Campus Community,

This is to officially notify the campus of the following timeline to decommission the old site (www2.ewu.edu) and its Content Management System, or CMS:

Jan. 1, 2011: The old site, currently www2.ewu.edu, will no longer be publically available. CMS users will still have access to the content via the old CMS at webcms.ewu.edu.
Feb. 28, 2011: Access to the old CMS will be terminated and the environment will be decommissioned.

Please send any issues you have to ewuwebteam@sharepointes.ewu.edu  or contact me at jkissack@ewu.edu . If you would like to sign up for regular web updates, please contact Betsy Knox at bknox@ewu.edu .

The web team is establishing a standard maintenance timeslot of 3-5 PM every Thursday to perform routine software updates, administrative tasks, etc.  During this time, CMS users will not be able to add or modify web pages in both the wcms.ewu.edu/external and wcms.ewu.edu/internal environments.  Unless otherwise notified, the published web sites (www.ewu.edu and access.ewu.edu) will be available to users throughout these scheduled maintenance periods.

Please send any issues you have to ewuwebteam@sharepointes.ewu.edu or contact me at jkissack@ewu.edu.  Thanks!

As you’ve probably noticed, the new web site has a number of great new content features:  news and events, twitter feeds, spotlights, etc.   Here’s a list of the main features and who you need to contact to utilize.

Enjoy!

WHO TO CONTACT FOR THE FOLLOWING WEB FEATURES

News releases – Dave Meany at dmeany@ewu.edu  (MarCom)

Events, About, Spotlights, At a Glance (Fast Facts) – marcom@ewu.edu  

Just for you, Showcase, Title graphics requests – Sam Buzby at sbuzby@ewu.edu  (MarCom)

Twitter feeds – Kit Frantzich at kfrantzich@ewu.edu  (MarCom)

Flicker, photos - John Demke at jdemke@ewu.edu  (MarCom)

Requests for links in the Global Audience dropdowns, footer links, homepage links (Academics, Apply, etc.) – EWU Web team at EWUWebTeam@SharePointes.ewu.edu

The new content management system automatically creates structured URLs, which means in most cases you will no longer need an entry in the Friendly Names list. To illustrate, let’s say the Art program page exists in the College of Arts, Letters and Education beneath the Programs page.  In the old CMS, you would need to know the page’s “x” number to reference the page, or www.ewu.edu/x999.xml OR add an entry such as “Art” to the friendly name  list.  The new CMS allows for a structured URL, or in this example: http://redesign.ewu.edu/CALE/Programs/Art.xml, eliminating the need for a friendly name list entry.

The exception to the general elimination of friendly names is in the case where they have been recently published, especially in printed materials. Certain friendly names may continue to exist but we need you to confirm this and let us know the location of your new page as soon as possible!

We need all web users to do the following:

• Access http://www.ewu.edu/web/redirect/namelist.php
• Review the entire list to determine which friendly names were created by your area(s)
• Test the link by clicking to determine if it accesses the applicable web page
• Identify the friendly names that need to be retained and send to Betsy Knox at bknox@ewu.edu . Here’s a sample submission of Friendly Names still needed to be retained:

Friendly Name                            Location (INCLUDE FULL PATH!)
Catalog                                           http://www.ewu.edu/x15588.xml

Admissions                                      http://www.ewu.edu/x46249.xml

Library                                             http://www.ewu.edu/x42345.xml

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Thanks,

John

Phone 509-359-6205,  email jkissack@ewu.edu

Hopefully you saw the the official notification that went out early last week to the EWU community that stated we are scheduled to go live with the new EWU web redesign on Tuesday, August 3rd.   The project team would like to answer a few basic questions regarding Go-Live:

1. What sites will be available after Go-Live?  We want to make sure everyone knows that content from both the new CMS environments (what is now http://redesign.ewu.edu and http://access.ewu.edu ) and the current CMS will be available to the public after the launch.   The current web site will be clearly marked as the former website to avoid user confusion, and users will be able to link to their existing content until it has been migrated to the new site.
2. Why are there 2 new CMS environments?  The idea behind having the 2 environments is to provide content areas optimally organized for external EWU audiences (aka “the shiny brochure”) and the EWU community.  The end user experience will not notice any appreciable difference between the 2 environments, as the transition  is quick and seamless.  Again, both of these sites will be publically accessible after Go-Live.
3. Will users be able to search for content still on the old site?  Yes.  Published content from the current and new EWU web environments will be indexed for search.
4. How will the URLs change after Go-Live?  The web team will programmatically perform a search-and-replace to change all links within your pages to the following:

