Bucknell Web Development

Web Site Design Sneak Preview: June 4, 2008

2008-06-02T22:06:14Z

In my last update, we anticipated sharing a preview of the new website design by the end of the semester. Now that we've made it through Commencement and Reunion (which is what we really mean by "end of the semester), we are ready now to share the design.

Fastspot (our design partner) visited campus on April 4 with three design concepts. As a result of this presentation, the Web Design Advisory Group recommended a clear direction, and since then we've been refining and enhancing the design, exploring how the navigation will work, what the sub-pages will look like, and testing out the overall impression on prospective students and their parents.

Our goal with the new website is to increase Bucknell's national reputation by conveying to prospective students the quality of the academic programs and the breadth of opportunities that exist here. We're aiming for a site that is at once elegant and youthful, intellectual and active, focused and uncluttered.

For a sneak preview of the new Bucknell and Bison Athletics home page designs, log in to myBucknell and look under the "Spotlights."

We welcome your feedback.

FAQs:

Q. When will the new site go live?
A. We are anticipating being ready to go live with this design in late July.

Q. Will I still be able to make updates to my department/program web pages?
A. You can continue to update your pages using the Ingeniux Web Content Management System as you currently do. There will be a period of time before we go live when we will have to block everyone from making updates. As soon as we know something more specific we will announce this to the campus.

Q. What do I need to do to use the new design on my department/program web pages?
A. Not a thing. When we implement the new design, it will cascade throughout the whole website. You won't need to do anything.

Q. Other than the look, how will my site change?
A. All of your content will remain. However, you will have some new optional features available - such as an area for a photo gallery, and a spot for featuring an alumni, student, or faculty member. We wii also be standardizing the format of the faculty/staff contact page, as well as the detail page for individuals.

Q. Will I still use Ingeniux to update my web pages?
A. Yes. In the fall semester we will resume instructional sessions for Ingeniux, teaching you how to use new features.

Q. Tell me again why we're redesigning the website?
A. The current site has been up for over four years now. During that time, web technologies have improved, and the way that people interact with the web has evolved. The creation of strategic documents like The Plan for Bucknell and the Communications Strategy, coupled with the research we did last year to gauge Bucknell's national reputation, means we now have a clearer idea of both our audience and our message. The new design reflects this clearer vision.

Q. If the main Bucknell website is geared towards prospective students, what about current students, faculty, and staff?
A. Library & Information Technology is currently evaluating every aspect of myBucknell with the goal of dramatically improving both the content and the functionality. Because an internal audience is seeking very specific information, we are committed to making the portal the most convenient place to find what you need, while we develop the main site with the external audience in mind.

Q. What about Alumni?
A. We recently launched B-Link for Alumni. If you haven't seen it, take a look. Alumni can log-in to a site tailored to their specific information needs: e.g. a directory, career information, clubs, class notes, and other content that is unique for Alumni.

Web Site Redesign Updates: April 2, 2008

2008-04-02T15:40:42Z

Behind the Scenes

Think "web site redesign" and most of us probably think visually -- images, colors, fonts, layout -- all the elements that make a web site sing. In truth, much of the work goes on behind the scenes. Before you can build a house, you must draw up detailed blueprints, prepare the ground, lay the foundation. The same holds true for a web site So here's what we've been doing "behind the scenes."

The Foundation

In collaboration with Fastspot (our web design partner) and the Web Advisory Group, here's what we've been doing:

Discovering. In order for Fastspot to learn about Bucknell, we shared critical research and strategy documents, held small focus group sessions, and reviewed pros and cons of competitor and other web sites
Developing a project timeline. Since we are aiming for a "sometime-in-July" launch, our timeline was built backwards from the launch target.
Developing a creative brief. This document articulates what we want to convey about Bucknell and what sort of emotional response we are aiming for. It also establishes our priorities, such as highlighting academics before everything else, and considering prospective students as our primary audience.
Reviewing and revising the site architecture. The architecture of the site is the underlying structure that the design is based upon. We've reviewed the entire organization of the web site multiple times with an eye towards clarity and simplicity.
Creating wireframes. Independent of design (any look & feel), and analogous to a blueprint, wireframes allow the design firm to organize their ideas spatially, blocking out areas on the web page for features and components.

The Structure

What's next?

