Website Overhauls
When Arts & Sciences moved into the Cascade content management system, we all worked together to update the content and make sure everything lined up properly. That was in 2007-08. How long has it been since your website got a deep, comprehensive look and overhaul?
Website overhauls are currently discontinued. Check back when there's a replacement for Kathy.
It's Time for an Overhaul
Overhauls are projects where we look at every piece of content on your site and decide if it should be moved around, rewritten, or tossed. Then we move it, rewrite it, or toss it. These can be big projects that take several weeks, depending on the time you and your content experts have to devote to it.
The first step in an overhaul project is to [[kalarrieu, contact Kathy]].
Kathy will copy your entire website into a work area in the /as/test/ folder. The area is invisible to search engine bots, and we can play with different ideas and revise content without the public watching.
Kathy can be as involved with this phase as you like:
- In some overhauls, she acts as an advisor for this phase. She knows the W&M and A&S web guidelines and keeps that on track. The web editor, under direction of their chair or program director, does the actual work.
- In other overhauls, the project team gives Kathy the lead for the initial work - she reorganizes content and suggests new text in some areas. When she gets as far as she can, the team reviews her work and fine-tunes as needed.
Overhauls seem to go smoothest when Kathy and one or two people in the unit work together. First, we'll go through every page on the site, removing pages and moving things around to test new formats. We'll identifiy gaps in content and work on that outside of our work sessions.
Once everyone is happy with the revised site, Kathy makes the changes to the live site. This is a manual, painstaking process – best if Kathy handles it. Kathy will also go through the images and documents folders to remove any that are no longer used. One more sweep through the updated site to check for broken links and typos, and we're done.