• http://redesign.ewu.edu will become http://www.ewu.edu
• http://access.ewu.edu will stay the same
• http://www.ewu.edu will become http://www2.ewu.edu

Please contact me if you have any questions at jkissack@ewu.edu.  If you would like to sign up for regular web updates, please contact Betsy Knox at bknox@ewu.edu.  Also, this and other web updates can be found on our project blog space at http://ewuweb.wordpress.com/ .  Finally, you can sign up for CMS training at http://www.ewu.edu/trainingscheduler.

John

I apologize for the lack of updates over the past several weeks – we’ve been addressing a number of challenges, such as resolving pilot program issues, evaluating Intranet implementation solutions, juggling personnel changes, developing a college consolidation plan of attack, etc.  I will be sending out detailed project information (including a migration schedule) in the coming days.

In the meantime, I would like to share with you some of our implementation decisions.   I have provided instructions below for you to evaluate how colleges are structured in the new redesign (thanks to the CSHE pilot team for their help!).

Thanks for your continued support and patience,

John

COLLEGE WEB SITE PRIMER:    

Navigation – Complete traversal to a college program/department

STEP 1:  From the home page (http://redesign.ewu.edu/ )  click on the Academics button.  This takes you to the Academics Splash page, or a page that contains high-level sub-categories. 

Splash Page Example:  http://redesign.ewu.edu/Academics.xml

STEP 2: Under Colleges and Schools (lower-left section of the Academics Splash Page), click on the College of Science, Health & Engineering (CSHE) link, which takes you to the CHSE Home page.  Some of the basic features of the home page template include:

-          “Theme”ing:  Colleges have the ability to personalize their home page by altering the borders, fonts, colors, icons for programs, etc.

-          College programs are featured prominently on the page

-          College-specific events, links and space to showcase the college

College Home Page Example:  http://redesign.ewu.edu/CSHE.xml

STEP 3:  From the College of Science, Health & Engineering Home page, click on the Computer Science button:   which takes you to a Program/Department page.  Some of the basic features of the Program/Department page template include:

-          Standardized Program/Department navigation/content areas in the left-hand navigation

-          Program options in the right-hand navigation

-          Program/Department-specific events, links and space to showcase the Program/Department

Program/Dept Example:  http://redesign.ewu.edu/CSHE/Programs/Computer-Science.xml

 The pilot phase has officially started!  We have met with both undergraduate admissions and CSHE and they have provided a ton of great input.  As we work with them over the next few weeks, we will develop and coordinate the migration schedule – more to come.

 Have a great week,

 John

QUESTIONS FROM THE FIELD (These have been great – keep them coming!)

Q:  We’re not one of the colleges undergoing consolidation, but we’ll be impacted by the subsequent changes – will we be included in the discussions?

A:  Absolutely!  We understand this is a major undertaking with a lot of unknowns, dependencies, etc. We will at a minimum provide the web community with web consolidation status when available.

Q:  Why has the  “Find a Program”  feature been removed from the first page of the new website?

A:  The “find a Program” functionality has been incorporated into the redesign’s search feature and is available from any page.  To do so, locate the search box in the upper right-hand section.  Notice to the right of the field it defaults to “EWU” – if you click on the dropdown arrow next to it, you’ll see the options to refine your search to Web, People and Programs.  (NOTE:  most programs have not been instantiated in the redesign, so you won’t find many of them).  Why implement this way?  This approach not only allows program searches from any page, it allows the programs to be tagged as “keywords” to facilitate search.  Programs in the existing feature exist only in the dropdown list and therefore cannot be searched and potentially be inconsistent with the rest of the program information.