Fastspot is conducting a content audit. This will help us determine what belongs on the public site and what belongs in myBucknell, as well as out of date content, new content that we should create, or content that we should revise more forcefully for the web.
Fastspot is visiting campus on April 4, 2008 to present round one of their design concepts. They will be presenting three design concepts for the home page, and two design concepts for the main athletics site.
Based on our feedback, Fastspot will present the next round of designs later in April.
Once the design is finalized, the technical and programming work will begin as we do the work necessary to implement the new design in our Web Content Management system.

You might be wondering....

Will we share the designs with the campus? Yes, although we don't know yet exactly when that will be, we will share the selected design concept before the end of the semester.
What impact will this have on my web site? In most cases, a minimal impact. Some architectural changes will occur, which means sections of the site will move. Url's will NOT change. We will, however, be reaching out to some specific departments to work through some architectural improvements.

What can you do to help?

Review your section of the web site The time to sort out content that belongs on the public web site from content that belongs in myBucknell is now! So much of what we currently have on the public web site is too detailed for site visitors. The external audience does need to know what services, programs, and eventswe have, but they do not need the nitty-gritty details. Save that for the Bucknell community. If you could take a good, hard look at your site's content, we can help you publish that information to the right place.
Think 'global'. Visitors to our web site don't know, or necessarily care about, how we organize ourselves, or who is responsible for what. When they come to our site, they are looking for information. They don't know which office or department "owns" that information. The web site is like a classroom without walls. We should be thinking about how we can best present the information and not be overly concerned with developing independent web sites.
Ask questions! Have a concern, suggestion, or idea. Now is the time to communicate with us. At this point everything is still on the table. Use the feedback feature on this page, or send an email to webdevelopment@bucknell.edu.

Web Training for 2007/08

2007-08-31T17:39:57Z

Training Available: Now that the new semester is underway, we are ready to resume offering training sessions for using Ingeniux, our Web Content Managment (WCM) system. We'll be offerning "First Time User/Refresher" sessions, as well as "Beyond the Basics." (See full schedule.)

Additional Services: Beyond this training, we are available to assist you with evaluating the content of your site, reorganizing the material for improved usability, designing custom graphics, revising your text to make it web-friendly, developing multimedia, and other specialized requests. For more information, email: webdevelopment@bucknell.edu.

Coming Soon: We're evaluating the next release of Ingeniux and will make it available to the campus as soon as we confirm that it's stable. We also hope to be able to announce the availabitlity of the Mac version soon.

Ingeniux Unavailable

2007-04-13T12:23:21Z

The Ingeniux WCM will be temporarily unavailable Tuesday, April 17 for approximately two hours (beginning at 10:00 am) as we make some changes to the architecture of the site to support improvements to the home page. We will send out an email notification as soon as the work is complete. Thank you for your patience.

What's New in 5.2?

2007-03-28T15:19:35Z

We will be upgrading the Ingeniux Web Content Management software on Friday, March 30. This means the WCM will be unavailable from noon till 2:00 p.m. After the upgrade, the next time that you log-in to the WCM, you will be prompted to dowload the software (the same as the very first time you used the WCM). Click on the yellow bar and chose "Install ActiveX Control" and then accept all the default settings, chosing "next" and "install" as prompted.

On Wednesday, April 4, 10:30-11:30 we will host a Beyond the Basics session in the Library Lab (lower level 1, Bertrand) to review the enhancements to the WCM.

Web Pages are Like Plants

2006-12-18T08:43:24Z

Web pages are always evolving. They morph, grow, shrink. New pictures, new content, new sub-pages. The possibilities are endless. But if no one is updating your web page, it grows stale, and pretty soon, no one will bother viewing your page. Web pages need to be tended to, just like plants. Without water, your plants will wither and turn brown. But if you give your plants the right amount of water and sunlight, new growth appears. Tend to your web pages, and new visitors will come.

So if your answer to the question: "Who is updaing your web pages" is no one, then it's time to contact the Web Development team.

Send us an email
call (73310) or
drop by (entrance to the library, on your right, opposite the Teaching & Learning Center).

We'll set up your account, give you access to training material, and by the end of the day, you could be updating your website.

The Ingeniux WCM might be hard to pronounce (that's In-genie-x), but it's easy to use. We have over 50 people updating their pages, and many of them know to little or no HTML.

