Below are the blog entries for May 2008:
Meet the Team - Elizabeth Otwell
By Morgan Griffith,
Friday, May 23rd, 2008 at 10:00am
MORGAN GRIFFITH: Hey there, you're listening to Hannon Hill's 'Meet the Team,' and I'm Morgan Griffith. Today I'm here with one of our newest additions, Elizabeth Otwell. Hi Elizabeth, how are you?
ELIZABETH OTWELL: I'm great, thanks, how are you?
MORGAN GRIFFITH: I'm doing very well, thank you. So how are you liking it here at Hannon Hill so far?
ELIZABETH OTWELL: I'm really enjoying it! Everyone here has been so welcoming, and the atmosphere is pretty cool too. All the funky displays of colors and design in the furniture, art, and lighting is really unique. Definitely not the same old cubicles you would usually see at the workplace. I think the surroundings create an exciting place to come to work everyday.
MORGAN GRIFFITH: Yes, you're right, the environment is pretty different than most companies. So tell us, what brought you here to Hannon Hill?
ELIZABETH OTWELL: Well, I previously worked for a design company. The store I worked at was closing, and I was offered another position at a different location, but unfortunately, the commute would be too far. But I think things happen for a reason, so I took it as a sign to move on and try something different. I started browsing for listings in this area and I saw Hannon Hill's ad on Craigslist and applied. I had sent out a number of resumes and received several other job opportunities, but after meeting the people here and seeing how interesting the environment was, I knew this was the place for me!
MORGAN GRIFFITH: That's terrific, we're glad you decided to choose us. Hannon Hill is quite different than your previous place of work -- were you interested in getting into this particular line of work?
ELIZABETH OTWELL: In terms of what the company does, I didn't quite know, to be honest. But I'm always looking for something to broaden my horizons and thought, why not try something different? Everyday, it seems more and more crucial to understand computer technology, and this will be a great start.
MORGAN GRIFFITH: So where did you go to school and what did you study?
ELIZABETH OTWELL: I attended the University of Georgia, and I received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology. I'm considering eventually going back to get my masters.
MORGAN GRIFFITH: Very cool. So now that you're at Hannon Hill, what do you hope to accomplish?
ELIZABETH OTWELL: Well, in my role as Marketing Assistant/Office Coordinator, I'm hoping to keep the office running as smoothly as possible, as well as hoping to learn more about the marketing side of the company, and eventually become a more integral part of what the marketing team does.
MORGAN GRIFFITH: That sounds great! Well, that pretty much wraps things up for us. Thanks for being with us, Elizabeth.
ELIZABETH OTWELL: Of course! Thanks for having me!
MORGAN GRIFFITH: And thanks to everybody out there for checking out the latest edition of Hannon Hill's 'Meet The Team.' See you next time!
Category
- News
University CMS Adoption on the Rise; Innovative Communication Process becomes Emerging CMS Trend
By Morgan Griffith
Monday, May 19th, 2008 at 12:00pm
As is evident via the emergence of several site redesign blogs from prominent universities across the country, institutions of higher education are realizing the importance and benefits of having a web content management strategy. Defining goals, identifying key stakeholders and decision makers, and outlining a formal implementation process are all key strategic steps that must be taken before choosing the proper web content management system. Here at Hannon Hill, we are always seeking new ways to be innovative and exceed our customers' expectations. Recently, we've noticed that several of our clients have taken it upon themselves to be innovative as well, and are changing the way they think about a web content management system. Improving communication and transparency during the CMS selection process is just one way institutions of higher education are changing the game.
"In itself, the immense proliferation of the number of universities seeking to use a web content management system is very telling," notes Blaine Herman, Director of Strategic Accounts at Hannon Hill. "However, we're able to witness a very exciting time in the web content management industry. Many of our clients have not only begun to strategize when it comes to managing content, but have also outlined a thorough and strategic plan for how to go about doing so. Additionally, we've seen that many of these institutions are taking things one step further, and establishing a communication process via a university redesign blog that enables them to communicate updates and key information with stakeholders in the process."
