The University of Kansas School of Business offers undergraduate and graduate programs for virtually every interest. With KU as a Tier I research university, it is necessary the School of Business reflect this commitment of integrating the latest research, technology and information needs of its students, faculty and staff with its web site. The school operates a web site that is specific to the school and its activities. It contains information concerning students, faculty and staff, programs, news, events, enrollment, etc. Due to their ever increasing content needs, the KU School of Business required a system that could quickly and easily update content as well as convert many manual processes associated with HTML driven web sites into automated processes.

Challenge

• Build a web site that is representative of the prestigious image of the School of Business.
• Make it a completely database driven and customizable site with dynamic content that can be changed frequently.
• Ensure the site is easy to navigate by users due to the tremendous amount of information available.
• Build the site so members of the University faculty and staff can make modifications to the site with little or no programming experience.
• Create permission and security functionality that allows various departments to maintain their own departmental information.
• Ensure the flexibility to add new functionality as the web site becomes an increasingly comprehensive tool for managing all internal and external interaction.

Response

Our first objective was that the application and the sites it created be as efficient as possible. Currently, the complete application is less than 100 kb and the pages it creates are immediately database generated. This results in the near elimination of time delays experienced by database connectivity for sites since all pages are saved as HTML. Our second objective was for the tool to be reusable for additions to this site and also for the creation of new sites in the future. This is the result of highly customizable templates that can be reused as often as desired. Our final objective was for the application to produce complete web sites as quickly as possible. Uploading pictures, creating dropdown menus and inserting content is a user-friendly point and click process. HTML or other web programming knowledge is not required. This site and its structure of seven main drop-down menus, Contact, Feedback and Search functions, 35 sub-menus, 25 third-tier menus and multiple images on each page was completed in three weeks.

Effects

KU now has an effective web site design tool that can be utilized by any person in the organization to make customized changes to any aspect of the site. Menus, search pages and content are automatically generated. This is especially valuable when the information and services offered by the Business School are constantly being evaluated and changed. The content management tool that AllofE developed, ContentM, will enable the school to adapt to those changes in a timely and cost efficient manner.For this project, AllofE developed a content management tool that revolutionizes the way large web sites work. ContentM improves the process by which large web sites are created and maintained, while making it simple for non-technical people to maintain and change content on the site.