Oh, what a tangled web …: web content can be unruly. Here's how campus webmasters are using content management systems to gain control

University Business, March, 2005 by Jean Marie Angelo

We've all seen those college websites that make no sense. They are afterthoughts or the end result of ill-conceived student projects. There is no consistent color scheme from page to page; the fonts vary. The only area that received a professional design's tender, loving care was the homepage, but the links there lead to a maze of information that is dated, or hard to navigate. Worst are the websites with information that contradicts itself. Ever hear of a college that posted different tuition prices on its web pages? No one is willing to name names, but more than one higher ed web manager swears it has happened.

It doesn't have to be this way, say the developers of content management systems. They have created browser-based software systems that manage web efforts. Websites, they say, are gateways. Potential students visit to take virtual tours. Students log on to review the course catalog, register for next semester, pay tuition, or simply find out about the weekend social scene.

The website is the "face" of the school notes Dong Chen, web developer and architect at Bowling Green State University (Ohio). It is part of the branding effort. Two years ago, the public university, which is home to 20,000 students on two campuses, brought in a content management system to bring order to its website. The decision was part of a larger collaboration between the CIO's office and marketing and communications. At that point the website was "a mess," suffering from an inordinate number of users who imposed varied graphic and text styles. "Some pages looked like BGSU. Some didn't say anything. People would come to the website and not know where they were."

Thanks to a CMS program called Rhythmyx by Percussion, and global stylesheets that are part of the system, the website (www.bgsu.edu) now has a consistent took that features a recognizable color scheme on its main pages. About 25 CMS users on campus can update information and add pages, but they no longer have access to the main server. Instead, they publish information that is reviewed by a designated web editor before it goes live.

CMS systems work behind the scenes, keeping track of all pages and their respective links to other pages. They also store information, allowing users to re-purpose it at some future date. They disallow gonzo designers in disparate departments from changing design elements--keeping crucial information off limits to all but a webmaster. CMS users in academic departments might be able to, say, change their course descriptions, but they won't be able to replace the school logo that sits in the upper left-hand corner with a photo of the new dean. Something as critical as a tuition price change can be updated simultaneously on all relevant pages, leaving no room for error. The same is true for a changed URL that may appear on a number of webpages.

CMS tools came on the scene as the internet started to grow in the late 1990s. They were introduced to solve the common problems almost every webmaster faces. Webmasters lost control when websites grew from several pages to several hundred, then to several thousand. Many who didn't have software assistance to automate functions were left to hand-code every text and design change.

In academia, even the website page counts at small-sized colleges and universities grew into the thousands. Is CMS the answer for campus webmasters?

The early adopters think so.

Outgrowing Homegrown Solutions

Gonzaga University (Wash.), a private religious school with 8,000 students, installed a CMS in 2002 after first trying to manage web operations through a homegrown solution in its central office. Many IHEs at first take the "do it yourself" approach to web management, says Wayne Powell, C]O and associate academic VP. While the site (www.gonzaga.edu) was attractive enough, it grew too slowly.

In their impatience to load new material, other offices hired their own website development staffers, creating a decentralized web operation with pages and pieces that had no common identity. By 2001, officials came to the consensus that things had to change. A campus team eventually selected Microsoft Content Management Server for CMS.

Gonzaga paid $25,000 for the software, and pays an annual maintenance fee of $5,000 to maintain and upgrade the program. An estimated 70 CMS users on campus can post their own material, provided they receive CMS training and are provided a CMS password. Additional applications have been incorporated into the CMS. They allow Gonzanga to do such things as accept online credit card payment for continuing education programs.

In 2001, Baldwin Wallace College (Ohio), a private IHE with 3,000 students, installed PageWizard, a CMS offered by LeepFrog Technologies. Having CMS allowed the school's website to balloon from 750 pages to 6,000, says Susan Rouault, director of web administration. Eventually about 100 users were trained to use the system--specific personnel in academic and administrative departments were given passcodes so they could post new course information, specifics on admissions, information on students organizations and more.