27 January 2011

It Works like Word: The New Web CMS

The community of University web editors can look forward to a less complicated 2011 thanks to the new Web Content Management System (CMS) being rolled out.

Like its predecessor the new CMS will ensure that all 600 web editors produce pages in the pre-defined University style. However, gone are the rigid form fields and endless ‘One more’ buttons that made the old CMS such a uniquely clunky and cumbersome experience. Web editors are now presented with a modern word-processor style editor where you can simply click and type to edit text, choose bold, italic and underline using toolbar buttons and add pictures from a shared image library.

From January, the CiCS web team will work closely with each department agreeing a migration timetable. Departmental editors will be trained in using the new CMS and on an agreed date, CiCS will copy the existing departmental website into the new system. Once the migrated version of the website has been approved by the department, the website will be made live, the editors’ permissions will be activated and the old clunky CMS access will be switched off. Editors can then maintain their website using the new elegant interface.

CiCS has just completed this migration process for its own website. There were a few minor adjustments needed to perfect the copied version of the website, but since these changes could be made using the new CMS they provided a welcome opportunity to try the new system for real.

If you are interested in seeing a demo of the new CMS or would like to discuss the migration schedule for your own department email cms@sheffield.ac.uk