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