How do you solve a problem like a content management policy?
One of the projects that I (Carley) have been working on over the past few weeks is a review of the content management policy which Duncan and I worked on during the final phase of the Study at St Andrews project. (It was last mentioned (briefly) in our progress report from back in February.) Since that update, the Admissions department have selected two members of staff to be their ‘content coordinators’, and we have been working with Linda and Kayleigh to ensure that the content on the Study at St Andrews site is up-to-date, consistent and portrays St Andrews in the best possible light.
The first iteration of our content management policy was designed entirely with the Study at St Andrews website in mind. This meant that we could be really quite radical; we cut the number of people with access to the Admissions pages in the CMS from 40+ across the university to just 2 in the department. This decision meant that we had to have a watertight process for all of the content knowledge holders in Admissions to get their content onto the shiny new site. This led to the three main rules of our content management policy:
- The content coordinators in the department can make minor content edits, fix typos, update content details and make amends to media library files, for anyone in Admissions.
- For any updates which the content coordinators are not able to make, the digital communications team schedule time each month (the final Thursday and Friday) to work on these updates. This usually includes things such as changes to the information architecture, adding new pages or changing page templates. Staff have been instructed to expect to wait for these, non-urgent updates.
- In the case of urgent and emergency updates which cannot be implemented by a content coordinator, a director within Admissions can contact a member of the digital communications team directly to request an immediate update.
This structure has worked well for us, so far. The content coordinators have been able to make all of the day-to-day updates to the website (such as the dates that staff will be in various countries), while we also created a Google form for new page requests which we evaluate and then action at the end of each month. Thus far, there have only been two requests for emergency updates from directors (one to add a new scholarship with a short deadline, and the other to post a statement about Clearing for the 2014 – 2015 admissions cycle). But the decision tree we created has provided reassurance for the staff who can no longer update the website themselves.
However, as we now move forward, it is up to us to go back over our content management policy (plus the processes which underpin it) and ask whether it’s possible to scale it up. We were lucky with Admissions to have the time and support to work in tandem with the team, teaching them about the principles of user centred design, writing for the web and the benefits of consistent content. There is no guarantee that we will have the same time and support across other departments and schools, and it may well be the case that some individuals will not want to give up access to the web pages that they have historically been able to update as and when they like. There is also a question mark over whether we, the digital communications team, will be able to support more content coordinators as we currently support Admissions.
Later this week, the digital communications team has a group meeting to run through the updated content management policy to decide whether we think that it is a feasible solution to be rolled out across the whole (or at least the whole external facing) University website. It is very strange crafting a policy which could soon be the go-to guidebook for content creation for all schools, departments and units — but at the same time it’s exciting. We have the opportunity to educate so many people, and hopefully make the website more manageable, and more useful.
Hopefully we will be able to share more about our content management policy – and content strategy – in the coming weeks.