As the Office of Marketing and Communication and Information Technology Services continue to upgrade Marquette.edu, the university is working toward to a new web content management system (CMS) called OU Campus.
OU Campus, a product of OmniUpdate, has more than 60,000 higher education users across the world and will replace Adobe Contribute for web authoring.
As part of the transition, official websites will be updated with the newer Marquette design which is mobile friendly and will meet web accessibility standards. Websites will be migrated into the new tool in phases over several years. Colleges and schools, sites with the greatest impact on students and sites with the highest traffic will move first. OMC will contact web editors and their managers in the coming months with more details on training opportunities and next steps.
Web editors’ wish list
OU Campus makes it easy for non-technical individuals to manage websites. Web editors shared what they most wanted in survey feedback and focus groups before OU Campus was selected. Five popular items that OU campus includes are listed below:
Work anywhere
Now: Contribute can only be used on a specific computer. Departments pay for the software.
With OU Campus: Web editors will login with their Marquette username and password to a OU Campus website to make updates. That means they can update sites from any computer on-campus and via VPN software from off-campus. Departments will not need to purchase web editing software.
Easy image editing
Now: Web editors must use image editing software such Photoshop Elements to resize and crop an image, then use Contribute to add the image to a page and publish. Departments pay for the image editing software.
With OU Campus: Web editors can add and edit images in OU Campus. Departments will no longer need to purchase image editing software.
Accurate preview lets editors verify changes before publishing
Now: Contribute often does not offer an accurate preview. Editors need to publish content in order to see what a page looks like online.
With OU Campus: Web editors can see what their pages look like while editing. The multi-browser preview feature reveals what a page looks like in up to 25 desktop browsers and mobile browsers. The preview is accurate so web editors can feel safe about publishing.
Keep sites current
Now: It’s hard to keep track of when content needs updates, and stale content tends to stay online, confusing site visitors.
With OU Campus: It’s easy to set email reminders for web editors to review content. Content can also be removed automatically after a specified date without breaking links to any CMS pages that point to it.
Accessibility and quality assurance
Now: Editors must consult external references on university style and accessibility standards.
With OU Campus: OU Campus checks for accessibility issues, spelling and broken links. The tool requires fixing issues before publishing. Web editors can also generate reports and assign issues to be addressed other team members.
On the process of selecting the OU Campus content management system
A core project team of university stakeholders formed in 2015 to select and launch an enterprise web content management system. Web editor needs have informed every step of the selection process. Before drafting requirements, the team surveyed web editors and hosted focus groups to get perspective on their challenges and what was working well.
After narrowing options to three vendors that met capital budget and functional requirements, the core project team invited web editors to attend product demonstrations and share feedback. Because OU Campus was the clear favorite among attendees and best met university requirements, the core project team chose OmniUpdate as the university’s CMS supplier. Work began on the implementation after OU Campus was purchased in spring 2016.
Marquette.edu by the numbers
144,000 — Estimated number of web pages across Marquette web sites as of Fall 2016.
575 — About 575 individuals across Marquette, including student employees, serve as web editors. Web editors will be trained in the new software, making the transition to OU Campus over several years.
2,940,000 — Nearly 3 million visitors last year came to Marquette.edu, a key communication vehicle for prospective students, faculty, staff, alumni and the community.
5 and 1 — The number of full-time and part-time web design and development personnel in OMC and IT Services, responsible for marquette.edu website support, digital advertisement, and other digital content.
6.8 — The number of years it would take one full-time person to spend five minutes editing each of the 144,000 pages on Marquette websites.