Welcome webinar participants! Day 1 discussion...

Hello again, everyone. Thanks for joining today's session.

As I mentioned earlier, managing content is a strategic choice in which a CMS package is only part of the total solution.

To get the discussion started, how many of you feel your institution is truly ready to embark on this adventure? And, if not, what are your challenges? Expectations, culture, overly-simplistic view of the issue, budget? For those needing to build momentum, let's chime in to help.

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Answers to questions during the webinar will be posted below as we assemble them...

Q: Doing an audit as described in the session for a large university website seems outlandish. Thousands of pages and hundreds of departments. How do you do something like that?

Excellent question. Yes, it is a daunting task to take-on your entire website. But if your CMS scope includes your entire website, at some point you're going to have to face it. It's coming, one way or another.

If there are thousands of pages of content on your website, I'll gamble and say your website has probably become the dumping ground for everything everyone wants "on the web." The phrase "yea, let's get that posted on the website," has been used way tooooo much. (Hopefully, your nodding in agreement.)

If this is the case, you want to strongly consider a content management strategy that includes a segregation of your content between internal audiences vs. external audiences; which means an internal portal may well be in your future. It also helps bolster the case for higher standardization and clearer publishing guidelines with administrators.

The only way you're going to know for sure how to segment and scale down this much content is to take a full accounting of exactly what's out there.

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But if you only want to get an idea of the content that's out there, to help keep your CMS project moving forward, here's a quick plan:

1. Group common websites at a high level first, like by administrative unit or college.
2. Choose a minimum number of websites to detail audit for each group. I'd recommend no fewer than five. (If you had 100 directories and broke them down into 10 groups, you'd cut your detailed audit number by half. And if you're auditing fewer than 20 directories in a website with over 100, you may want to re-group or raise your minimum.)
3. Audit those groups in detail, by categorizing file types, average last update date, type of content, applications used, etc.

Patterns should start emerging between directories in the same group. You might also notice patterns between groups.

In a scaled-down content and information audit, you'll likely face bumps when the "rubber hits the road" in the migration phase; especially with those departments you didn't audit. It's Murphy's Law: Those will likely be the ones that have that weird, quirky little web application they won't want to give up, and they will be the squeakiest wheels on your campus.