Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Search for a New CMS Platform Underway

The CMS service has grown dramatically in the four years since it was launched.  Today over 600 users are managing over 30,000 pages of content that represent much of the university's official web presence.  In response to both this growth and the need to improve the university's overall web presence, Computing Services is beginning a search for new web content management tools. You will be hearing more about this project in coming months, but there are a few things we wanted to bring to your attention right away.

1. MORATORIUM ON NEW SITES

Effective June 1st we will be placing a moratorium on creating new sites in the CMS.  We will also be advising existing clients to postpone any major work on existing sites.

2. MIGRATION OF EXISTING SITES

Migration of existing sites to new technologies will be a key criterion in our evaluation process.  We will work out the specifics of this in the implementation plan and share details with you as they become available.

3. RESPONSE TIME

As our staff begins to spend time gathering requirements for the new system, you may notice a delay in their response time for routine requests.  Please use the following guidelines to set your expectations:
- 1 week for routine questions
- 2 weeks for site reviews and site launches

4. YOUR INPUT

Rigorous and thoughtful requirements gathering and analysis will be critical to selecting technologies that best meet our needs.  While we can gather much of this information by studying the CMS from our side, we are very interested in your feedback.  Please send your questions, comments, and suggestions to cms-feedback@andrew.cmu.edu

We're excited about this project, and hope you are as well.  We'll be in touch soon and often with more details as we flesh out our project plan.