It's been a little while since we've written. The professionals forging the new www.psu.edu have been working diligently and many took two days to attend the Web Conference at Penn State. Keeping abreast of best practices and benchmarking against others in higher education and industry is vitally important to insure a job well done on this project.
In future weeks, I will be your guide to the happenings behind the scenes. I plan to provide you with weekly highlights and a glimpse of what is upcoming so that you can follow along with our progress.
Things on the table the past couple of weeks:
The teams are researching the purchase of Google Analytics Premium and proposing the creation of a Web Analytics and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) team that could be utilized University-wide.
A review of the Information Architecture (IA) of www.psu.edu prior to any changes is in process to make sure everything is accounted for-so we know what is staying, what is moving to a new location in the new IA, as well as pages that will no longer be directly linked. Work on IA and wireframes continues, including a a decision not to have drop-down menus for accessibility and aesthetic reasons.
A review allowed the core team to begin work on an implementation budget to keep the progress on track.
Several team members met with Georgy Cohen of Crosstown Digital Communications LLC to discuss content strategy for Penn State Live and the aggregation of news. Georgy is a well respected and savvy content strategist with several years of experience in higher education at Tufts University and also at The Boston Globe.
The Technical & Integration Team met to discuss plans for how the team will function. Two panels were created. The first will focus on the Drupal content management system and the second on the site infrastructure.
The core project team is working on a Request for Proposal (RFP) for assistance with the Drupal application setup and coding of templates created by Penn State's talented design team.
Next on the Agenda:
In the coming weeks, the teams will work on...
- Completion of the RFP and submission to Drupal consulting firms
- Preparation for the upcoming meeting of the entire project team
- The next Wireframes meeting will take place on June 21
- A review of the IA for the Penn State Live news site
Stay tuned for further updates and thank you for your interest!
Patti
