Upgrading to Content Management

This is meant to be a case study based on a real solution provided to an institution. @ebc Inc. has these resources available to implement for clients.

A Museum sought to redesign their web presence and invite a broader community to engage with the institution, without any restrictions on content.

Through a few web development companies, the museum evaluated several potential content management options, ultimately selecting Macromedia Contribute as their solution for adding and updating web content quickly and easily. With Contribute, the museum introduced a flexible review and approval process and enabled cross-functional departments to easily and safely add and update content on the website. An authoring tool for non-technical content providers, Contribute 3 requires no technical expertise and is powered by the same technology as Macromedia Dreamweaver.



The Benefits:
•Enabled cross-functional departments to easily and safely add and update content -- without knowing HTML.
•With consulting help from a web developer, the Museum created a flexible review and approval process, which accelerated website updates.
•Accessibility standards and usability maintained through transparent and invisible project workflow.
•Admin settings help ensure that website meets guidelines for accessibility support.
Content publishing process never degraded and ensures preservation of work and standards.

The museum boasts more than a million artifacts and approximately 28,000 works of art. The museum is also a broad, active, and community-based institution that includes exhibition spaces, a library, and archives. In fact, the archives contain the largest collection of photographs, drawings, memorabilia, and documents about their territory in the world.

Within the scope of a five-year New Media plan, developed to implement a new technology strategy for the delivery of museum content, the Museum sought to redesign and redevelop its web presence to reflect the welcoming, active, and dynamic nature of the institution.

To achieve this goal, the Museum selected an interactive technology and web design firm. Renowned for their work in the arts and culture space, the firm worked closely with the museum’s staff to create a new website that was intuitive, accessible, and highly usable for a broad range of users.

The Museum had three primary goals for the site: First, the site had to accommodate dynamic, compelling and up-to-date information on the museum’s exhibitions, collections, programs, and events. Second, the site had to be easy to maintain, which was no small feat considering the size of the institution and the number of departments involved in developing content for the website. And third, the site needed to adhere to new government standards for web accessibility.

In fact, Macromedia technology underpinned almost every facet of the new website redesign project. The web firm developed the site using the Macromedia Studio product suite, and deployed the site using Macromedia ColdFusion. The museum uses the Macromedia Web Publishing System, which includes Contribute, to enable content contributors to collaborate, manage, and publish to websites using templates within a centrally controlled, standards-based environment. Developers used Macromedia Flash to create multimedia content and interactive functionality. Finally, the museum’s web producers use Macromedia Studio for ongoing website production.

The ongoing success of the new website redesign is apparent, yet Contribute remains behind the scenes. It is approachable and easy to use for the broad range of departmental users in the museum. Additionally, site administrators like the flexibility of using Dreamweaver and Contribute together to maintain a centrally controlled and permissions-based environment for distributed web publishing. Furthermore, they leverage Contribute’s accessibility features to meet and exceed the W3C levels 1 and 2 accessibility standards (both at site launch and on an ongoing basis). Administrator options allow site developers to enforce accessibility markup (such as alt tags for images) and protect CSS layout standards (which help structure the hierarchy of content so that it is optimized for screen readers).

Finally, the Museum provides their comments on the website project.

“Contribute hits the mark because it takes advantage of and enforces an imbued intelligence that is integrated into the work-flow process, web templates and overall site design.” For the web firm and the museum, implementing Contribute into the Museum's site maintenance process means that the developer and the museum’s web producers can rest easy at night. They know that as content is added and published to the site that design, accessibility and usability standards will be maintained at all times. Best of all, for site producers, the enhanced publishing process means they are free to work on more challenging projects (other than updating text) and that accessibility has become transparent and invisible to the project work-flow.

For more information, feel free to contact us on how to implement the Adobe line of products for your next website project.