Web Review staff survey

Well, the Web Review staff survey has finally been released. To recap, we're seeking views on how we need to develop both the intranet and internet to meet the needs of all our users in the future. We'll also be surveying and talking to students and external users of the website. The results of this survey work will inform our website strategy, and will be the launch point for more detailed one-on-one interviews.

http://web1.yorksj.ac.uk/Survey//TakeSurvey.asp?SurveyID=mM3l934L996KG

The responses I've had already are flagging up a general confusion about what is internet and what is intranet. What I've been saying is that the internet site is the external-facing website at www.yorksj.ac.uk and the intranet sites include the Staff Homepage, the Student Homepage, the Document Directory, the Staff Information Point; sites that require users to log in, or are not generally intended for the public. The rule of thumb I've always gone by is that inter- is between or amongst, and intra- is within; the internet is stuff for everyone and the intranet is just stuff for us staff. I managed to identify 38 distinct websites or microsites within our total web presence, however we describe it, and I hope we don't get too bogged down with worries about assigning the correct label -- it's all stuff that needs sorting, that needs pulling together. What all these sites provide is valuable, useful content; it's just that it is all so awkward to find, difficult to navigate through, hard to digest.

Here's a quick question to illustrate my point. The hefty Your Rights, Rules & Responsibilities guide book that we distribute to all the students at the start of their programme; that contains all the policies and contracts, the regs and procedures; that they read from cover to cover and internalise fully; an important document they might need to refer to at any point in their time with us — where's that on the web?

Stick a link in the comments if you think you know.

But what is a Content Management System?

I've just realised that I've written an entry about what I feel are the requirements for a content management system, without actually explaining what one is. I'm sure the term can mean many things to many people, but this is what I'm on about at least:

A content management system is a software system that helps us manage our content. Sounds obvious, but to expand, it helps us produce, organise, control and publish large amounts of documents, web pages, images and multimedia resources. We're interested in web content management systems, as I think there is a recognised need to address some of the shortcomings in our external and internal websites.

Here's the obligatory steal from Wikipedia:

A web content management system is a computer system used to manage and control a large, dynamic collection of web material (HTML documents and their associated images). A CMS facilitates document control, auditing, editing, and timeline management. A Web CMS provides the following key features:

Automated templates

Create standard visual templates that can be automatically applied to new and existing content, creating one central place to change that look across all content on a site.

Easily editable content

Once your content is separate from the visual presentation of your site, it usually becomes much easier and quicker to edit and manipulate. Most CMS software include WYSIWYG editing tools allowing non-technical individuals to create and edit content.

Web standards upgrades

Active CMS solutions usually receive regular updates that include new feature sets and keep the system up to current web standards.

Workflow management

Workflow is the process of creating cycles of sequential and parallel tasks that must be accomplished in the CMS. For example, a content creator submits a story but it's not published on the website until the copy editor cleans it up, and the editor-in-chief approves it.

Document management

CMS solutions always provide a means of managing the life cycle of a document from initial creation time, through revisions, publication, archive, and document destruction.

Summary of requirements for a Content Management System

I think we're all agreed that we need a new Content Management System, but we need to make sure we get the right one. Here's a summary of what our basic requirements might be. This isn't entirely my own work, I hasten to add. It's based on example requirements from elsewhere, but I think it provides a useful starting point. I'd be very interested in what you think.

The CMS must be an established system, with demonstrable market presence, from a financially stable provider. It must provide a single repository for the storage of information, and enforce the separation of content from design. It must be easy to use and cater for a cross section of skills, and should improve the speed of creating new content and editing existing content. The system must be able to run both our public-facing external website and our internal intranet, with reliable security measures and system contingency. It should be easy to extend or customise the software, and develop into other web service areas, such as discussion threads and online form design. It should be possible for the system to interact with other software in industry-standard formats such as XML and RSS. Technical support must be available from the supplier.

The system must enable decentralised management of content to avoid authorisation bottlenecks, be accessible 'outside the office', and must have the ability to manage users and administrators efficiently, incorporating role-based security and group profiling. A full audit trail of content authors' activities must be available. A workflow model must be in place, with clear content approval processes.

The output of the CMS must conform to accessibility and disability standards, without requiring content contributors to have any technical (e.g. HTML) knowledge in this area. The system must provide the ability to publish content to a variety of channels, including mobile devices, as well as text only. It must enable the incorporation of multimedia content and be capable of displaying content 'dynamically' so that pages can appear fresh and different each day. The system should incorporate a link-checking mechanism, and links within the site should not be broken if a page is moved or renamed.

The CMS should publish pages with human-readable URLs and have an automatic, customisable sitemap capability. Site navigation must be easy to maintain, and should preferably automatically reflect changes to the site. The CMS should provide conversion and publication of MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF documents, and should preferably have tools to enable the migration of content from our legacy CMS.

CMS administrators and authors must not need to have proprietary software skills (e.g. HTML, JavaScript, ASP etc), but it should be possible for advanced users to take advantage of their extra skills. The system must have a WYSIWYG style content preview function, and enable users to add images easily from a 'library' of acceptable images.

The CMS must have version control functionality, allowing users to view versions of published content, subject to permissions. When approving a new version, it should be easy to determine how the current and the new versions differ. Roll back and roll forward functionality should exist, that retains the integrity of the version history.

It should be possible to create secure areas of the site that only some site users can access, and a full audit trail must exist for both content and users. The CMS should provide a visitor statistics facility and a search facility.