Yesterday we launched a refresh of the online Campus Directory as apart of our efforts to remediate websites that are not accessible. The update looks more or less the same visually, but there’s much more exciting stuff happening under the hood including a sprinkling of the hCard Microformat where applicable.
Years ago in an interview I was asked how I would solve the university’s web consistency problem. At the time, the thought was “good luck!” In an environment with a decentralized web site, it seemed unlikely that content management would happen. That question has been asked once again, but now we’re in a better position to answer that question: “How do you manage the Chico State website?” Here are my personal thoughts on how to approach this problem.
Accessibility has been a driving force behind the urgency to find a solution for web management. The need to ensure that all of our pages are accessible along with the desire to streamline the process of creating websites has been combined under a new Web Governance plan. In the coming months, committees will be formed and discussions will take place about where the future direction of the Chico State web presence and how we will get there. Below, is a diagram of the problem as I see it and how I would go about implementing a solution.
When the university gets around to redesigning the campus web presence, it will need to meet the following goals:
If implemented properly, Web Content Management would be a great tool for making inroads toward achieving the first three: accessibility, web document management, and usability.
By placing the onus for accessible templates in the hands of developers who understand accessibility and how to create standards based solutions, the campus can ensure that all new sites created in the WCMS are accessible.
A WCMS solution will also play a significant role in how manageable documents will be on the web. Centralizing and standardizing the workflow should make it easier for departments across campus to publish content to the web.
How usable the web site is will depend on many factors. One way to ensure good usability is through centralizing the creation of template sets with those who practice design with usability in mind.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of “Able-ity: Chico State’s Web Presence”
This week, Web Application Development introduced a new and improved service to campus, Chico State Search. Built upon the Google Custom Search product, the new search page offers greater control over the templates for accessibility as well as the opportunity to glean information that will help improve results and information findability. Go give the new search page a spin!
This is hardly new information, but it’s clear that it bears repeating. Every finals week we see a surge in the number of Google hits for our posts with “Finals Week” in the title and header tags. Unfortunately we don’t have the information people are looking for. We did go back and update our posts with links to the information we assumed they were looking for, which is the schedule for when finals are held.
Semantic markup is a key component of accessible content, but it’s also critical for SEO. The more accessible you make your content, the more likely you are to have better search hits for your content.
