New homepage and design: reflecting on the work so far

Having launched the new homepage and design for core pages of the website a few weeks ago, we held a team retrospective to reflect on the process and outcomes of the work so far. This helps us build on the things that went well and refine our process for the future. Below are the four categories of our retrospective and selected highlights from our thinking.

High points

1. It actually happened!
   It's been a long time coming, so we're really happy to finally launch something new.
2. Having a comprehensive preview available on a test server
   From early on in the process we were publishing the work-in-progress homepage and new design for core page on a test server. This made it so much easier to discuss the changes with the wide range of stakeholders who were involved.
3. Trying some new tools
   We used Usabilla and CrazyEgg in anger for the first time with this project. Both proved really useful, the former for gathering up useful feedback before launch and the latter for visualising usage of the new homepage in a really compelling way.

Things that went well

1. CMS implementation
   Despite its faults, and we know that lately a lot of you have been feeling the pain of slow previews and unreliable publishes (previews should be better now; publishes should get better later this week), the way we'd implemented the original design in Site Manager made it relatively easy to switch to a new look.
2. Developing a process to manage the homepage
   In conjunction with redesigning the homepage, we've redesigned the process by which features and promotions are added to that page. York staff can find information about how we manage promotions on the homepage on the wiki.

Room for improvement

1. Too many things, too little time
   The biggest challenge, by far, was finding time to do the work. We're a very small team of just four people: one manager, one full-time on training and support, two of us trying to do project work but constantly pulled in different directions (eg. CMS preview and publish issues, unplanned project requests). We reckon we get to spend, at best, the equivalent of 1 FTE on planned project work. Given that the recent redesign is just one of several projects ongoing, it's easy to see why we struggle to make quick progress.
2. Finishing what we start
   We sometimes found that we'd start some aspect of the work with gusto, but then other things would come up (see point above) and we might not quite finish what we'd started.

New ideas

1. Reporting on where our time goes
   There are no easy fixes to the problem of just having way too many things to do, but we think a good start might be to reflect on exactly where time is being spent. We track a lot of our time already (using the excellent Tick time tracker) and we track our support calls too, so we have data. We're going to trial having monthly reviews of exactly what we spent time on and hopefully identifying actions we can take to make more time for the most important projects.

Web CMS Upgrade Coming Soon

We're upgrading Site Manager to Version 7 in June, so here's a quick rundown of the improvements that make it much easier to use.

Big improvements to the look and feel

When you log on to the new version of Site Manager you'll notice a difference immediately. The layout and menus are much clearer and easier to use. You can navigate down into the section you're working on without losing your place, as it no longer refreshes the page. And there's no more Tools menu - you'll find the Media Library under the Content menu.

Improved media library

You can upload an image while you're editing text: just go to the media library from the content edit screen and you'll see a new option there.  It's much easier to find out where photos and files are being used - select a 'usage' tab in the individual media item and you'll see a list of locations.  And find media much more easily by adding keywords when you put them into the media library - you can search on them now.

Drag and drop to move sections

It's really easy to move content around: just pick up a section with your mouse and drag it to where you want it to be. All the links will update automatically.

Save as draft

You can now save a piece of content as a draft - anyone using blogging software will know how handy this is. This means draft content doesn't appear in the approvals queue, so it can't accidentally be published.

Easy to preview your content

There's now an option to preview your page from the drop down menu in the content tab, meaning you don't have to preview while editing the content itself.

We are really excited about these changes because we know they will solve a lot of problems for you.

So when is all this happening?

We are testing the software at the moment and subject to no unforeseen problems, we will work on the upgrade from 09:00 on Monday, 25 June until the evening of Wednesday, 27 June, 2012.  It's a major upgrade and the Web CMS will be out of action for three days: we're giving good notice so you can plan around it and let us know (web-office@york.ac.uk) straight away if the dates clash with a major event within your department.  During the upgrade, all pages produced by the Web CMS will remain visible on the website.  However, it will not be possible to edit content.

We're revising our help pages and training notes, so these will be available for you at the time of the launch of the new software.

Site Manager conference and version 7.0

Myself, Paul and Bill were in Dublin last week at an event called T44U, a conference run by TerminalFour who supply our Site Manager Web CMS. Hearing how lots of other Site Manager users run their systems is always fascinating and it was a great opportunity for us to pass on ideas about the product to T4.

The main focus of T44U this year was version 7.0 of Site Manager, currently in development. This is a major new version of the product and significantly enhances the user interface. We're part of a beta programme for the new version and have been trying out the first release for a month or so. There are lots of improvements, but of course as an early release there are still issues to be worked through so we've been sending lots of feedback. We were name-checked as the beta-test client who had submitted the most feedback, so there should be lots of York-influence in the final product! It'll be a while yet before it's ready for general release, but there's definitely lots to look forward to.

Finally, Paul and I gave a short presentation at T44U on some new functionality that we commissioned and developed with T4. I'll not go into details here (far too dull!), but the basic change is that we can now easily use a variety of file extensions for pages on our site. It may not sound exciting, but it makes provision of RSS feeds lots easier and facilitates the creation of iCal feeds and integration of Coldfusion content.