We have online tutorials, weekly sessions for first-time users, and weekly sessions for learning more advanced features in the WCM. We're here between semesters to answer your questions, and the weekly sessions will start up again in January.

So what are you waiting for?

Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear

2006-12-15T16:29:18Z

Now that the project of migrating our website into a new Web Content Management system is behind us, I’ve found myself thinking back to the start of the project and wondering what we could have done differently. With my perfect 20/20 hindsight vision, I offer this list of lessons learned for those of you whole might be undetaking a similar project:

Demos, Demos, and More Demos. During the product demos, ask for real demonstrations of all features that matter to you. Not screen shots, not verbal reassurances that something will work, not a promise that the next release will be able to do what you need. Ask direct questions about versions of the software -- what features the current version has; what features are under development. Make sure you are clearly understand the answers.
Get Your Hands Dirty. Ask for some hands on time with the product. No matter how hard you try to keep the products sorted out in your head, they inevitably start to blur. Hands-on experience will help. And by "hands-on," I don't mean watching the sales person using the CMS; I mean you, at the computer, mouse in hand.
Know What You Need. Will you have lots of people editing the website? Then focus on the end user interface. Will your web editors use the workflows? Is email notification as part of the workflow important or not? Do you have web editors using both Macs and PCs? Think about how your campus will actually use the WCM and build questions for the sales people around that.
Communicate With Your Campus. Update your campus regularly about the status of the project, new developments, changes that they can expect to see. For example, if the new system is going to mean a change in URLs sitewide, make sure your campus knows this and understands the implictions (e.g. that bookmarks will break; that references to URLs in printed publications must be updated). Communication more than you believe is necessary.
Do It Yourself. Lots of CMS companies promote some sort of "import" tool. My advice? Even if they offer such a tool, no matter how tempting it sounds, import the site yourself. You know your website inside out; the CMS staff does not. And it's the only way to really learn all the ins and outs of the product. Hire a crew. Ask for volunteers. Host a weeklong migration party. Whatever it takes.
Be Patient. Estimate how long you think it will take to get your website into the CMS. Now take that figure and double it. Seriously. You are going to encounter unpredictable issues, convoluted challenges, and depths to your website that you never knew existed.
Nothing is Perfect. Finally, remember what I said in an earlier entry: there is no perfect CMS system out there, even if you have the people-power to write your own. Repeat after me: there is no perfect CMS.

Web Migration Update

2006-09-15T15:45:20Z

To the Campus Community: We are pleased to announce that the website migration should be completed sometime within the next two weeks. Thank you for your extended patience and understanding, and a special thank you to the many ISR, Communications, and Administrative Services staff who volunteered their time to help us complete this major project. After such a longwait, it might seem like a let down when the website looks almost exactly the same, but getting everything to look as it did was actually our goal. This was not a site redesign, but a change in the tool that we will use to manage the web content.

In spite of our best efforts, there will still be some missing pages, broken links, or forms that won’t process. We ask that when the site goes live, you review your website and make note of any errors or missing material. We will work with you to correct any part of your site. One new enhancement you will notice to the site is a link on the left to “Comment on this Page.” We encourage you to use this feature to communicate with the Web Development Team. Please be aware that the URLs leading to each major web section will be the same (e.g. www.bucknell.edu/Admissions, or www.bucknell.edu/Geography, etc.). Because it will be far easier for visitors to follow such addresses, we encourage you to always use the URL to the top-level page of your site (e.g. www.bucknell.edu/WeisCenter) in publicity or other communications.

However, the URLs for all subsequent pages (those not leading to the top page of a web section) will change. The good news is that these URLs will now be short and manageable, taking the following form: www.bucknell.edu/x409.xml. (Upon request to webdevelopment@bucknell.edu, a “friendly URL” can be created in the form of: www.bucknell.edu/HonoraryDegrees.xml.) Changes to URLs will not impact web sites on the facstaff, students, orgs, or departments servers. Questions or concerns about changes in URLs should be sent to webdevelopment@bucknell.edu.

We will be sending out information soon about how to access the training tutorial and how to log in to the Ingeniux training site.

Thank you again for your patience.

What's on Your Internet?

