Meet Sharon Ruth, Marketing and Communications Manager for the John Muir Institute of the Environment, and a member of the implementation committee since March of 2008. Learn about Sharon’s goals for the Web content management system (CMS), and her experiences so far.

About Sharon

Sharon plans and coordinates the John Muir Institute for the Environment’s communications, marketing and outreach efforts - including the weekly JMIE Announcements & Opportunities Bulletin. Sharon is also a content developer, editor and designer for JMIE’s print and electronic publications.

Sharon lives in Davis with her husband and two children.

Q. How are you involved in the Web CMS initiative?

A. I became involved in phase III, the implementation phase of the initiative. The project team had already selected the CMS solution, and the John Muir Institute of the Environment was brought in as one of several “early adopters.” In exchange, we provided a non-technical and a technical staff member to help develop strategies and solutions for deployment of the system. I have been working with the content management and template teams to deconstruct existing sites to find common elements and processes. Our aim is to provide useful and attractive tools for Web site construction.

Q. Why did you choose to participate in the project?

A. Our unit has been adopting campus Web templates since early 2006. We manage about half a dozen Web sites and were considering content management solutions about the same time that the conversation regarding a campuswide solution was shared. With the diversity of people contributing to our Web sites, and the benefits of adopting a centrally supported tactic for branding and standards, I knew JMIE would consider adopting the CMS solution at some point.

I applied to be part of the implementation initiative in order to provide a faculty-centered research unit viewpoint to the team, contribute time and resources toward a campuswide effort, make sure the system and accompanying templates would meet our needs, and expedite the process of moving our unit’s Web sites to the CMS.

Q. What are the biggest challenges you have worked on as a member of the initiative?

A. There is a fairly steep learning curve for the CMS; a lot of confusing terminology to decipher: roles vs. workflows; style sheets vs. XSLT formats; summary vs. teaser vs. description; asset factories, blocks, templates and resources; etc. The implementation team has been working on glossaries and FAQ’s to help our campus understand the system more easily.

The other challenge has been to try to maintain maximum flexibility with the new system and templates, while still maintaining standards for design, branding and accessibility. There is a constant push-pull for “design freedom” vs. “controlled-content presentation.” This has led to many fruitful debates.

Q. How will you use the Web CMS in your unit or department?

A. I plan to incrementally implement the CMS for all the Web sites in our unit. The implementation process itself will be of great benefit, allowing me to evaluate the existing sites and work with program directors to make sure their sites are meeting the goals of the program as well as those of the university. The long-term benefits of the CMS, though, will be to allow program staff, students or faculty the ability to directly get involved with their Web sites, editing and publishing content, without having to worry about site branding and accessibility.

Q. What advice would you offer others interested in adopting the Web CMS?

A. Clean house! Moving to a content management system is a great opportunity to clean up your Web sites. Not only is this an excellent time to evaluate the organization of your site and get rid of orphaned files, but it also gives site managers an excuse to crawl through each and every Web page to update content and breathe new life into a site.

Learn more about the Web CMS initiative and its participants at the project’s Web site.