Web Feature of the Week:  Page Types and Web Components.  The new redesign provides you with a number of page types and web components to help you quickly and easily develop a feature-rich web presence.  You will receive a complete list of available page types and web components when you attend the CMS training.  Featured Page Type:  Media Room.  This page type provides you with a pre-configured template that dynamically aggregate pictures and videos – want to see an example?  http://redesign.ewu.edu/Undergrad/Life/Media-Room.xml

Wow-the piloting phase of the project starts next week!  First and foremost, thanks to everyone for volunteering to be part of the pilot – see the 1^st “questions from the field”  addressed below on how we will select any additional users.  Also, thanks to everyone for resubmitting their comments and concerns – I think we have them all. 

Have a great week!

John

College Consolidation Planning for the Web Redesign

The team has discussed the college mergers (College of Arts & Letters with the College of Education & Human Development and College of Social & Behavioral Sciences with the School of Social Work & Human Services) with changes effective July 1^st and our web redesign options:  1) continue with plans to migrate all six colleges separately and consolidate later, or 2) consolidate the colleges for go-live.   We will be meeting with the affected colleges in the next few weeks to present our findings and get their inputs, determine what the schedule/resource impacts will be, etc.

QUESTIONS FROM THE FIELD

Q:  Can you tell me what some of the evaluation criteria are to be a part of the pilot program?

A:  For the pilot criteria, we’re generally looking for non-competing/functionally-unique candidates to complement the initial pilot organizations, Undergraduate Admissions and the College of Science, Health and Engineering (a breadth versus depth approach); however, we may be able to include similar departments/functional areas in the pilot if time permits – stay tuned…

Q:  I think it’s odd that the two most used links by students and faculty – EagleNET and Blackboard – are obscurely buried at the bottom of the new home page.  Why aren’t they featured as prominent buttons near the top of the page?

A:  When evaluating the public facing site our focus has to be audience, audience, audience. Our primary audience for this site is external to EWU with a large emphasis on prospective students.  With that said, we recognize that it’s extremely important to accommodate visits from internal audiences such as students, faculty and staff on our public facing site. This is why links relevant to those audiences will be located in:

- global audience-based navigation (Links like “Blackboard”, “EagleNET” and “Library” will likely be featured in all four of the audience-based drop-down menus, which effectively quadruples the placement of those links and puts them at the very top of every external page),

- global footer navigation, and

- the resources page.

These types of links will also have a prominent presence on our intranet/portal solution.

Q:  There seems to be a presumption of all web developers/designers that everyone uses a broadband connection to surf the Interweb,  and that seems true here at EWU.  Too many pages are bloated with graphics and animations.  Please provide a low bandwidth version of the new web pages, without the flash video, etc.  Many, if not most, students would benefit from that option.

A:  Done!  Visitors with low-speed connections will have the option to choose the text-only version of the web site (see the upper-right corner of the redesign site).  An interesting note here is that the text-only feature exists for ADA-compliance–not performance reasons, and here’s why (ALERT:  plug for Google Analytics follows!):  Between Sept. 1, 2009 and Feb.1, 2010, Google reported that ewu.edu received 1,437,896 total visits from an external audience. Of those visits, only 25,296 were from a dial-up connection, or roughly 1.76% of the total visitors to the site.    Now, since ewu.edu is for anyone interested in any aspect of EWU, we also looked at sites that target our biggest audience for the new external site, mainly prospective students, and had comparable results.   For example, when you look at the analytics info for the startsomethingbig.org’s site between March 1, 2008 and Feb. 1, 2010, Google reported that there were 6,005 total visits. Of those visits, only 81 were from a dial-up connection, or 1.3% of the total visitors.  (See my 13 January email for more information on Google Analytics, or go to http://www.google.com/analytics/index.html to learn more)

WEB FEATURE OF THE WEEK:  Web 2.0 Technologies – What are they?

Web 2.0 technologies “allow its users to interact with other users…, in contrast to non-interactive websites where users are limited to the passive viewing of information that is provided to them.  Examples of Web 2.0 include web-based communities, hosted services, web applications, social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, mashups, and folksonomies.”—Wikipedia.   The EWU web redesign has incorporated a number of these web 2.0 technologies to give our audiences an interactive, state-of-the-art web experience they expect and deserve. (Want to see EWU’s presence on popular social networking sites?  Go to http://www.ewu.edu/x66982.xml )

RESOURCES

Redesign website URL:  http://redesign.ewu.edu/  (Please note that this is a staging area and may be subject to unannounced maintenance and changes. There will also be a lot of un-styled and completely made-up content while new pages are being built out.  Also, you must access the site through the EWU network)

Questions or concerns for the web team? Email to EWUWebTeam@SharePointes.ewu.edu – we’d love to hear from you!

