Content Management System CMS

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Content Management System (CMS)
Implementation for the Prospective Students site
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Introductions

• Ian Bartlett Student Recruitment
  Communications
• Trish Richards International Office
• Both from Educational Liaison, UCL Registry

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Objectives of presentation

• What is the Content Management System?
• What it can do and what it cant
• Why Educational Liaison uses the CMS
• General overview of P S website structure
• How pages are constructed
• Updating a page
• Content auditing and workflow
• Summary

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What is the CMS?

• A system for managing content in a web site
• Doesnt require special software for uploading
  pages (e.g. Dreamweaver)
• An open source package called Silva which runs
  within an environment called Zope
• Under constant development and is largely free
• Some sections of UCL site using it, but
  Prospective Students by far the largest

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What can the CMS do?

• Allows web page updates using an ordinary web
  browser (e.g. IE, Firefox, Safari, Mozilla etc.)
• Reduces overall work as those responsible for
  content can update it directly and submit it for
  approval
• Allows different access levels for individuals
  with different roles (e.g. Authors, Editors,
  Managers)
• Enables documents to be published for fixed
  terms older versions of documents can be re-used
  (versioning)
• Has Sitestat tracking code built-in
• Especially good for simple content pages.

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What it does not do

• Does not write content!
• Does not create site structure needs planning
• Is not a design tool
• Does not create images
• Does not automatically link pages in to a site
  and make them visible
• It is not fully WYSIWYG

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Why Educational Liaison uses the CMS

• Unsustainable to have one webmaster responsible
  for updating entire Prospective Students site
  no time for development work
• More efficient no double handling of content
• Updates can be carried out directly by content
  owners when they are ready to do them
• Allows for quality control over style and content
• Makes it easier to produce coherent site
• Reinforces awareness of using web as part of
  communications strategy all staff can have
  access
• Frees up webmaster to focus on technical,
  structural and design matters i.e. site
  management

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Outcomes of switch to CMS

• Much more efficient way of handling content
• Able to continue publishing new pages and update
  existing content at a time when one of the two
  web staff left UCL
• Allowed staff across Ed. Liaison to update
  content as little technical expertise required to
  use CMS
• Faster way of working no double handling of
  content
• Have been able to massively expand website
  content without increase in staffing
• Have improved functionality of site as
  development time has been freed up
• Can perform higher level functions database fed
  content, blogs, podcasts etc.

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Prospective Students site structure
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(No Transcript)
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Structure of a Page

• Use Australia page for demonstration
• Pages made up of various elements
• Main Content (index)
• Right hand column (index_right)
• Left hand column (index_left)
• Contact Information (contacts)
• Any images to be used
• All sits in template
• Colours, fonts, sizes and overall look set in
  style sheets (set by me with ref. UCL policy) and
  Attributes file (uclattributes)

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Template
menu
index_left
index_right
index
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Australia page files
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Basic Page Updating1. Opening the file

• Navigate in web browser to page you wish to
  update
• Click on cross icon to open edit screen
• Enter UCL username and password
• Look for file called index (usually at top)
• In modify column, click name of file (index)
• Click on New Version to edit
• Example

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Editing and Saving

• Focus on text - images and tables higher level
• Just start deleting and adding text as you would
  in Word. You can
• Format text with bold and italics avoid
  underline
• Insert bullet points
• Insert text links to other pages
• Insert images and table
• Save after every stage not 100 stable yet
• Example

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Saving and Publishing audit and workflow

• Most people set up as authors, so have to request
  approval for page to be published.
• SRC staff designated as Editors
• When finished editing, click to save
• Click Publish tab
• Click submit for approval
• E-mail to Editor automatically sent
• Editor can approve page or reject it. Both
  actions trigger an e-mail to inform author of
  action taken.
• Example

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More advanced CMS

• Navigating the CMS (intermediate level)
• Creating hyperlinks
• Using images
• Using tables
• Style sheets and attributes
• Blogs, podcasts, data feeds etc.

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Summary

• What is the Content Management System?
• Why Educational Liaison opted to use CMS
• What CMS can do
• Website structure - context
• Page construction
• Simple page update
• Content auditing and workflow
• Any questions