{"id":45,"date":"2006-06-15T20:45:34","date_gmt":"2006-06-16T00:45:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unitstep.net\/blog\/2006\/06\/15\/universities-and-web-platforms\/"},"modified":"2006-06-18T22:12:10","modified_gmt":"2006-06-19T02:12:10","slug":"universities-and-web-platforms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitstep.net\/blog\/2006\/06\/15\/universities-and-web-platforms\/","title":{"rendered":"Universities and web-platforms"},"content":{"rendered":"

Traditionally, university websites have been very hodge-podge and piecemeal, as a result of the many departments and faculties that comprise the institution. This has resulted in pages whose “look & feel” varies widely and can either confuse the reader (humans adjust easily when there are clear patterns) or just come off as looking non-professional. The obvious solution is to adopt some sort of CMS<\/acronym><\/abbr> that will make it easier to apply styles site-wide, but this can be a problem in a university setting, where departments and faculties can sometimes be very territorial. <\/p>\n

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\nThis is why when my university, Queen’s<\/a>, decided to try out a CMS<\/acronym><\/abbr><\/a>, it piqued my interest. I read about the progression of this, from the time they had to get input from various sources to when they had to define criteria that a CMS<\/acronym><\/abbr> would have to meet in order to be selected. While these are baby steps, in relative terms, it’s a trip to the moon, since what they had before must have been a horrendous mess to keep up to date and to maintain.\n<\/p>\n

\nThere still is a lot of work to be done, however. The vast majority of the pages that form the Queen’s website still lack a common “look & feel”, which I believe is important for an institution. While organizing everything under a common CMS<\/acronym><\/abbr> would take much effort because of the training that all staff would require to adjust to such a new system, (not to mention the adjustment the webmasters of each department would need), I think it is a necessary step in the overall evolution and update of the website.\n<\/p>\n

\nAs an example, Queen’s can look at the University of Waterloo’s website<\/a>, inter-university rivalries notwithstanding. They clearly have a defined look & feel<\/a>, and have a nice web development blog<\/a> that seems to be in tune with current web standards, technologies, and practices. (As evidence, look at their standards-based design for their sites.) Most of their departmental and faculty websites also share the same styles, and standards-based designs, at least on their front-pages, as I’m sure there are a few static back-pages that haven’t been integrated into their system.\n<\/p>\n

\nWith more and more universities making the switch to a CMS<\/acronym><\/abbr><\/a> for easier management, the upcoming changes for Queen’s could not have come at a better time. I only hope that this pilot project does not get stalled or otherwise delayed; ideally, I’d like to see site-wide changes before I graduate next year.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Traditionally, university websites have been very hodge-podge and piecemeal, as a result of the many departments and faculties that comprise the institution. This has resulted in pages whose “look & feel” varies widely and can either confuse the reader (humans adjust easily when there are clear patterns) or just come off as looking non-professional. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[19,5,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitstep.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitstep.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitstep.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitstep.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitstep.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/unitstep.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitstep.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitstep.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitstep.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}