in Drupal. We also redesigned our institutional homepage in Drupal in the fall of 2009.

Duke’s centrally-hosted Drupal instances run in a LAMP environment (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP). However, Drupal can be installed on a Microsoft IIS web server, and it can use a PostgreSQL database - although these aren’t recommended. Our homepage receives around 27,000-30,000 visits per day, and it handles this with ease.

A simple Drupal installation is fairly straightforward: Download the most recent version from http://www.drupal.org, put the files on the web server, create a database, and run the install script. However, Drupal is very bare-bones out of the box; the current version does not even include a WYSIWYG editor. It is almost always necessary to supplement the Drupal core with add-on modules. And, if you do not find a contributed module that fits your needs, a developer with decent PHP chops can write a custom module, and even contribute it back to the community if desired.

This can be daunting to people who are accustomed to getting more out of the box with their CMS. However, the bare-bones core is actually a boon to developers, as it makes Drupal very easy to customize. That said, it’s tempting to go overboard with contributed modules. However, installing a large number of modules can be resource intensive and substantially slow your system down, so you have to find a happy medium.

My main caveat to anyone considering Drupal is the need for adequate development resources, preferably in-house. While it is certainly possible to get a Drupal site up and running without HTML or programming experience, it would be a very difficult task and your site will mostly likely not look very good, to be perfectly blunt. Templates are created with HTML, CSS, and some PHP. You can either build your own templates, or install an existing theme. If you want to create your own template, you don’t need to be an expert in PHP but it is necessary to have a basic idea of the syntax. PHP is not needed to install modules, but if you want to embark on creating your own, then it’s a must.

The central IT unit at Duke has three developers and two systems administrators who work directly with Drupal; individual school and department units have their own IT staff and are responsible for their own Drupal installations. Our central web team is always building new websites, and maintaining Drupal is only one of our responsibilities. Once a site is up and running, our only involvement is upgrading Drupal periodically or building additional features onto an existing site if the client requests them.

Drupal is free and open source, and we host our sites in house. Therefore, all of our costs are absorbed into hosting costs and staff salaries. This, of course does not mean that Drupal has been completely free for us. As a case in point, the Duke.edu redesign consumed a large percentage of three developers’ time for over two months, which kept us from working on other projects.

Drupal has an option for multi-site installation: running multiple websites off of the same code base, with each site getting its own database (it’s also possible to run multiple sites off of the same database or to share tables; for example, a user table). Multi-site simplifies upgrades substantially. We have some websites running off a multi-site install, and some standalone instances. This is due primarily to our decentralized organizational model than a limitation of Drupal, per se.

High availability was one of our main concerns when we first started thinking about using Drupal for the Duke.edu site. Since content is stored in a database and files are PHP, the site is already more resource intensive than one comprised of flat HTML files. There are a number of caching mechanisms built into Drupal as well as additional modules that can boost the caching further. We enabled these but just to be on the safe side, we also used GNU Wget, a tool for retrieving files and outputting them as flat HTML. When site visitors go to the Duke.edu front page, they are actually viewing a flat HTML file rather than dynamic PHP output. Wget is triggered regularly by a scheduled cron job so to the content stays fresh. This cuts down on page load time substantially.

Duke uses a Google Search Appliance and a custom people directory search program. Because these systems were already in place before our redesign, we chose to wrap them in the site template, rather than build them into Drupal itself. However, we were able to incorporate data from other systems into Drupal directly. We use a module that not only pulls in items to the homepage from the news site and institutional calendar, but also allows content editors to cherry-pick which items should display. They enjoy the ease with which content is imported from these other systems, but also the editorial control the cherry-picking affords them. Drupal has a module for incorporating Shibboleth authentication, which Duke’s Division of Student Affairs has implemented on their installation.

Since Drupal is open source, there is no official support built in. That said, however, the Drupal user community is wonderfully helpful. http://drupal.org has links to tutorials and documentation as well as the user forums. I initially found the myriad resources on the internet to be sensory overload, so I actually found a book to be most helpful when getting started (“Using Drupal” published by O’Reilly, was my favorite). Lullabot provides a variety of instructional videos and training as well. I’ve also found my local Drupal users’ group to be an invaluable resource. Even though most Drupal developers I’ve met through the group work outside of higher education, they have been very helpful when troubleshooting and brainstorming.

Drupal is known as “developer-friendly,” in the sense that it is highly flexible. One of my favorite aspects of Drupal is that it allows you to customize the format of your data to the logic of the content, rather than squeezing your content into a predefined set of form fields in which it might not logically fit. Editors have reported to us that content entry feels more intuitive to them in Drupal than in more rigidly defined CMS’s.

