The document summarizes the content management system used to manage the website for Syracuse University's College of Arts and Sciences. It launched in 2010 using Cascade as the CMS. The site, ASNews.syr.edu, showcases news, events, research and accomplishments for the college. Content comes from press releases, social media, videos and is organized into categories. The system allows content to be easily reused across sites. Over 500 stories have been posted to date. The CMS is low maintenance and predictable, allowing a small editorial staff to manage the site.

1. #cascadeserver @hannon_hill

2.  TheCollege.syr.edu
launched in February 2010, first time a CMS
had been used to manage online content
Purpose: repository for academic information
(the “business” side of TheCollege).
 ASNews.syr.edu
launched in September 2010, a sister site
Purpose: showcase activities, research, student
and alumni accolades, news and events unique to
Arts and Sciences.

5.  Based on Press Releases (“Stories”)
 Primary Categories aligned to the academics of
TheCollege:
◦ Sciences
◦ Humanities
◦ People
 Classify each Story as “News” or “Event”
 Current Stories and searchable Archive
#cascadeserver @hannon_hill

6.  Press Releases created by two staff writers
 SU Calendar (VT Calendar application) provides
xml feed of daily events
 Social Media postings
 Video (YouTube Channel and Ensemble
streaming server)
 Custom Slideshow Stories
 Outside News “snippets” as links

7.  Content will always have some updated material
(daily)
 Story selection and rotation determined by the
editorial staff (of two)
 Any moderation or approval of content done
offline (no workflows required)
 Auto-Publish nightly with optional
on-demand as needed

8.  # Story pages
2010 (95)
2011 (142)
2012 (174)
2013 (110)
Over 500 total to date…
(adding 6-7 stories weekly during academic year)
 In addition to TheCollege and ASNews sites, my technical staff manages:
18 department, 3 intranet, 5 cultural,
40 research sites and the online faculty directory,
for a total 3500 pages. (All in Cascade)

9.  LOW MAINTENANCE
 PREDICTABLE EFFORT INVOLVED
 CREATE ONCE, USE MANY
 Get a lot of mileage out of a “Story”
 Editorial components can be used in multiple
places in ASNews and in our other web sites
 Present the content in such a way to look
like more (especially in periods of low academic
activity)

10. Home Page
CURRENT
Story Pages
Story Pages
Archives
2013
2012
2011
2010
“CURRENT”
List Pages

11.  Center column
is the editable
region
 Left Sidebar:
navigation plus
up to three
additional
blocks
 Right Column
contains the
calendar feed

12.  default
region
Story Page
This area
contains the
content we
repurpose to
other pages

13.  Metadata assigns the Category affiliation(s) and
the designation as News or Event item
Based on the checked affiliations, this page will be included
on both the
People and the Science-Math listing pages
Event or News designation is a preference of our editors

14. We decided not to include the photo as a thumbnail –
but could have.

16.  Story Page in relation to List Pages
Story Page Resides in the
Newsevents_2013 folder
A reference to it is placed in
the appropriate “Current” folder
(Events or News)
Story shows up on the List or
Lists checked in the
metadata
and shows up in ALL-Current

17. WHY
?

18.  Our Writers understood references

They could see references and move them around
in the folders

They could delete a reference and not panic

They could recreate a reference if wanted to rerun
a story
 They stopped deleting the list pages by accident
 The story pages stayed in their original folder and the
links always stay the same
They stopped calling and emailing me!

20.  Home Page:
Stories in rotation
(3+)
 4 more
feature
stories

21.  Only a small amount of custom information accompanies the
Story Page link in a Rotating Story
 Only a Rotating Story requires a different size picture (4
smaller features can use
same size picture as the Story Page)

23. In The News Left Sidebar:
external recognition of our stories
lends authority
(and helps our search ranking!)
Home Page -Home Page - Reuse other people’s content…

24.  Events
Right Sidebar:
 XML feed from the SU News
calendar
 Filtering is applied at either the
inbound feed link or in the
XSLT
 This feed will pick up Events
that don’t have a Story Page
 Events drop off after they occur
(at the calendar level) and
combined with daily publish is
always current

25. Various ways to sort items from the
feed, including
By Category
(Humanities,
Sciences, People)
By department
(English, Physics)
By number
to display and
placement
Combination of feed
filters and XSLT filtering

26.  Twitter feed tends to
reinforce what is
already in the Stories or
Calendar
(so we added it)
 Facebook feed is a
potential addition but is
less legible and more
repetitive
 YouTube channel is
linked in the Multimedia
sidebar…and…

27.  We have
a modified
Story Page for
video embeds…
 That draws from an
Arts and Sciences
YouTube Channel
with a subgroup of
playlists
We have tested Hannon Hill’s video
embed tools in the WYS
For accessibility compliance, we only
use videos which are captioned

28.  The “Ticker Line” features academic links
Because (virtually) all our sites are in Cascade, we
have the ability to cross reference content easily
Cascade’s Page Chooser has recently become one of my
favorite tools to replicate content to other areas.

29. Same basic
functionality as
Category Lists with
different ordering
and an upper right
navigation created by
an index block that
counts the List pages
within annual
archives
List Pages in archives are restricted to a numerical
range of pages so the list does not become too long.

30.  The Story Page link does not “expire” when it’s
referenced by outside media or our own web sites. We
can add a link on a faculty member’s personal page to
the Story Page that featured them-and it will always
work.
 Stories in archives update any changes in sidebar or
header/footer as well (2010 stories get new feeds,
links to social media) and are republished nightly as
well.
So much of the ASNews site is text it’s highly searchable

31.  Story Page Master Elements added at the Template or
Configuration Set Level
(they all share the same side elements)
 Story Page has sub-versions: video, slideshow, notesField) all
of which do not have a right sidebar
 Home Page is unique, has its own Template
 Category List Pages (current) share a Configuration set but
have Left side elements added at the Page level. Archives are
basically the same with an added block and format for the
page count-and nothing is customized at the page level.
 I looked at what sidebars needed to drop into every page in a
section and planned around that.

32.  Content draws directly from
the story page and does not
require
rewriting
 Changes made in the links
to convert from browse path
to url
 Publish to a folder on the file
server instead
of the web server
 Weekly mailing and
event-specific
Our Physics department has been using a Cascade email
format for weekly notifications to faculty, staff and students

33.  From August 25-September 14, 2013 ASNews had
1,800 unique visitors (3 weeks)
 A typical month during the academic year is 3,000
unique visitors

34.  We see outside promotion driving viewers to ASNews
(we want that!)

35.  George Saunders Video on YouTube posted
Friday night at 5pm. This followed the
announcement his book just made the NY Times
bestseller list. Link added to ASNews
 By Monday morning, thousands of views of the
video and the Story Pages featuring Saunders
were getting lots of hits
 To date, Saunders video has over 40,000 views.

36. Content
Design
Reuse Content
Strategically
Technical
Design
Consistent User
Interface
Cascade
TOOLS

37. lcfranci@syr.edu

38.  For reference

40. Index Block Listing Current

41. Index Block Listing Current

42. XSLT Listing Current (Science-Math)

43. Page Chooser DTD

44. Page Chooser XSLT