CMS “Content Factories”

A content management strategy for the University of Kent

Web Forum - 20 April 2009

Scope of “the web”

• At Kent, there is no such thing as just "the web"

• instead there are many web systems which combine to provide a plethora of web services 

The wider web estate

Personalised, authenticated content

Internalaudience

Publiclyavailable

www.kent.ac.ukCore university message:

public, prospective students, research, press, etc

Main website

NetCommunity/Raisers Edge

Alumni

Portal.kent.ac.ukuPortal

Student portal

records.kent.ac.uk

SDS

moodle.kent.ac.ukMoodle

VLE

kentmail.kent.ac.uk

KentMail

opac.kent.ac.uk

Library catalogue and account

Existing mechanism for local files/intranet

Local only

Staff-focused but open to public?

Requirement: Intranet

New Exchange mail server

ConnectMail

Web-based file sharing and collaboration

SharePoint

acme.kent.ac.uk

Non-core businesses

Internal and multi-institution

Special projects

What is CMS?

• A Content Management System A system for managing content

• A computer system... primarily for web content but can manage other content

Our approach

• Concentrate on re-usable content first

• Create places to manage that content

• Make them system-independent and available to existing sites

• “Content Factories”

What will CMS do for us?

• Edit websites with a browser Any PC/Mac Minimal training for basic editing Offsite editing

• Empower web authors No limit Improved permissions Enable inter-departmental authoring

• Allow content re-use Between web pages Between web properties See later: Content Factories

See IS Committee paper: Update paper on proposals for a Content Management System ISC 08/08-09

Free-up content

• Currently we're just creating pages one file = one page To re-use this content it must be copied-and-pasted

into another file/page

• CMS will manage “blobs” of content blobs are known as "nodes”

• With these nodes content can be manipulated in a variety of ways A node can simply be a page A page can contain many nodes A page can show parts of nodes A page can show filtered nodes

Management of content can help…

• Departmental homepage

• Courses

• Staff profiles 

A typical departmental home page

Welcome paragraph

News - three items: headlines with thumbnails,

date, excerptEvents - two items: title, intro, date

Facts box

Adding one item of news…

1. Create news page

2. Add excerpt to homepagea. Sort out imageb. Link to actual news page

3. Remove old excerpt from homepage

4. Copy files to ‘live’ a. Image, new page, homepage

5. Inform C&DO

6. Send emails, add to plasma, update RSS feed, etc…

How does CMS help Departmental home page?

• Add one news item and the following are automatically created: home page snippet a news page snippet the main news index an archive index

• Add one events item similar automation as news, but with different style

• Potential re-use of other content: welcome paragraph facts box

What happens to Dreamweaver?

Large amount of web properties

• 180-230 sites

• 250-400 web authors

• 350,000 pages

CMS will therefore be introduced gradually and incrementally

Key to this is “Content Factories”

Content Factories 

• manage certain types of content

• provide re-usable content to parts of the site

• not necessarily visible themselves

Content Factories

Start with three basic types 

• Publicity

• People

• Programmes

Content Factory 1: Publicity

• Handles: News Events Announcements

• Organised via taxonomies

• Content out is “Baked or Fried”

• Enables content sharing: Dept news to Media Office Event information all in one place etc

Content Factory 2: Profiles

• Online Directory

• Expertise directories: Media Enterprise Research

• Helps create: Staff profile pages Will include KAR info etc

Content Factory 3: Programmes

• Modules

• Courses 

• Subjects

• Provides: online prospectus departmental pages user-friendly wizards

Current web site – Dreamweaver powered

Some content from Content Factories

CMS powered sites with Content Factories

Getting content out of the CMS: Fry vs Bake

• Fry vs Bake Fried eggs: made on demand Baked muffins: made in advance

• Fried Created by filtering Happens automatically A page that shows:

• last 5 news from KLS • next 5 events on the topic of Politics

• Baked Created by choice Chosen manually

Further info

• http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/cms