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As the project team's understanding of faculty and schools (current sites and the proposed future sits) has grown we have realised that our proposed delivery approach can be improved. The main direction for improvement lies in pruning content areas off all the existing faculty and school sites in repeat "by domaincontent area" sweeps, rewriting it for the Homesite prior to redeveloping the first new faculty site. This pruning, at least in part, will cover content that would otherwise be in a future stage, but where doing it earlier seems to make more sense. Each sweep would reduce the size and complexity of all the faculty and school sites, so that eventually the only content left is that which will be covered on the new site or dropped altogether. The project team all believe that this revised approach is better, as does Nathan. However, this leaves some important questions that need answers before an approach decision can be made.
Why are we already planning to approach CSP "by
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content area" not "by faculty"?
The short answer is because we must. Just think about our subjects on the old school sites (even where on homesite the content is still mastered on school sites). Our new approach is based around topic pages, not subject pages. Wile most topics consist of subjects from the same school (e.g. the topic Film and theatre contains two subjects, Film and Theatre), others cross schools (e.g. the topic History and classics contains five subjects from two schools), and some even cross faculties (e.g. the topic Environment contains six subjects from two faculties). Add to this the confusion for students deciding on what to study if we "bounced" them between old subject pages and new topic pages depending on what subject they wanted to look at next. As we have already accepted that it makes sense to prune the CSP information off all faculty and school sites, the first "by domaincontent area" sweep the next question is . . . .
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Our current approach for Phase 2 is that CSP (and staff profile) content would be addressed "by domaincontent area" across all faculties, rather than as we address all the content on a specific faculty site (i.e." by faculty"). By implication, the remaining content on a faculty site would then be considered and either dropped/deleted or rewritten. The big question is whether this "by topic" approach should be utilised further, extending this gradual whittling down/thinning/pruning of the faculty sites prior to the new replacement faculty site being developed?
There are currently three areas (in common to all/most faculties, significant volume of content (i.e. number of pages), with clear target areas on Homesite) in contention for also being addressed "by domaincontent area" before we start on building the first new faculty site:
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All other content on faculty and school sites will be dealt with on a "by faculty" basis.
How do we decide on where to change from "by
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content area" to "by faculty"?
The project team members and Nathan are in agreement to attempt and prune off as much as possible from all the existing faculty sites before engaging with building a new site for the first faculty. Some guidelines and limits to this view are:
- Follow "by domaincontent area" so long as the domain is common to all/most faculties, contains a significant volume of content, and has a clear target area on Homesite where the current I/A and core team resourcing can "receive" this content. If the answer to most of these is not yes then the content could probably stay on the old site until the "by faculty" approach deals with it.
- Content that could not be moved but ought can be park in a temporary and ring-fenced page/section on the new faculty site until resources or timing is ripe to deal with it properly.
- Stand-alone sites that are specifically mentioned in the high level scope for another stage should remain unchanged until that stage.
- Resist the temptation to perpetuate the life of the old sites by surfacing new content on the old faculty and school sites, even if it seems to meet a short term objective. It will be tempting, but is likely to extend the time span for disabling the old site.
- Content with low usage/unique views could be dealt with by any method, any time. If few people are looking at tit then lets not stew over how and when to handle it. The lower the usage the less we need to weight or consider the impact on users.
- Avoid having more instances of the truth than we currently have. This means we try to turn pages off as there are replacement pages available and live.
What are the implications of following the "by
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content area" approach further than initially intended?
- More redirecting: area being pruned will require an audit and plan for the links to that area from elsewhere, especially on the old faculty site it is coming form. Sometimes we might be able to enable the new content on Homesite and leave the old working on the old site without any great disadvantage. Making changes on a stable, albeit old site introduces risk. While testing can mitigate this risk, it costs and is unlikely to entirely eliminate it.
- By domain is likely to extend the elapsed time over which we need contact with the web admins in faculty and schools. However, it will be less intense on any one faculty or person, so on balance is probably a better idea. It also gives us more opportunities to win people over and show what the new content looks like in on Homesite before we disable their old faculty site.
- I am unclear if one approach is more efficient (i.e. quicker/cheaper) over all.
- I am unclear if one approach has less workload impact on the core team. Having said this it is clear that doing things well will place high demands on the core team, both the impact on the
- URL's: We would have less flexibility to reuse existing urls for the new topic pages until such time as the old school and faculty sites are disabled, freeing up some more desirable urls (e.g. www.victoria.ac.nz/design
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No matter whether we only prune CSP (and staff) before moving to a "by faculty" approach or do subsequent "by domaincontent area" sweeps we will have to help users navigate between the old faculty site and the new content on home site. The following are guidelines (not rules) on how to approach this temporary transition period:
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