The downside of this is that you get very little out of the box with Drupal, and the developer learning curve is relatively steep. There is a lot of configuration that needs to be done at the outset just to get a site off the ground. It’s crucial to have a Drupal developer (if not more!) on staff, or the resources to hire an outside firm.

However I would be remiss if I did not mention Acquia, a company that provides products, services, and technical support for Drupal, and founded by the creator of Drupal. Acquia offers various pricing models with differing levels of support and maintenance, all the way up to a fully-hosted option. I personally have never used Acquia, but have heard only good things about it. Acquia might be a good option for organizations that would like to use Drupal but do not have resources available to keep up with support and version updates.

As much as I love Drupal, I will be the first to admit that it is not the best tool for every website — which is why we support three CMS’s in our web office. A small standalone departmental site consisting of only a few informational pages and maybe a listing of news stories? I’d probably build that in WordPress or Cascade Server because the structure of the site is simple and I could build it much more quickly in either of those than in Drupal. But a website in which the clients want a blog, a database of case studies that can be searched in a variety of ways, a discussion forum… and they’ll probably want to add additional functionality later? That site would be an excellent candidate for Drupal.

Our next steps for Drupal at Duke? Build more Drupal websites, of course! All kidding aside, our major priority is investigating ways to speed up the rollout and upgrade process for our standalone instances, as well as developing a slightly more streamlined hosting model overall. We are also looking to establish a more cohesive Drupal user community at Duke. Increasingly more departments and organizational units are adopting Drupal as their CMS. But because of our decentralized IT structure, Drupal developers at Duke often operate in isolation from one another. The global user community is one of the greatest benefits of Drupal, so we need to take our cue and foster greater camaraderie among Drupal developers within our own institution.

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Harry C. Edwards of Amazon.com writes about the book:

How would you classify a book that begins with the salutation, “People of Earth…”? While the captains of industry might dismiss it as mere science fiction, The Cluetrain Manifesto is definitely of this day and age. Aiming squarely at the solar plexus of corporate America, authors Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger show how the Internet is turning business upside down. They proclaim that, thanks to conversations taking place on Web sites and message boards, and in e-mail and chat rooms, employees and customers alike have found voices that undermine the traditional command-and-control hierarchy that organizes most corporate marketing groups. “Markets are conversations,” the authors write, and those conversations are “getting smarter faster than most companies.” In their view, the lowly customer service rep wields far more power and influence in today’s marketplace than the well-oiled front office PR machine.

The Cluetrain Manifesto began as a Web site (www.cluetrain.com) in 1999 when the authors, who have worked variously at IBM, Sun Microsystems, the Linux Journal, and NPR, posted 95 theses that pronounced what they felt was the new reality of the networked marketplace. For example, thesis no. 2: “Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors”; thesis no. 20: “Companies need to realize their markets are often laughing. At them”; thesis no. 62: “Markets do not want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They want to participate in the conversations going on behind the corporate firewall”; thesis no. 74: “We are immune to advertising. Just forget it.” The book enlarges on these themes through seven essays filled with dozens of stories and observations about how business gets done in America and how the Internet will change it all. While Cluetrain will strike many as loud and over the top, the message itself remains quite relevant and unique. This book is for anyone interested in the Internet and e-commerce, and is especially important for those businesses struggling to navigate the topography of the wired marketplace. All aboard!

Fair disclosure: See, I picked up a copy of the first printing a while back. Shortly thereafter, I got a copy of the revised edition. Naturally, I don’t need two, so I’d like to pass on my copy of the first edition to one of our readers as a way of saying thanks for being awesome like you are. “So Michael, basically you’re just pawning your old junk off on us?” Yeah. I am. But I promise it’s totally in great shape, and the information is far from out of date. And regardless, did I mention free?

So, how do I get this little prize gem of a book? It’s darn simple, let me tell ya’ (that’s how we say “you” in Kansas-talk). Down under this post is a section for comments. Tell me why you want it and how you hope to use the information to help people become better at what they do, or make you better at what you do. Be sure to enter your Twitter handle or a valid email so I can contact you if you win. That’s it. And remember, if you lie in your answer, I probably can’t tell, so just make it a good lie.

At some point in the future, maybe this afternoon, maybe the next Groundhog Day (okay, probably more like in a day or two) I’ll pick one of the entries by some fancy criteria that involves randomness combined with non-randomness, and I’ll give that person the book. And look, I’m not saying that tweeting about your entry with a link to this post and the hashtag #wincluetrain will necessarily help your chances at winning, but it might help your chances at winning. #justsayin

I’ll ship the book anywhere in the US for free. For our international friends, I’ll ship it to you, too. I think that covers everyone, right? Extraterrestrials, sorry, my transporter is down for repairs.

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