2006-04-07T15:55:11Z

Deciding what belongs on your internet (your public facing website) and what is better placed on your intranet (your organization's internal website) seems like ano-brainer. It's the same as determining what you would tell a stranger compared to what you would tell your sister or your best friend. Nothing tricky about that, right? Then why are so many websites filled with material that the general public neither cares about or needs to know? Why can the casual visitor to a university website find handbooks, forms and policies that are relevant only to the business of living, learning and working on a particular campus? Some of it is historic (that's the way we've been doing it); some of it is what I would call the "Technology Overload Syndrome" or a resistance to learning yet another electronic pattern/gadget/tool/language. Perhaps you may remember what work was like before email, before voicemail, before the web. Something like a staff handbook was a binder on your bookcase. Annual updates arrived via snail mail. If you phoned someone and there was no answer, you tried calling again later. But the casual visitor to your campus never touched any handbooks. So why do we have similar documents on our public websites now? Why are we still telling strangers more than they asked for and more than they could ever possibly want to know? We launched myBucknell almost two years ago (0ur version of an intranet). It's growing slowly (too slowly, one might argue), but clearly a one-size-fits-all website is no longer viable. The public has to wade through all our internal chatter to find out the facts and details, while the current student, faculty or staff member has to read through page after page of "recruitment" material when all she really wants is to submit a form detailing receipts from a recent conference. Sorting through our content, separating the internal from the external, is time consuming, but it's a task we can no longer afford to avoid. The public wants to know who we are, where we are, and what makes us unique. They really don't need to know how we are organized, how we process our internal information, or what's available in the cafeteria next Monday. Just because it's easy to tell the stranger on an airplane our life story, doesn't mean we should, or that he wants to hear. It's time we start focusing on what, exactly, we are posting on our public website and why.

UWrote It, UHaul It

2006-03-25T15:38:03Z

As we get ready to move our website (over 13,000 pages) into a new WCM system, I've been thinking a lot about content. We've spent considerable time on design & navigation issues, and the tools for creating websites, but in comparison, we've spent only minimal time tending to the actual content that we're posting. The more I scrutinize our website, the more certain I am that we simply have too much content, too many pages with long blocks of text that we're originally written for a brochure or some other printed publication.

We need to turn our attention to what information we're posting. The Web Development Team recently offered a "Writing for the Web" workshop. Enrollment was higher than we expected, which confirms for me that the time is right for us to concentrate on content. It's time to weed the garden. Clean house. Or maybe a "relocation" metaphor is more apt. Remember the last time you moved to a new home or apartment? You didn't just pack up everything you owned and move it. You cleaned and sorted and threw things away. That's what we have the opportunity to do. Even though it's possible that we could import our entire website into our new WCM, that might not be the best thing. I think it's time for us to clean out our closets and drawers, to streamline, and take a good hard look at what's worth packing up in boxes and what's just baggage that we've been dragging around.

Expectations

2006-03-06T16:06:54Z

I've been thinking about expectations, specifically expectations for Bucknell's new CMS -- my own, and those of the many people on campus who will be using our system. Is it better to have high expectations (and risk disappointment), following the career advice to dress-for-the-job-you-want-not-the-job-you-have? Aim high! Dream big! Expect the most out of yourself and those around you. Or is it better to have low expectations (expect the worst), so that anything else will feel like a success. No place to go but up! And exactly what do I mean by which approach is better? Do I mean which approach is safer, or which approach will yield better results? By setting our sights high do we push ourselves to achieve more? Or do we limit the possible outcomes by having such a clearly defined set of expectations? On the flip side, by keeping our expectations modest, have we clipped our wings before we've even tried flying? Or are we keeping the possibilities wide open The prudent thing to do would be to keep our expectations realistic. Expect some improvement over the current situation. Expect the new system to be better but not fantastic. Expect that working on web pages will be easier but not easy. But this sounds about as inspirational as reading the ingredients on a cereal box. So here's what I expect of the new CMS:

it will be simple to navigate
the interface will be clear and compelling
making links will be a matter of browsing, dragging and dropping
the system will process changes rapidly (no more heading to the coffee pot while the page processes!)
we'll be able to drag and drop content from Word into the CMS
we'll be able to preview the pages before publishing them
there will be context sensitive help available
the workflows will work!

