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Case Study
Temple U Solves Content Management Challenge
7/11/2007
In terms of a return on investment, Stahler also pointed out that making timely changes to Temple's many websites enhances marketing and recruiting capabilities for faculty as well as students.
Lightening the Load
Under Temple's original system, Central Computer Services would make changes to websites as requested. But as interest in the Internet grew, so did the need for extensive content maintenance. Change requests from users were entered into a queue; depending on the request and the size of the change, an appropriate action could take weeks. Funneling all changes through the IT department had become an expensive and unwieldy approach. "The workload on us was ... overwhelming," Horvath said. "We were falling behind. The more popular the Web got, the more work we had to do."
In response, the university began a lengthy selection process for a solution that eventually narrowed the search to five products, including costly high-end content management systems and open source platforms.
In eventually selecting Contribute, Horvath cited the product's price, compatibility with the open standard LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) for organization of information directories, and ease of use. Temple also wanted a product with a solid ability to control workflow--that is, a method to communicate and control who had permission to make and approve website changes.
Use of an LDAP-compliant system has allowed the university to maintain its single sign-on system and portal server. Through the single sign-on system, a new Contribute user from within the university can be authorized to create or edit Web content very quickly. And the product's ease of use has created a growing base of everyday users, freeing IT staff for more complex programming tasks.
Temple uses Contribute not only as an editor for websites, but for managing the updating of online publications as well. Schools and colleges that must update course information for their catalogs each year can post, review, rewrite, and post the content again, all using Contribute.
The gradual move of Temple sites to Contribute has been made easier by the fact that, unlike some proprietary systems, Contribute can be used to edit any Web page, no matter its origin, Horvath said. Users can thus edit older sites that haven't yet been moved into Temple's Dreamweaver-created customized templates.
"They can get right in and start editing,' Horvath said. "Anybody who wants to edit, can edit. We have everybody from the deans of schools and colleges, to administrative assistants, editing Web pages. This was unheard of a few years ago."
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Linda L. Briggs is a freelance writer based in San Diego, Calif.
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