By Jeff Morris
A milestone was quietly reached this summer in the continued updating of the K-State Web presence. As two more colleges published sites in our content management system, or CMS, we met the goal of having every college/major unit in the system. Thanks to all who helped with this effort.
From a practical standpoint, we have now migrated 500 sites representing about 40,000 pages created during the past three years. More than 1,000 K-Staters have been trained in using the system and are actively updating content.
For our end-users, the Web experience has been improved through more consistent navigation and a uniform look and feel. By constantly monitoring user behavior, the Web team is able to continuously improve the experience based on real data, not just personal opinions or anecdotes.
This effort began in fall 2010 per the direction of President Schulz and started with the evaluation of many CMS platforms. Teams from across the university worked on this project and solicited input from our many users. They knew it would be challenging to find a solution that met the needs of a multicampus system. Compromises were necessary, as was lots of testing, dialogue and feedback.
What we call the “great web migration” continues today. There are more areas to bring into the system and updates continue. It is exciting to look at new features yet to come, especially with the ever-increasing use of mobile devices to access content. Today, we can more quickly add new features and make universal changes to enhance security, usability and accessibility across the university website.
There are too many folks to thank, especially those in Student Life, ITS and our communications and marketing Web team who tirelessly worked on this mega-project. Our work is not done and the potential not yet fully realized, but we should take a moment to celebrate progress.
If you have suggestions or thoughts about our website, please send me an email atjbmorris@ksu.edu.
At your service,
Jeff Morris
Vice president for communications and marketing
(Editor’s note: Reprinted from K-State Today’s article published Aug. 22, 2014.)
