Slides used in workshop session B8 on "Implementation of a Commercial Content Management System" at the IWMW 2003 event held at the University of Kent on 11-13 June 2003. See http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/webmaster-2003/sessions/#workshops-b

1. Collage at Cass
Business School

2. Cass Business School
• Major UK Business School
• Requirements
Marketing
Programmes, research, students,
involvement
Internal Communications
“Intranet”, Teaching & learning
External communications
Alumni, Press, Events
Accessibility
Multi-browser support

3. Website History
• Version 1
Hand rolled, limited
• Version 2
Out-sourced - unmanageable
• Version 3
Early CMS - Control but loss of flexibility
• Version 4
Collage! - Control & Flexibility

4. Resources
• Team of three
• Branding toolkit
• Some consultancy on implementation
• Systems support
• Lotus Domino for DB Apps
• But - no developer resources

5. Process
• Technology Immersion
• Site Architecture
• Template and CSS Development
• Clean up old content
• Migration of content
• Tidying up
• Switch on - to new domain at same time

6. Why CMS?
• Standards
• Control
• Support
• Brand
• Versioning
• Templates
• Self managing links
• The future

7. Why (Commercial) - Collage? -
Standards
• J2EE
• HTML 4.0
• JavaScript
• CSS
• XML (The future?)
• Collage does not get in the way
• LDAP

8. Why Collage? - Control
• One definitive version
• Not editing live site
• Fine grained security model
• Approval cycle
• Versioning
• Compliance - SENDA (Section 508)

9. Why Collage? - Web team’s friend
• Remote support - WYSIWIS
• Collage paradigm easy to assimilate
• Self generating navigation elements
• Real time link management
• Integration with Dreamweaver (itself customisable)
• Audit log - who did what and when?
• Versioning & rollback
• Web interface, ftp, WebDAV
• Components - re-usable chunks

10. Why Collage? - Brand
• In 2002 City ->Cass rebrand
• Need to implement brand right through site
• But need for flexibility & differentiation
• Intelligent Templates with asset metadata
• Style sheets & Image assets

11. Why Collage? - Users friend
• Versioning - A huge reassurance for all users
• Staging server
• Content contribution - simple interface
• Scheduled deploy
• Easy to get support - WYSIWIS
• Link management
• Only simple formatting needed for attractive end
product

12. Why Collage? - Templates
• Nested templates
• Intelligence
• Majority of site implemented in one template
• Integration with asset metadata

13. Why Collage? - Self managing
links
• Drag and drop assets and links are
remembered
• Components - self describing information

14. Why Collage? - The future
• Integration with Lotus Domino through J2EE
• Extensible
Store information as XML
Put it in front of Oracle 9i
Run it on Linux
Multiple Collage
Servers/Database
Servers
• Office -> PDF Conversion (GhostScript)