What the new CMS won't do?

it won't create good web content for you (yes, you still have to write for the web!)
it won't allow you create a new design for your section of the website
it won't do complex web programming (that's we the web team is here for
it won't create graphics or multimedia for you (that's what the web team is for)
it won't turn you into a web professional, but it will assist you in creating professional looking web pages

I don't know if these expectations are high, low or realistic. Maybe they're a combination of all three approaches. But I'm excited to get started. I'm going to take the optimistic and open-minded approach: expect a lot and stay open to learning and changing.

Making a Commitment

2006-02-27T16:11:08Z

Well, we've done it. We've selected Ingeniux for our next CMS. And although our recent mantra has been: "No CMS is perfect, no CMS is perfect," I have to admit my expectations are high. Ingeniux is a small but well-established company with lots of higher education clients. We're anticipating that this will mean a) that we'll get personalized customer service, b) that our requests will be heard, and c) that the specialized requirements of a higher education web site will be understood and given priority. Our next step is to start a dialogue with the Ingeniux team. Over the next few weeks we'll be developing an implementation plan. The Web Team will go through intensive training, learning to administer the system and to develop the necessary templates. We'll be developing a timeline for software installation, web team training, site migration, and end-user training.

Lots of hard work ahead, but I'm eager to get started. Our current system is still functional but it's getting rusty and temperamental. So, for better or worse, here we go. Hello, Ingeniux.

Choosing a CMS, Part II: The Calm Before the Storm

2006-02-15T16:18:35Z

After the Demos So you've made it through the endless Content Management Systems demos. You've compared the features, asked all the questions you can think of, weighed the pros and cons of each, reviewed the feedback from your community, considered the costs, and overall spent so much time on this project that the systems are blurring together and you're seeing CMS system images in your dreams! The Calm Before the Storm But you've made a choice. For better or worse, one system has floated to the top. The coins have been flipped. Straws chosen. Petals plucked. Contract negotiations are at last underway. Since this is our second time going through this process, here's what I've learned: take advantage of this calm phase. Make some updates to your personal page. Check your web statistics. Tweak your search engine. Because when the implementation team shows up and the installation is done, this calm phase will be nothing but a sweet memory. You'll be neck deep in training, learning to build templates, devising a plan for migrating your site, developing training materials. You're about to enter the busiest phase imaginable, because while you're learning this new system, the day to day maintenance of your current site doesn't stop. So take a deep breath. It might be your last opportunity for awhile.

Searching for a (Web) Content Management System

2006-01-23T16:24:45Z

Any of you out there searching for a CMS for your college or university? Get ready for a major project. From evaluating, to demonstrations, to training, to migrating your site, there are many steps to this process. We're going through our second CMS search/purchase, as the first one we bought turned out to be a product that the company stopped developing. So we've been basically riding a dead horse for about three years now, whipping it now and then and applying band aids. Because this is our second search, we've learned a few things that might be helpful to those of you going through this for your first (or second) time.

Nothing's Perfect: There is no perfect CMS system out there, even if you have the people-power to write your own. Repeat after me: There is no perfect CMS.
The Biggest Hurdle: If this is your first CMS, the biggest hurdle has nothing to do with the particular system you select, and everything to do with the fundamental shift from an unmanaged to a managed site. Getting your campus community to think about the content and not the overall design is a huge change, and if you are going to harness the power of CMS workflows, expect some confusion and/or resistance.
Priorities: Take some time to identify your institution's top priorities for a CMS. Is it ease of use for the content contributors? Is it MAC compatibility? Is it flexibility? Coming up with your priorities will help you to sort through the CMS features.
Communication is Key: Communicate with your campus throughout the process. Hold open forums to explain why you are moving into a CMS. Invite stakeholders to demonstrations. Get feedback from future content contributors. Notify the campus of your plan for migrating to the CMS.
Training: Anticipate that there will be a significant time investment in end user training. Even with the more intuitive systems out there, expect that it will take about 45 minutes to train a non-technically inclined content contributor, longer if you are training in groups. And your content contributors keeps changing every semester.
Be Patient: Don't expect to be able to leverage all of the power of your new CMS right away. These are big powerful beasts that take some time to tame. Regardless of how much training you get from the company, it's one of those things that you really grow to understand by using it.

We're at the tail end of the purchase phase. Stayed tuned for our announcement about which product we selected what it's like to really use it. Next segment: Beyond the Demo.