Hannon Hill client The College of William & Mary was one of the first institutions to fully revamp the CMS selection and communication process with their redesign blog, Re.Web. W&M utilized this blog as a platform to communicate with key decision makers and stakeholders in their CMS process. In addition to W&M, Hannon Hill client North Carolina State University also pursued a similar effort back in 2006 and 2007 with their ncsu.edu redesign blog. We have now seen many higher-ed institutions taking on similar endeavors. Binghamton University, a state university of New York, recently took up a similar effort with their Web Redesign Project blog, which they use to keep interested parties updated on process status, timelines, and options. We at Hannon Hill hope to see this trend continue amongst all institutions of higher education shopping for a CMS. Encouraging community input and collaboration, getting key stakeholder feedback, and ensuring end-user buy-in of your CMS of choice will all greatly benefit your web content management process.
The recent upsurge in CMS use amongst institutions of higher education has been substantial. In May alone, Hannon Hill has been pleased to announce the signing of five new clients of higher education. Emory University, California Polytechnic University - San Luis Obispo, Rollins College, Northwestern Michigan College, and Sarah Lawrence College have all concluded their CMS decision-making process, and have chosen Hannon Hill's award-winning web content management system, Cascade Server. We look forward to working with these renowned institutions, and keeping you updated on their progress with their CMS of choice, Cascade Server.
Category
- New Customers
The College of William & Mary Setting the Bar with Communication during Site Redesign and CMS Selection Process
By Blaine Herman
Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 12:30pm
Hannon Hill is pleased to announce the signing of one of our newest clients, The College of William & Mary. The decision to purchase Cascade Server was just a portion of William & Mary's effort to "reassert" their "web presence". The project was code named re.web; more information about the re.web initiative, and the depth of their CMS research and analysis can be found here: http://www.wm.edu/reweb/.
Related Content
Category
- New Customers
Powerful Tools One Click away with Cascade Server Firefox Extension
By Syl Turner
Friday, May 2nd, 2008 at 4:00pm
Cascade Server is very simple to navigate through already, but some of us power developers need a few more shortcuts. Sure, we have access keys (Alt-E to edit, Alt-S to submit, etc.), but some of us are clickers. That’s why the Cascade Server Firefox Extension was created!
Features
Now, you can easily right-click on an asset and it provides numerous asset options! View, Edit, Copy, Delete and Publish is now only one click away, instead of two!
This works anywhere there’s a link to the asset, too. So if a page is linked within the content, you can right-click on the link to reveal the same options!
That’s not all! If you would like to easily create a new default asset, just right-click anywhere, go to the “New Asset” menu, and select one of the default assets to create a brand new one!
What’s that? There’s more?! Yes! Now, if you know what asset you’d like to go to, just right-click, go to “Go To Asset…” and a new dialog box appears where you can type the absolute path to any asset, or administrative entity, to go directly to it! You can also press F4 to open the dialog box!
I know. I know. You can’t believe it. There are so many useful features, there can’t be anymore, right? Wrong! We have added additional functionality to the Bulk Change tool! On the list of assets screen during a bulk change, right click to reveal the Bulk Change menu! It allows you to select only certain types of assets, even based on regular expressions!
We still have two more features that are helpful! If there are a lot of workflows sitting on the workflow screen, and you’d like to delete them all, just right-click and go to “Delete All Workflows.” If successful, a dialog box will tell you how many workflows have been deleted.
We have one more feature! Similar to deleting all the workflows, you can now delete all the publish jobs in the queue! Go to the publisher status page (Tools -> Publisher -> Active), right-click and go to “Delete All Publish Jobs.” Again, a dialog box will appear if the deletion is successful.
Additional Information
This extension will not allow your users to bypass any security or access rights restrictions. For example, the “Edit” option may still appear on the right-click menu, but if you don’t have access to edit, you won’t be allowed to access the edit screen.
We have found that there are some display issues on Firefox for Mac, where some icons don’t appear. These are only style issues, though. The functionality still works.
This extension works on Firefox 2.0 and higher. We will continue to work on the extension by adding new features and fixing any issues that may appear. However, this is NOT supported by Hannon Hill. Any questions to Hannon Hill about how to use it, any issues that annoy you, etc., will be ignored. This is only a side project and cannot be supported. Feel free to send us feedback or use JIRA to suggest new features, and we may add them on future releases.
We make no guarantees with this extension! Keep that in mind.
Download the Cascade Server Firefox Extension
*Extension Credits: Martin Robinson and Syl Turner, with a very special thanks Andy Gardner, Joel Stevens, Brett Goodwin, Artur Tomusiak, and Steven Pease for all their suggestions and debugging ability.
Category
- Resources