 Here’s a quick update on our progress – the project team’s been working hard getting ready for the pilot phase starting February 8^th.   

Have a great week!

 John

 PLEASE VERIFY WE RECEIVED YOUR EMAIL!

We recently had problems with the email account EWUWebTeam@SharePointes.ewu.edu where some of your emails may not have been received.  We’re confident the problem has been resolved; however, please review the list of emails below to see if we received yours – if it is missing, please resubmit and courtesy copy me at jkissack@ewu.edu – I apologize for the inconvenience!

PRESIDENT’S COLLEGE CONSOLIDATION ANNOUNCEMENT

You probably saw the president’s merger announcement (College of Arts & Letters with the College of Education & Human Development and College of Social & Behavioral Sciences with the School of Social Work & Human Services) with changes effective July 1^st.  You’re also probably wondering how the mergers are going to impact the web redesign, if at all…good question!  Basically, the choice is simple:  1) continue with plans to migrate all six colleges separately and consolidate later, or 2) consolidate the colleges for go-live.  The team will discuss our options (pros and cons) at tomorrow’s web meeting and I will forward our findings to this group for review – more to follow…

WEB FEATURE OF THE WEEK: WordPress Blog

The new website will have a blog capability for approved EWU community members, and our technical team is in the final stages of implementing the WordPress blogging solution.  Want to learn more about the features that will be available? Go to  http://en.wordpress.com/features/ for more!

RESOURCES

Redesign website URL:  http://redesign.ewu.edu/  (Please note that this is a staging area and may be subject to unannounced maintenance and changes. There will also be a lot of un-styled and completely made-up content while new pages are being built out.  Also, you must access the site through the EWU network)

Hopefully, you’ve had a chance to peruse the EWU web redesign http://redesign.ewu.edu/ and are as impressed as I am with the project team’s hard work!

Below are our answers to questions we’ve received over the past week. As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please shoot us an email at EWUWebTeam@SharePointes.ewu.edu – we’d love to hear from you!

Finally, thanks to everyone that volunteered for the pilot phase of the project. The project team will evaluate each request and you will be hearing back from us soon.

Have a great week!

John

QUESTIONS FROM THE FIELD

Q: We have lots of web content…will we get help moving our content?
A: Yes! We are working to get dedicated project personnel to assist in migrating content – stay tuned for more details…

Q: We have the same content for our internal and external audiences – How is it handled so that we don’t have duplication?
A: In general, if the content is for both external and internal audiences, it would normally go on the external site (obviously there are exceptions that would require duplicate content, but they should be minimal). However, this statement does not give the “green light” to place all content into the external site! Remember, the primary audiences for the new external web site are people outside the EWU community; therefore, the site’s content should be high-level and “brochure-like”. We will be providing guidelines and training for determining external versus internal content soon. Great question!

Q: Will the new site be ADA compliant?
A: Yes, the site will be ADA compliant and we have been working with EWU Disability Support Services on this very important issue. Kit Frantzich (kfrantzich@ewu.edu )is overseeing the site’s ADA compliance and can answer any questions or concerns you may have.

WEB FEATURE OF THE WEEK: Google Analytics
Ever wanted to know how many people visit your web page(s)? When and from where are they visiting? Do they ever come back? To answer these crucial questions and more, the web redesign has incorporated Google Analytics, a powerful tool that provides you “rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness”. Want to learn more? Visit the Google analytics main site: http://www.google.com/analytics/index.html . It includes a good overview video (click on Product Tour). Also, under the Education Tab there are some good instructional videos: http://www.youtube.com/googleanalytics?hl=en , especially Beginning Analytics http://www.youtube.com/profile?v=_qfG2d9etvk&user=googleanalytics&hl=en . Enjoy!