HomeGrown Content Management In the Pursuit of MaintenanceFree Home Pages

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Home-Grown Content ManagementIn the Pursuit of
Maintenance-Free Home Pages

• John Galvin
• Web Services Group
• September 10, 2007

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What We Know

• Home pages are high-traffic areas
• and we want them to be
• Home pages should be robust
• Information should be concise, relevant, useful
• Their content must be kept fresh
• If yesterdays information is displaying today,
  readers wont be back tomorrow.

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What Were Challenged With

• Limited staff resources
• Increased demand for web services, support,
  professional development, etc. so much to do,
  so little time
• Growing sites require increased upkeep
• Someone has got to feed these content-hungry
  monsters

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The Solution

• Wherever possible, convert static components that
  require regular updating over to dynamic ones
• If a components content changes regularly, but
  its container remains the same, then shoot for a
  Content Management System (CMS)
• Shift content-scheduling and content-generation
  responsibility to someone else wherever possible
• Not because were lazy, because our resources are
  better spent building new monsters, not feeding
  the existing ones
• Systems that we build for ourselves can be rough
• Systems that we build for others to use have to
  be smooth

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BNLs Intranet Home Page

• Template Elements,Navigation Elements
• Rarely Change
• Content
• Splash Graphic
• Events Calendar
• Press Releases
• Conferences
• Comments
• Holidays
• Weather
• Announcements
• BNLs 60th Anniversary
• Newsclips
• Intrapics
• Classified Ads

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Staticvs.DynamicComponents
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Number of Home PageComponents13
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Number of Components That Require Hand
Editing0
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The Splash Graphic Example

• Media Communications
• Schedule Stories
• Write Stories
• Take Photographs
• Send Us the Complete Package for Posting
• Web Services
• Built the System
• Maintain the System
• Feed the System
• Provide Graphics

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The Old Way

• HTML was hand edited each time the home page
  graphic changed
• ltimg src"http//www.bnl.gov/today/splash_pics/20
  07/09/vaccine-w.jpg" alt"Flu vaccine
  available"gtlt/pgtltpgtThe influenza (flu) vaccine
  will be offered to all full- and part-time
  eligible Laboratory employees at the Occupational
  Medicine Clinic through Friday, September 28. If
  you are unavailable during this time frame, flu
  shots will be also available upon request through
  December, or for as long as the supply
  lasts.nbsplta hrefhttp//intranet.bnl.gov/memo/0
  91007.aspvaccinegtMore...lt/agtnbspnbsplta
  href"http//www.bnl.gov/today/"gtTODAY
  Archivelt/agt
• Drawbacks
• Not necessarily difficult, but a pain to do every
  day
• Couldnt put future stories in a queue
• No schedule of future stories
• Temporary solution using If Then logic
• A full story page had to be created for each
  new item
• Archive was hand-maintained

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The New Way

• Two Interconnected Content Management Systems
• The content schedule
• The Today story system

• The Content Schedule
• Media Communications sets schedule, maintains
  items on the list
• Once stories are completed, Web Services uploads
  them into the Today story system

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So, What Does This Get the Lab?

• Common schedule to work from
• Content automatically archived
• Content is searchable
• Content can be queued
• Content can be categorized
• Department-specific stories can be shown on those
  departments home pages

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What Does This Do for Web People?

• Both splash graphic and Intrapic spot on both
  home pages are entirely dynamic
• No more spent time, resources hand-coding the
  pages that change most frequently
• No longer have to create separate story pages
• Global changes Change a single story template
  page and every Today story will display
  accordingly
• The increased growth of the site no longer
  requires increased work to manage
• No more risk of inadvertent typographical errors
  in page code to cause pages to malfunction
• In a pinch, even a non-web person can update
  these sections of the home page without risk of
  disaster
• Future applications can be built that tap this
  information

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A Few Other BNL CMS Examples
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Questions, Comments

• John Galvin
• BNL Web Services