Choosing the Right CMS
Drupal vs. Cascade Considerations
CMU is excited to offer a newly re-designed Drupal platform to support university websites. Schools, organizations and programs may access advanced styles and site layouts in an intuitive interface. While we strongly encourage exploration of Drupal, not every site will be eligible. If you’d like to discuss the possibility of migrating into Drupal after exploring the differences between the two CMS offerings, contact the University CMS team.
| Cascade | Drupal | |
| Audience | Serves internal audiences like faculty, staff and current students | Targets external audiences like prospective students, external partners and the general public |
| Content | Contains a lot of evergreen content which may include legal statements, guidelines, and other reference materials | Has ever-changing content related to programs, initiatives, etc. that must be audited and updated on a regular basis |
| Site Traffic | Less than 25,000 page views per month, on average | More than 25,000 page views per month, on average |
| Design | Less need for photos, established templates, animated elements and reusable blocks | Needs support for a wide range of visual elements like photos, tables, timelines, etc., as well as reusable components, statistics and animation |
| Page Structure | Built-in site tree to organize pages and menus by default | Drag-and-drop model that allows authors flexiblility when organizing pages and menus over time. |
Plan Your Website
1. Review other CMU sites for duplication.
The university's web presence extends across hundreds of websites, representing departments, offices and disciplines. As a result, there are many websites that overlap in both focus and content.
Before you start working on a new website or new web page, do a search to make sure there isn't already a website or page built around your topic or concentration. If there is, consider linking to them instead of creating a new page. This will help reduce duplicate information and make it easier for the university's web visitors to find exactly what they are looking for. It also lends more credibility to one source when that source of information is not competing with other internal sources.
What's more, search engines, like Google, scan websites looking for keywords and content. If there are too many pages with the same keywords or duplicate content, search engines have a harder time identifying the correct page to link to. That's why it's important to give attribution to the original source via a link to them.
2. Consider long-term maintenance.
Remember, building a website is not a one-and-done endeavor. Most websites require continual maintenance to stay relevant, informative, useful and engaging for visitors.
Though you may have time to build a website now, make sure there is a plan in place for continual website updates in the future. This usually means having someone on staff available, and that someone may be you.
3. Put yourself in you audiences' shoes.
When developing content for your website, you must first determine who your website visitors will be. Is your website being used to attract prospective students? Or is it being used to provide information and updates for current students, faculty and staff?
Chances are, your website will serve several audiences. For this reason, it's important to think through how you will communicate with each, as each audience has different expectations for what your website will provide and what information they will be looking for.
A useful marketing technique is to build a general profile, or persona, of who an average user might be for each audience, including demographic and behavioral characteristics.
4. Set your website's objectives and goals.
Determining who will be coming to your website and why will help you take a step back and determine what the goals of your website should be. Before writing your content, you should be able to answer "what is the purpose of the website?"Answers that are concise and straightforward are usually key. For example, "provide information about our program," or "attract more students to events," or "provide an easy way to communicate with the public." For further assessment, consider the following questions:
- Why is the website needed?
- What do I want my visitors to take away?
- What are the concrete objectives that I would like to accomplish?
Identify goals for your website! It will help you to get started in the right direction and better prepare you for organizing your content.
Prepare Your Material
Organizing your content is key to creating an effective website because it ensures users are provided the content they are looking for, and it identifies gaps where new content should be created.
1. Take inventory of what you have.
To start, begin taking an inventory of existing content sources. Current or past websites, brochures and other documents are great starting points, as some of the content may just need to be updated or repurposed.
Using either index cards, Post-It notes or a whiteboard, write down everything you want to include on the website. If you are using index cards or Post-It notes, write down one topic per card. Sort the individual topics into groups or piles that "go together," and begin to think of category labels for each pile. This exercise will prompt you to evaluate why certain topics go together, and it will allow you to move items easily between piles and possibly lead you to discover the need for new or different categories. This creative process should demonstrate the different possibilities of organizing the same information.
2. Create a content outline.
Once you've compiled a full inventory, you can determine what your website's main structure and navigation will look like. It's very important to label the navigation items in a way that your audience is able to find the information quickly. The following guidelines may be used to help you identify the best labels for navigation:
- Use keywords and terms that your audience would most likely search on, like "Calendar" or "Contact Information" or "Fees."
- Use words that are intuitive, descriptive and easily scannable. For example, instead of a generic label such as "Programs Offered," a more specific label such as "Undergraduate Degree" would better serve your audience.
- Use phrases that translate into actions (e.g., Apply Now, Schedule a Meeting, Request Help), since most people use websites to perform actions. This will also help you avoid simply using your audiences as navigation items (Students, Faculty, Parents, etc.). While this works in some instances, there is often overlap in both how audiences identify and the content provided to audiences, and you do not want to have to update content in multiple places. Plus, as mentioned earlier, audiences are looking to perform an action. Bucketing them by audience labels can make them hesitate and take them out of their task mindset.
- Use editorial consistency regarding labels and naming; if you choose to use actions as labels (e.g., Apply Now), be consistent and stick with actions for that navigation area.
- In general, avoid being too wordy as people scan text on web pages. Less is more! The same goes for the number of navigation items. Information overload sets in when people have to look at more than seven to eight navigation items.
- Having analytics or anecdotal data can help determine the most often viewed content on your current website. In some cases, this could be important enough to warrant it being its own navigation item.
Once you are satisfied with the main navigation, you can begin to fill in where your other content will go in your new navigation "buckets." The content outline is meant to be just that, an outline. You do not need to fill in every detail; just enough for a solid road map.