Hi Bill
We recently (well actually in June) launched our new website. The
new site was totally re-structured, re-designed (by a company called
Headscape) and is now underpinned by a CMS provided by Terminal 4
called Site Manager.
The project began with a very thourough requirements gathering
exercise and tender process. We eventually chose Site Manager from
a large list of competitors based on their functionality, ease of use,
honesty and price (I believe we chose well).
The installation was completetd within a week (or there abouts). The
hard work begins during the migration phase. We decided to phase
the project. Phase One included all of the top-level "marketing"
information, development of a courses database (linked and fed by
legacy systems), all academic faculties and departments. We also
decided that a large team would be assembled to do this work rather
than rolling out templates for individual departments to do themselves.
Do not underestimate the size of this task. It took a team of 8 people
(on average), working full-time, approximately five months to complete
the task of migration and copy writing and to finally launch the new site.
However, during this period we were also tweaking templates and
styles and working very closely with Terminal Four to develop our
courses application and various other dynamic applications.
Since the launch we have began roll-out of Site Manager to depts. We
have taken a pragmatic approach to this by saying that depts who wish
to maintain their own sites can do and those that do not will still be
maintained by the central webteam. Paradoxically I feel that this
approach has helped achieve more "buy-in" to local site manitainence
than if we had taken a firmer approach. Site Manager is very simple to
use and staff seem to have taken to it very well (we run internal training
courses which last one day).
Phase two is now rolling and includes all other departments, research
groups and intranets. We made a decision that teaching and learning
materaials would not be included.
Hope this helps.
Many thanks
Simon
_______________________________________________
Simon Brookes
E-Marketing Manager
Marketing Department
University of Portsmouth
1 Guildhall Walk
Portsmouth
PO1 2RY
_______________________________________________
Tel: (023) 9284 2713
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